The Huguenots / Geoffrey Treasure.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part one: Europe falls apart. The native land: people and institutions -- Renaissance kingship and noble subjects -- The special relationship -- The power of the word -- Every man his own priest -- The French church, humanism and the pre-reform -- 'God will change the world' -- Calvin: the way, the truth and the life -- Geneva: the experiment and the experience -- Part two: A church forms. Persecution and growth -- Why be a Huguenot? -- A party forms -- Towards war -- A kingdom divided -- Battle, murder and deadly consequences -- The massacre of St Bartholomew's Day -- Part three: Religious wars. A failing state -- The struggle intensifies -- Henry IV, King of France -- The Edict of Nantes -- The regime of the edict -- Catholic reformation -- Ventures too far -- The great siege -- Part four: 1629-1661: a golden age. 'The little flock' -- The eye of the storm: Huguenot lives and conditions -- A pastoral and spiritual crisis -- Revision or reunion? -- Part five: Revocation. Uncertain times -- Mars ascendant -- Temptations and trials -- Towards resolution -- Force majeure -- Aftermath -- Diaspora -- Huguenotism recovers its soul: war in the Cévennes -- Sous la Croix.

Following the Reformation, a growing number of radical Protestants came together to live and worship in Catholic France. The Huguenots survived persecution and armed conflict to win freedom of worship, civil rights and unique status as a protected minority. In 1685, following renewed persecution, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes abolished their remaining rights. Choosing faith over home, over 200,000 Huguenots fled across Europe and, soon, further afield. In this magnificent book, Geoffrey Treasure explores what it was like to be a Huguenot through their rise, survival and fall, from power politics to religious practice and the psychological pressures of living in a threatened 'state within a state'. Over a span of a century and a half he weaves together political and religious concerns, those of statesmen, feudal magnates and leading figures of the Catholic revival, a Catherine de Medici seeking compromise, a Louis XIV requiring unity, with the stories of ordinary citizens leading extraordinary lives.

Print version record.

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