Progressive Protestants: Representation and Remembrance in France, 1685-1815 Bryan Banks
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Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2014 Progressive Protestants: Representation and Remembrance in France, 1685-1815 Bryan Banks Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES PROGRESSIVE PROTESTANTS: REPRESENTATION AND REMEMBRANCE IN FRANCE, 1685-1815 By BRYAN BANKS A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2014 Bryan Banks defended this dissertation on October 3, 2014. The members of the supervisory committee were: Darrin M. McMahon Professor Directing Dissertation Amanda Porterfield University Representative Rafe Blaufarb Committee Member George S. Williamson Committee Member François Dupuigrenet-Desroussilles Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Since this dissertation questions the changing and capacious meaning of a word, a concept, and an identity, I would like to begin these acknowledgements in a similar way, albeit for a different term. While authorship today implies independent creation, many historians have questioned the autonomy of the author. The acknowledgements section of any work evidences the dependent nature of such an endeavor. While I may be the “author” of this dissertation, this in no way implies that I am independently responsible for everything that follows. Financial, academic, and moral support have made this dissertation possible just as much as my own drive. In the process of researching and writing this dissertation, I have benefitted from the support of many institutions. Without the financial support of the Institute on Napoleon and the French Revolution, in the form of a Ben Weider Fellowship and travel grant, and the history department at Florida State University, this project would have staggered and disappeared at its earliest stages. Their support has allowed me to visit archives and libraries on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. While researching and writing, I have acquired untold academic debts. To the archivists and librarians at Florida State University’s Special Collections and Archives, Emory University’s Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, the British Library, the British National Archives, the Library of the Religious Society of Friends in London, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Archives nationale in Paris, and especially the Bibliothèque de la Société de l’histoire du Protestantisme français, I owe you all my utmost gratitude. Countless hours were saved with your assistance. In addition, I have also benefitted from the invaluable assistance of my mentors and colleagues. Darrin M. McMahon advised this dissertation with a high level of erudition, iii analytical precision, and most importantly, patience. He provided the perfect balance of intellectual freedom and guidance. Rafe Blaufarb, François Dupuigrenet-Desroussilles, George S. Williamson, and Amanda Porterfield read the entire dissertation and provided critical and crucial advice for revisions. Material drawn from this project has been delivered at several conferences. I am grateful for the comments that I have received from colleagues at the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, 1750-1850 (2010, 2011), the Western Society for French History (2010, 2013), the Society for the Study of French History (2013), and the American Society for Church History/American Historical Association (2014). Sage advice has come from Joseph Clarke, Bernard Cottret, Denise Z. Davison, Carol E. Harrison, Jeff Horn, Colin Jones, Annie Jourdan, Bertrand van Ruymbeke, Timothy Tackett, and so many others, in addition to the dozens of my fellow students who have offered their knowledge and shared in the experience of graduate school. I am especially thankful to Kim Beaver, Tim Best, Jonathan Deverse, Cindy Ermus, Shane Hockin, Erica Johnson, Joshua Meeks, and Weston Nunn who have all read portions of this dissertation in either chapter or conference presentation form. The real champions of my work are the members of my family. My wife has listened to many unprompted lectures, read the roughest of my drafts, and been a constant source of support. My mother and sister have been great sounding boards and have lifted my spirits when writing this dissertation had taken its toll. More than any other, I owe my father a great deal. He has read every word of this dissertation and has done so with a close and eager eye. A recently retired high school English educator, my father continues to teach me new things on a regular basis. From an early age, he imparted to me an appreciation of history and the English language, but most importantly, he taught me the joy of learning. This dissertation is dedicated to him. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1: PROTESTANTS OF OLD REGIME FRANCE ................................................... 23 The “Calvinist Crescent”.......................................................................................................... 24 Lutherans and Other Protestants .............................................................................................. 48 CHAPTER 2: PROTESTANTS AND PHILOSOPHERS ........................................................... 54 Violence, Vitriol, and Veneration in the Writings of Voltaire ................................................. 56 Persians and Protestants in the Works of Montesquieu ........................................................... 65 Protestant Multivalence in the Encyclopédie ........................................................................... 71 The Reformed and Rousseau ................................................................................................... 80 CHAPTER 3: PROTESTANTS AND CITIZENSHIP................................................................. 86 “Contrapuntal Readings” in the Apologetic Corpus of Antoine Court .................................... 87 Cause célèbre: Voltaire and the Calas Affair .......................................................................... 95 Turgot’s Separation of Church and State, Thought and Practice ........................................... 105 Law and Toleration in Malesherbes’s Mémoires ................................................................... 112 Rabaut Saint-Étienne: A Protestant Pastor and the Politics of Protestantism ........................ 117 CHAPTER 4: PROTESTANTS AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ................................... 124 Liberating the Patriotic Protestant .......................................................................................... 126 Counter-Revolutionary Constructions of Protestants............................................................. 140 Reconciling Religion and Revolutionary Ideology: The Case of the Quaker ........................ 148 CHAPTER 5: PROTESTANTS AFTER REVOLUTION ......................................................... 163 Ending the Revolution (and the Wars of Religion?) .............................................................. 164 Revolution as the Realization of the Reformation ................................................................. 169 National Religion, Christian Reunion .................................................................................... 182 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................... 192 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 203 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...................................................................................................... 226 v ABSTRACT This dissertation examines representations of Protestantism during a crucial period of legal persecution initiated by Louis XIV’s Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) and concluded during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Era. Drawing on a vast variety of printed sources by Enlightenment writers, social reformers, priests, pastors, revolutionaries, and even Napoleon Bonaparte, this dissertation examines the versatile and fungible nature of Protestantism in the wake of the Revocation. Consideration of Protestantism permitted the exploration of a variety of pressing issues, including the role of religion in society, the perfectibility of human nature, the characteristics of an ideal citizen, secularism, pluralism, and human rights. This study of representations of Protestants in France during the long eighteenth century— by both Protestants and non-Protestants — offers new insights on the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Era, and the history of Protestantism in general. It crosses traditional chronological boundaries, building off of the latest historical scholarship and cultural theory, to argue that an understanding of modern, progressive Protestantism emerged over the course of the eighteenth century, alongside and intertwined with the more