CHILDREN of the REVOCATION: the REEDUCATION of FRENCH PROTESTANTS AFTER 1685 by ELIZABETH ANN CHURCHICH a Dissertation Submitted
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CHILDREN OF THE REVOCATION: THE REEDUCATION OF FRENCH PROTESTANTS AFTER 1685 By ELIZABETH ANN CHURCHICH A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School – New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in History under the direction of Dr. Jennifer Jones and approved by ____________________________________ ____________________________________ ____________________________________ ____________________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey May 2013 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Children of the Revocation: The Reeducation of French Protestants after 1685 by ELIZABETH ANN CHURCHICH Dissertation Director: Jennifer M. Jones, Ph.D. This dissertation examines the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in late seventeenth-century France and its connections to the absolutist monarchy of Louis XIV and the shifting educational ideals of the period. Focusing on the detailed implementation of the edict in Paris, it discusses the importance of the development of a new bureaucratic structure that allowed Louis XIV to remain relatively involved in the details of implementation, while entrusting the daily operations to individuals loyal to the crown. Placing the Revocation in the context of administrative expansion, growing central control, and idealized Christian kingship, Louis XIV’s decision to end toleration of Protestantism in France becomes clearer. It also argues that education and social reform were central in the conception and execution of this edict, and that the Revocation was part of a moment in which conversion through education appeared possible. In combining religious conversion and education in an effort to form Protestants into French Catholics, Louis XIV built upon an absolutist vision of education and connected his efforts to a flourishing debate. For the Protestant families affected by this edict, particularly the children, this approach shaped their experience of the Revocation. This study of the interaction between state and society, ideals and practices, in 1685 allows a new and more complicated understanding ii of Louis XIV’s kingship, the meaning of conversion in the late seventeenth century, and the place of the Revocation in French history. iii Acknowledgement This dissertation is the product of many years of work, and the support and assistance of many people and places. First and foremost, the intellectual community at Rutgers allowed for its creation and helped it take final form. I owe an immense debt to my committee for their support and guidance: Jacob Soll, Phyllis Mack, and Jonathan Dewald. I am particularly grateful to my advisor, Jennifer Jones, for the continual feedback and support she has provided, both intellectually and personally. The graduate students who have taken this journey alongside me were perhaps even more essential, as they sustained my sanity and my intellectual drive in a multitude of ways. Annalise Kinkel, Kathryn Mahaney, Alejandro Gomez-del-Moral, Arnout van der Meer, Kristin Canzano Pinyan, Steve Allen—as we’ve said so many times, this cohort is something special. I also benefited greatly from the archival wealth and community in Paris, thanks in large part to the generous support of the Fulbright Commission in France. The archives and archivists at the Archives Nationales, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Archives départementales de Lot-et-Garonne and of Yvelines, and of the Bibliothèque de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français all provided valuable resources essential to this project. The archival companionship of Erin Corber, Katie Jarvis, James Coons, Megan Barber, Hannah Callaway, and Andrew Bellisari lightened the load of French bureaucracy, and brightened a sometimes dreary city. This project revolves around the city of Paris, and my experience there defined its expression in so many ways. Behind all of this work and these experiences, however, one constant has iv remained: my family. Their love and support throughout this process have sustained me, and I dedicate this project to them. My parents, Greg and Deb Perry, and my husband, Zach. You have pushed me to think, to work hard, to reach high, to not be afraid of falling. Thank you. v Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgement iv Introduction 1 Chapter 1 France in 1680: Approaching the Revocation 10 Chapter 2 The Idea of Education in the 1680s 41 Chapter 3 The Years of Revocation 93 Chapter 4 The Revocation for the Nobility 140 Chapter 5 The Revocation for Parisians 204 Chapter 6 Social Education, Religious Control 268 Conclusion 302 Bibliography 307 List of Illustrations Map I. Quartiers of Paris, 1685. 212 Map II. Relative Concentrations of Protestants in Paris by quartier, 1685. 