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Huguenot

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For other uses, see Huguenot (disambiguation).

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A Huguenot (/ˈhjuːɡənɒt/ or /hjuːɡəˈnoʊ/; French: [yɡ(ə)no], is a member of a French Protestant denomination with origins in the 16th or 17th centuries. Historically, Huguenots were French Protestants inspired by the writings ofJohn Calvin (Jean Calvin in French) in the 1530s, who became known by that originally derisive designation by the end of the 16th century. The majority of Huguenots endorsed the Reformed tradition of Protestantism.

Huguenot numbers peaked near an estimated two million by 1562, concentrated mainly in the southern and central parts of France, about one-eighth the number of French Catholics. As Huguenots gained influence and more openly displayed their faith, Catholic hostility grew, in spite of increasingly liberal political concessions and edicts of toleration from the French crown. A series of religious conflicts followed, known as the Wars of Religion, fought intermittently from 1562 to 1598. The wars finally ended with the granting of the Edict of Nantes, which granted the Huguenots substantial religious, political and military autonomy.

Renewed religious warfare in the 1620s caused the political and military privileges of the Huguenots to be abolished following their defeat. They retained the religious provisions of the Edict of Nantes until the rule of Louis XIV, who progressively increased persecution of them until he issued the Edict of Fontainebleau (1685), which abolished all legal recognition of Protestantism in France, and forced the Huguenots to convert. While nearly three-quarters eventually were killed ^[1] or submitted, roughly 500,000 Huguenots had fled France by the early 18th century^{[citation needed]}.

The bulk of Huguenot émigrés relocated to Protestant European nations such as England, Wales, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, the Dutch Republic, the Electorate of Brandenburg and Electorate of the Palatinate in the Holy Roman Empire, the Duchy of Prussia, the Channel Islands, and Ireland. They also spread beyond Europe to the Dutch Cape Colony in South Africa, the Dutch East Indies, the Caribbean, and several of the English colonies of North America, and Quebec, where they were accepted and allowed to worship freely.

Persecution of Protestants diminished in France after the death of Louis XIV in 1715, and officially ended with the Edict of Versailles, commonly called the Edict of Tolerance, signed by Louis XVI in 1787. Two years later, with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789, Protestants gained equal rights as citizens.^[2]

Today, most Huguenots have been assimilated into various societies and cultures, but remnant communities in Alsace and the Cévennes in France and a diaspora of Huguenots in England and French Australians still retain their Huguenot religious tradition.