Huguenot and Economic Power Shift Max Weber (1864-1920) analyzed Huguenots and the other Protestants role in the modern society in his famous The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”. It was about one million of two million of Huguenots who was forced to emigrate by The French Wars of Religion (1562-1598) and Louis XIVs persecution to surrounding Protestant countries: England, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Prussia, South Africa and North America. This demographic shift brought very deep impact on the culture and the technology in the world. Their very strong religious conviction push them to establish the society on more rational principle. Many of the refugees very skilled trades associated with weaving, clockmaking and financial services and there was also a large number of intellectuals. Huguenots very much contributed to modernize the social culture or technologies in the countries they emigrated. In UK, after the Glorious Revolution in 1688, King William and Queen Mary gave Huguenots a remarkable level of charitable support. At the end of the seventeenth century, for example, some 64,713 pounds was raised by royal brief for their relief, while William and Mary donated 39,000 pounds to help Huguenot resettlement between 1689 and 1693 alone. On arrival in London, French refugees found two already well-established French churches. The first was in Threadneedle Street in the City, where a strict and continental Calvinist form of worship was practiced, and the other at the Savoy, in the West End, where an Anglican form of worship was followed. By 1700 there were nine French churches in the East End (all of which practiced a Calvinist form of worship), and twelve in the West End (six of which celebrated Anglican communion, and six a Calvinist liturgy). Huguenot silversmiths modernized the manner of the table, the design and the production techniques of silverware in UK and the 2nd or 3rd generation of the immigrants Huguenot, like Paul de Lamerie, created the long surviving Rococo design tradition like the Naturalistic Spoon. They also worked as one of main source of the Industrial Revolution. --------------------- History of Huguenot Huguenots criticized the worship performed in the Roman Catholic Church, in particular the focus on the ritual what they viewed as an obsession with death. They saw Christian life as something to be expressed as a life of simple faith in God, relying upon God for salvation, and not upon rituals, while obeying Biblical law. They felt that the Catholic Church needed radical cleansing of its impurities, and that the Pope represented a worldly kingdom, which sat in mocking tyranny over the things of God, and was ultimately doomed. In 1558 Huguenot organized their first national synod in Paris. By 1562, the estimated number of Huguenots had passed one million and peaked in number at approximately two million, compared to approximately sixteen million Catholics during the same period. The French Catholic Church fanatically opposed and attacked the Huguenots. In 1562 some1200 Huguenots were slain at Vassy, France. This ignited the the Wars of Religion which would rip apart, devastate, and bankrupt France for the next three decades. The height of this persecution was St. Bartholomews Day massacre of the night of 23/24 August, 1572 more than 8 000 Huguenots were murdered in Paris. It happened during the wedding of Henry of Navarre, a Huguenot, to Marguerite de Valois (daughter of Catherine de Medici), when thousands of Huguenots converged on Paris for the wedding celebrations. It was Catherine de Medici who persuaded her weakling son Charles IX to order the mass murder, which lasted three days and spread to the countryside. Total number of victims might be 70,000 in France. On Sunday morning August 24th, 1572 she personally walked through the streets of Paris to inspect the carnage. Pope Gregory XIII in Vatican was so pleased to hear this news that he engaged a famous Renaissance painter, Vasari, to paint the triumph of the Most Christian King over the Huguenots and memorized to struck a medal representing an angel exterminating the Huguenot with the inscription Hugonottorium strages (Huguenot conspirators)”. Henry of Navarres life was spared when he pretended to support the Roman Catholic faith. In 1593 he made his perilous leapand abjured his faith in July 1593, and 5 years later he was the undisputed monarch as King Henry IV (le bon Henri, the good Henry) of France. The Edict of Nantes was signed by Henry IV on April 13th, 1598, which brought an end to the Wars of Religion. The Huguenots were allowed to practice their faith in 20 specified French free cities. France became united and a decade of peace followed. After Henry IV was murdered in 1610, however, the persecution of the dissenters resumed in all earnestness under the guidance of Cardinal Richelieu. The Huguenot free cities were lost one after the other after they were conquered by the forces of Cardinal Richelieu, and the last stronghold, La Rochelle, fell in 1629 after a siege lasting a month. Louis XIV (the Sun King, 1643-1715) began to apply his motto LÉtat, cest moi (I am the state) and introduced the Dragonnades - the billeting of dragoons in Huguenot households. The Huguenot population of France dropped to 856,000 by the mid-1660s, of which a plurality lived in rural areas. The greatest concentrations of Huguenots at this time resided in the regions of Guienne, Saintonge-Aunis-Angoumois and Poitou. In 1685 Louis XIV began with a policy of une foi, un loi, un roi (one faith, one law, one king) and revoked the Edict of Nantes. The large scale persecution of the Huguenots resumed while emigration was declared illegal. Many Huguenots were burned and some were shipped to sea to serve their sentences as galley slaves, either on French galley ships, or sold to Turkey as galley slaves. How many Huguenot could fly to the foreign countries? It was about one million of two million Huguenots that The French Wars of Religion (1562-1598) and Louis XIVs persecution forced to emigrate to surrounding Protestant countries: England, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Prussia, South Africa and North America. In 1787 Persecution of Protestants in France ended with the Edict of Toleration. Three years later, during the French Revolution, Protestants were finally granted full citizenship but most of them never come back to France. Article 4 of the June 26, 1889 Nationality Law stated : Descendants of families proscribed by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes will continue to benefit from the benefit of the December 15, 1790 Law, but on the condition that a nominal decree should be issued for every petitioner. That decree will only produce its effects for the future. Foreign descendants of Huguenots lost the automatic right to French citizenship in 1945 (by force of the ordonnance du 19 octobre 1945, revoking the 1889 Nationality Law).Ordonnace du 19 octobre 1945 also states in article 3 This application does not however affect the validity of past acts by the person or rights acquired by third parties on the basis of previous laws. In the 1920s and 1930s, members of the extreme-right Action Française movement expressed strong animus against Protestants, as well as against Jews, and freemasons - all three being regarded as groups supporting the French Republic, which Action Française sought to overthrow. Protestants in France today number about one million, or about two percent of the population. They are most concentrated in the south-eastern France and the Cévennes region in the south. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism
Posted on: Sun, 26 Jan 2014 10:53:30 +0000
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