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111 Conclusion “A Habitation Elsewhere” Huguenots, Camisards, and the Transatlantic Experience The case of the Cévennes Camisards is a neglected historical component of both European and colonial American narratives, one that warrants telling. Through the addition of this French dimension, the customary portrait of Protestantism in this period becomes more nuanced and complete. This inclusion enables scholars now to explore more fully the relationship between Huguenots and Camisards and to trace their impact on European and, especially, early American culture. Three influential French Protestant exiles provide focal case studies for informing and enlarging our understanding of the New World experience. Thanks to their presence and voices, scholars who had been limited to a sketched profile of our nascent nation can now see a complete face, thoroughly fleshed out, that incorporates the French dimension and delineates Cotton Mather’s French connection. The piety and prophecy of French Protestants profoundly influenced the culture , religiosity, and polity of Europe and the New World. Their belief system intersected in dialogue with Puritanism and prepared the ideological content (freedom of speech, freedom of conscience) for Enlightenment understandings of the appropriate relationship between church and state. French Protestantism contributed theologically, aesthetically, and socially to the pre-Revolutionary colonial context. Huguenots and Camisards: Common Ancestry, Changed Circumstances During the latter half of the sixteenth century, the Wars of Religion convulsed France as Protestants, influenced by the teachings of Martin Luther and organized by the administrative genius of John Calvin, tore themselves away from their former Catholic adherence. They had come to believe Roman Catholicism to be unscriptural. The king and others in positions of power increasingly perceived these French Protestants, or Huguenots, to be a threat. Although part of the body politic, Huguenots embodied what was viewed as a form of 112 • Conclusion “possession”: they represented the demon that lurked at the heart of the nationstate . Soon, official policy was aimed at extirpating French Protestants. Royal troops under Henri II and Henri III were deployed against a significant portion of the king’s own subjects, committing atrocities in the name of Christ (and king). As civil war divided France, John Calvin, who had fled to Geneva, devised a coherent way to organize Calvinists in Switzerland, training some of them as pastors to be sent secretly to France, there to nurture covertly an ecclesiological counterculture despite the systematic persecution being waged against French Calvinists. From the beginning, the hallmark of the Huguenots was the seriousness with which they received and interpreted scripture. Their reading of the Bible was often very sophisticated, and the debates in which they engaged among themselves often relied on rational discourse that deployed “proof texts” and counterarguments based on scriptural loci, imitating the meticulous structure of a lawyer’s brief. This legalistic and rationalistic frame of mind would reach its apogee in Reformed Protestantism in the New World a couple of centuries later, and still characterizes some strands of modern Protestant thought. The Huguenots thus offer a form of scriptural dependence—and, for the Camisards, reliance on scriptural literalism—associated with adherence to the virtue of freedom of conscience, a stance resulting in much humanitarian and reformist work on their part once they found a haven in the New World. Henri IV finally quelled the religious hostilities, at least on the surface, by forswearing his Protestant faith in order to appease predominantly Catholic Paris and thus win the allegiance of the majority of the French; he promulgated the Edict of Nantes in 1598. This arrangement was, at best, one of grudging and very limited toleration. While unofficial persecution continued, more than lip service was now accorded to Protestant subjects, who experienced unprecedented liberty in which to celebrate their faith. This continued, for the most part, throughout the reign of Louis XIII. However, Louis XIV, urged on by his morganatic wife Madame de Maintenon and by his minister Richelieu, as well as by the very powerful group of Jesuit advisors at the court, came to view Protestants as unorthodox and undesirable. Particularly worrisome to him was the establishment of the Calvinist state of William of Orange after the Peace of Ryswick. As early as 1685, concerned that his French Protestant subjects might leave the country and support a Calvinist regime against him, Louis XIV issued orders forbidding Huguenot emigration. Pushed by Catholic clergy and especially by Jesuit hard-liners, he further mandated conversion to Catholicism, revoking the Edict of Nantes in 1685 with the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1698. Despite the prohibition against leaving...

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