Good afternoon all, In my readings of several books on the Inquisition in Languedoc, I did find a short closing section that deals with parallels between the Cathars and the Huguenots, and the religious/political events between the inquisition and protestant exodus. This only applies to Languedoc. This is quite apart from the authors main treatise in this book and is reproduced under the fair use doctrine. Hope you find it of interest and perhaps assistance. Bob Fay "The Albigensian Crusade: An Historical Essay" By Jacques Madaule Translated by BARBARA WALL FORDHAM UNIVERSITY NEW YORK PRESS FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS BRONX, NEW YORK 10458 Published 1967 This is a translation of " Le Drame albigeois et le Destin francais" (Bernard Grasset Editeur, Paris, 1961). @ 1961 by Editions Bernard Grasset English translation @ 1967 by Bums & Oates Limited Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 66-23621 Made and printed in Great Britain by The Ditchling Press, Ltd, Ditchling, Hassocks, Sussex Set in 'Monotype' Bembo. Pages 145-150 "The Final Years of the Monarchy" "King might follow king; each with his own individual characteristics and his greater or less good fortune, but the slow march of administrative centralization pursued its way almost without interruption. More important than the wars with Italy was undoubtedly the Statute of Villers-Coterets under Francis I (1535). It stipulated, among other things, that the judicial acts that hitherto had been drawn up in Latin should henceforth be drawn up in French throughout the length and breadth of the kingdom. This made the use of the French language obligatory for all local administration. Now up till this date the Southern administration had drawn everything up in the language of Oc-but in the years following the Statute of Villers-Coterets we see a rapid change- over to French in administrative documents. This meant that the ancient and glorious language ceased to be written, and soon French became the current language not only of the nobility who frequented the glittering court of the last of the Valois kings, but also of the middle classes who performed all the nation's clerical duties. Henceforward the language of Oc became a spoken language only, and it quickly broke up into local dialects. It still is, even in our own time, the language of the people-that is to say, by and large, of those who cannot read or write; everyone who has any education writes and expresses himself in French. We might end our story here, regarding the Statute of Villers- Coterets as having put a full stop to Southern particularism. Henceforth Languedoc was French in the same way as Normandy or Burgundy. But in fact it did still retain certain characteristics of its own, and these were soon to show themselves in the great crisis of the wars of religion. From its first inception the Protestant Reformation encountered sympathy between the Garonne and the Rhone, more or less in those areas where, before, the Cathars and the Waldensians had flourished. The first thought that comes to mind is that this represented a sort of resurgence of the medieval heresies after a lapse of two centuries. Many Protestants did think this, and that was why one of their pastors, the rhetorical Napoleon Peyrat, made himself a champion of the Albigensians in the last century. But we must take a second look, and on closer inspection we see that the regions through which Protestantism spread were not exactly the same as those in which the Cathars had formerly been at their strongest. Nimes, for instance, had always been a Catholic town in the Middle Ages, and in a general way we can say the same for the C'evennes region. Yet it was there that Protestantism had its greatest success, and from the very first. True, it was otherwise in certain parts of the Albigeois. For instance at Roquecourbe in Castrais, just near the Sainte-Juliane hill where traces of Catharist worship have recently been discovered, memories of the past were still active at the time when Protestantism took root. The director of the excavations on the hill, Madame Poulain, tells us that "the first two pastors of the Reformed Church to be named at Roquecourbe found a group of faithful at the heart of their Church resolutely opposed to. the building of a temple. Did they wish to worship 'in spirit and in truth', or did another sanctuary claim their devotion?" In either case it seems probable that the opposition of this group had Catharist origins, for the "other sanctuary" could only have been that of Sainte-Juliane. The probability increases when we note that one of these first Protestants was surnamed Catarel, and that one of his ancestors left a legacy, in a will drawn up in 1538, in favour of his daughter Esclarmonde. This name, known only in the House of Foix in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, was not in common use at that time and bears witness to the persistence of certain traditions. In fact it is the opposite that would be surprising; and in recent years efforts have been made to find traces of past beliefs in the folklore of the region, and with some degree of success. Thus it seems that-barring possible exceptions-there was no direct affiliation between the last of the Cathars and the first Protestants. And yet it is unquestionable that the long-drawn-out Inquisition had given rise to a stubborn anti-clericalism in the South which was to manifest itself times without number in the course of the following centuries. And this state of mind obviously favoured the first preachers of the Protestant Reformation. But only indirectly; for it is certain that if Catharist memories lingered anywhere it was not in the cultivated classes, yet it was precisely in these classes-or, anyway, a section of them-that the Reformation first took root. At the time of the Ligue Languedoc was literally cut in two geographically, the eastern part, round Nimes, being Protestant, and the western part, with Toulouse and Carcassonne, being within the Ligue (i.e. Catholic). This is just about the opposite of what we saw at the time of the Crusade against the Albigensians. Here political considerations played a part as much as religious ones. The two Languedocs, though at enmity with each other, had one thing in common: a desire for the restoration of those municipal liberties that had been whittled away by the march of monarchical centralization. But while, on the Protestant side, it was the urban patriciate, leaning on the lesser nobility, who tried to recapture power, on the Catholic side, under the influence of the Ligue monks, it was the people. So on the political plane as much as on the religious one it was a battle on reversed fronts: Toulouse, former capital of heresy, was now the capital of the strictest orthodoxy, seeking the support of Philip II of Spain as before she had welcomed Peter of Aragon within her walls. We see it yet again, and in a quite