The Huguenots and French Opinion, 1685-1787 : the Enlightenment Debate on Toleration.

The decision of Louis XIV to revoke the Edict of Nantes and thus liquidate French Calvinism was well received in the intellectual community which was deeply prejudiced against the Huguenots. This antipathy would gradually disappear. After the death of the Sun King, a more sympathetic view of the Protestant minority was presented to French readers by leading thinkers such as Montesquieu, the abbé Prévost, and Voltaire. By the middle years of the eighteenth century, liberal clerics, lawyers, and government ministers joined Encyclopedists in urging the emancipation of the Reformed who were seen.

List of Illustrations; Acknowledgements; Introduction; I. The Edict of Fontainebleau: The Rationalization of Intolerance; II. Thunderous Applause, Discreet Dissent: The Intellectual Reaction to the Revocation; III. A Three-way Impasse: The Huguenots, The Clergy and the State; IV. An Abstract Combat: Voltaire's First Battles Against Intolerance, 1713-1750; V. Montesquieu and the Huguenots: A Conservative's View of Minority Rights; VI. A Friend in the Enemy Camp: The Abbe Prevost; VII. Controller-General Machault Provokes a Public Debate on Huguenot Rights, 1751-1760.

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