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Persecution of the Huguenots in the 18th Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Extract
In 1685 the government of Louis XIV revoked the vestiges of the Edict of Nantes, after having made various encroachments on it since the 1630's when Richelieu nullified the military provisions. And thus France, which under Henry IV in the late sixteenth century had gone farther toward legal toleration than the other states of Europe, lapsed into the ranks of those intolerant. The Edict had never been popular with a large element of the French people, notably the group which had fought under the Guises in the Wars of Religion. The clergy in particular urged its repeal. Louis XIII and Louis XIV under the influence of his Jesuit advisors, Pères Le Tellier and La Chaise, and of his second wife, Madame de Maintenon, a zealous ex-Protestant, revoked the Edict completely.
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References
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