different context: religious particularism and provincial particularism not only not coinciding but even being opposed to each other. The two Joyeuse, the Duke and his brother the Capuchin who was always "putting on, taking off, and putting on either his armour or his hair-shirt", did not submit until 1596 at the Treaty of Folembray, just before the Edict of Nantes which was issued in 1598. The real quality of Henry IV's great edict has often been misunderstood. No one at the time could conceive that two different confessions could coexist peacefully within one and the same State. Having become a Catholic, but being unable and unwilling to destroy Protestant France, Henry IV created by the Edict of Nantes what amounted to a Protestant republic at the heart of the Catholic monarchy-a republic recognizing the King's authority but otherwise administering itself with its own assemblies and "safe places". At Castres there was an "Edict Chamber", that is to say a court of justice composed half of Catholic judges and half of Protestant judges, to adjudicate all cases that came up between Catholics and Protestants. Nimes and Montauban were among the Protestant "safe places" ; they could count on the active support of the local feudality and of some municipalities such as that of Montpellier-that town where formerly so many Councils had been held and where Catholicism had never wavered in the face of Catharism. The Catholics were now wholly won over to the Bourbon monarchy. It was the Protestants who were to show an inclination, if not towards independence, at least towards autonomy, during the troubles that beset Louis XIII's minority. It was Henri de Rohan, Sully's son-in-law, who commanded in Lower Languedoc bordering the C'evennes. The King had to come in person to lay siege to Montpellier which managed, however, to retain its ramparts and consuls. The war started up again when Richelieu was besieging La Rochelle. Once again Rohan stirred up Lower Languedoc and the C'evennes. He procured religious toleration finally by the Edict of Grace d'Alais (27 June 1629), but Languedoc lost her last political freedoms. The States continued, and Languedoc would remain a county of States until the end of the Ancien Regime; but in fact the Assembly had become a mere symbol, for tax assessments, as well as their distribution, were now in the hands of royal officers. And this was in part the cause of Languedoc's final revolt led by her governor himself, Henri de Montmorency, in 1632. This episode had two aspects: on the one side the intrigues of Gaston d'Orleans, the King's brother, in which the province was not really interested, and on the other the dissatisfaction of various Languedoc bishops and lords who hoped to win back their former privileges. Montmorency was defeated; wounded and made prisoner under the walls of Castelnaudary, he was condemned to death and beheaded some weeks later. The South has retained a tender memory of this great lord, the last of his illustrious line; and yet his defeat and death were but a minor episode in the history of Languedoc. Richelieu profited by this ill-judged uprising to dismantle the last surviving feudal fortresses and to distribute confiscated goods to families that had remained loyal-thus once again transforming the Southern nobility as Simon de Montfort had done four centuries before. Languedoc was now so thoroughly under control that it played no part in the disturbances of the Fronde. Under Colbert Languedoc became one of this great administrator's fields for experiment. Riquet built his great southern canal, and Montpellier put up buildings and monuments that were hence- forth to form part of her glory. Fresh impetus was given to the cloth-making industry which had for long been established to the south of the Massif Central. About the stewardship of Lamoignon de Basville, who governed the province from 1685 to 1718, there is much to be said, both good and bad. He created the image of Languedoc that was to persist until the end of the Ancien Regime, developing in particular her agriculture, which never prospered as it did in the eighteenth century. But he also insisted on a very strict application of the Edict of Fontainebleau revoking the Edict of Nantes, and it was this that led to the revolt of the Camisards in the C'evennes, though poverty was a subsidiary cause. This out- burst had various characteristics all its own, and its fervour was perhaps not without similarities to the fervour of the Catharist "good" men long ago. But we must not push these tempting parallels too far and to the detriment of accuracy. The flourishing Languedoc of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had definitely become a part of French unity, even if she had lost something of her native genius in the process. The work of a poet such as Goudouly (1580-1649), however charming it might be, had nothing in common with the mood of the troubadours; and perhaps it was the Benedictines of Saint-Maur, Dom Devic and Dom Vaissete, who brought fading memories back to life most successfully in their well- informed Histoire du Languedoc published in the eighteenth century. Languedoc was henceforth a province among other provinces, a province like other provinces. And anyway the picture it presented at the end of the Ancien Regime, extending along the Rhone as far as Vivarais and with its capital, Toulouse, far from the centre, no longer corresponded with the former three seneschalsies of Toulouse, Carcassonne and Beaucaire. Most of the nobility came from outside the province and was allied to the great families in the other parts of France. The middle classes became daily more frenchified. Only the poor remained faithful to their old language, to which the Floral Games never managed to give back its ancient lustre. The Protestants were by far more numerous in Languedoc than elsewhere, and they continued to preach, in spite of repression, right up to the end of the Ancien Regime. But even that was not peculiar to the province and had but little to do with its time-honoured traditions. By 1789 Languedoc was ripe for total fusion within the national whole. " From: "Shirley Arabin" <arabin@wave.co.nz> <HUGUENOTS-WALLOONS-EUROPE-L@rootsweb.com> Subject: Re: [HWE] French Religous History Question Date sent: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 06:58:28 +1300 Its a matter of location to some degree (but not the full explanation). In the south of France particularly there was a history of religious dissent going back to the Cathars. The Huguenots of the area known as the Camisards kept up their opposition to religious oppression right into the mid 1700s where in the rest of the country, many had either emigrated or conformed to the RC faith. Walloons were protestants in the north in the "Low Countries" which were for years controlled by Spain. Many Walloons had left for England prior to the main Huguenot diaspora. Shirley Arabin from Mount Maunganui