This great charter of the French Reformation briefly consisted of what follows under the ancient régime—entire liberty of conscience in the domestic circle; the public exercise of religion in all places where it was established in 1597, and in the suburbs of the towns; permission to lords of high rank to have service performed in their castles, and to noblemen of second rank, the right of admitting thirty persons to their private worship; the admission of the Reformed to public employment, of their children to the schools, of their invalids to the hospitals, of their poor to partake of the alms; the right of printing their books in certain towns; equal representation in some of the Parliaments; a chamber of the edict at Paris, entirely composed of (Roman) Catholics, except a single member, but offering sufficient guarantee by its particular object; four academies for scientific and theological instruction; authorization to convoke synods according to discipline; and lastly, a certain number of places of surety.
The (Roman) Catholic church had also its share in this edict. The property of the clergy was to be everywhere restored, tithes paid, and the exercise of (Roman) Catholicism re-established throughout the kingdom. This last article, which restored the mass in two hundred and fifty towns, and two thousand country parishes, narrowly missed exciting an insurrection at La Rochelle.
Yet this was not religious liberty, nor even simple toleration, as we understand it now; it was still a treaty of peace between two people juxtaposed upon the same soil. There was a twofold law; there were two armies, two judicial establishments, and each party had its places of hostage. Henry IV., the head of the whole state, had filled the office of arbitrator between the two camps. But this was already a great step in advance of the past.
The false maxim that there should be only one faith, as there are only one king and one government, had cost France three millions of actual money, and two millions of men. It had erected the scaffold and the stake during sixty years, kindled civil war during thirty-five years, provoked the massacres of Mérindol, of Vassy, and of Saint Bartholomew, and inspired spoliations and murders, and crimes without number. At the termination of the wars, half of the towns and castles were in ashes, commerce destroyed, and the country so devastated that thousands of the peasantry had resolved to emigrate, having no longer the wherewithal to live upon the soil which had nourished their forefathers.
Humanity has achieved the principle of religious liberty through rivers of blood and over heaps of ruins: it has been too dearly purchased to be lost.
BOOK III.
FROM THE PROMULGATION TO THE REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES.
(1598-1685.)
I.
The compromise between the two religious communions met with the approval of good men; but it was slow in passing from the law into the ideas and manners [of the people].
The (Roman) Catholic clergy made the strongest protestations against the Edict of Nantes, and Clement VIII. wrote to say that “a decree, which gave liberty of conscience to all, was the most accursed that had ever been made.” The university, governed by the Sorbonne and the Jesuits, wished to close the gates of the colleges against the Huguenots; and several Parliaments even raised serious obstacles against the registration of the edict.