213 1 Introduction As Louis XIV approached his forty-second year of kingship in the fall of 1685, he was at the height of his reign. His palace at Versailles was nearly finished, and the new aristocratic system it established, full of spectacles and rules, maintained at least the appearance of a nobility in the service of their king. Years of war had come, at least temporarily, to an end, with Louis XIV as the victor, and France was now seemingly more powerful than it had ever been. Looking back nostalgically at this period, Voltaire wrote, “Louis XIV in his court, as in his reign, was so full of brilliance and magnificence that the smallest details of his life seem interesting to posterity, much as they were the object of curiosity of all the European courts and of all his contemporaries. The splendor of his government was spread over his smallest actions.”1 Within this spectacular tableau, Louis’ model of Christian kingship loomed large. Presiding over a confessionally divided kingdom, Louis XIV struggled both personally and politically with allowing Protestantism to remain a part of French society and culture while asserting his ideal as “most Christian king.” In October 1685, he boldly addressed this concern, revoking the century-old Edict of Nantes and eliminating the official toleration of Protestantism in France. Alongside this strong statement of his vision of Christian kingship, he laid out a grand plan for refashioning French society, beginning with the conversion and reeducation of French Protestant children. What Voltaire called 1 Voltaire, Le siècle de Louis XIV (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1918), 283. Introduction 2 “one of the great misfortunes of France” was, to Louis XIV, the highest ideal of religious unity, an ideal worthy of the grandeur of his court and reign.2 The Revocation has been studied by many historians, beginning with Voltaire, and has a storied place in the historical memory of Louis XIV’s reign. Its relation to the confessional warfare of the seventeenth century and the ensuing emigration and concurrent rise of the Enlightenment have dominated historical discussion of the edict. Classic studies of the Revocation, such as that of Elisabeth Labrousse, interpret the policy as, above all, a political calculation, couched in the language of Christian kingship, but rooted in an understanding of the state as persecutor throughout the seventeenth century.3 Studies of the military power inherent in the dragonnades, and the violence they brought with them, emphasize similar points, as the king’s interest in conversions becomes a discussion of force and royal will.4 Beginning immediately after 1685, histories of the Revocation and its ensuing emigration emerged, primarily from the pens of Protestant exiles themselves, casting the Revocation as disastrous for the French economy.5 This understanding remains important in contemporary studies of the Revocation, with the theories Warren Scoville6 about the economic crisis following the Revocation continuing 2 Ibid., 456. 3 E. Labrousse, La Révocation de l'Édit de Nantes: Une foi, une loi, un roi? (Paris: Editions Payot, 1985). A similar sentiment is expressed in J. Orcibal, Louis XIV et les Protestants (Paris: Librairie Vrin, 1951); J. Garrison, L'Édit de Nantes et sa révocation: Histoire d'une intolérance (Paris: Seuil, 1985). 4 R. McCullough, Coercion, Conversion and Counterinsurgency in Louis XIV's France (Leiden: Brill, 2007); B. Strayer, Huguenots and Camisards as Aliens in France, 1598-1789: The Struggle for Religious Toleration (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001). 5 The most well known of these works is that of Pierre Jurieu, Reflexions sur la cruelle persécution (1685), and a similar sentiment can be found in many contemporary documents. 6 Scoville focuses on economic models, comparing tax, interest and production rates before and after the Revocation. He sees the economic decline of the late seventeenth-century as a Malthusian crisis, thus disconnecting it from political and religious influences. Many have since critiqued Scoville’s work, but his decentering of the economic destruction was pivotal. W. Scoville, The Persecution of Huguenots and French Economic Development, 1680-1720 Introduction 3 to influence questions of diaspora and sustained communities.7 Together, this historiographic tradition emphasizes questions of Huguenot survival in the face of violence, but the Revocation itself—as a policy and an ideal—is often lost and underexamined. The promulgation of the Revocation in 1685, at a time when so many countries and intellectual arguments were shifting towards policies of toleration, has also merited considerable historical attention. Louis XIV’s wars with his European neighbors had inflamed tensions within Europe, particularly with the Dutch Republic and the Hapsburg Empire, for several decades, creating an atmosphere of mutual distrust and animosity that defined international relations in the period.8 The Revocation was issued during a lull in overt hostility, but clearly was intended to garner support from Louis’ Catholic allies and remind his Protestant foes of his strength and power.9 The work of Geoffrey Adams has directly explored the connections between the Revocation and the Enlightenment debate (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1960); M. Yardeni, "Naissance et essor d'un mythe: la Révocation de l'Édit de Nantes et le déclin économique de la France," Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire du Protestantisme Français 139(1993).