We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
THE FRENCH PROTESTANT ENLIGHTENMENT OF RABAUT SAINT-ÉTIENNE: LE VIEUX CÉVENOL AND THE SENTIMENTAL ORIGINS OF RELIGIOUS TOLERATION.
- Authors
BANKS, BRYAN A.
- Abstract
Historians often refer to the period from the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) to Louis XVI's Edict of Toleration (1787) as the Désert in French Calvinist history. As the name suggests, the French state outlawed Calvinists, forced them to clandestinely worship, and expelled many from the kingdom and empire altogether. In this article, I suggest that Calvinists played a role in the concurrent French Enlightenment despite their legal marginality. By examining the writings of Rabaut Saint-Étienne, a French Calvinist pastor and later leader of the National Assembly during the French Revolution, this article explores the underground French Protestant Enlightenment and the sentimental strain that ran through it. Calvinists such as Saint-Étienne informed Enlightenment debates over religious toleration and religious freedom with arguments that appealed not necessarily to public utility, reason, or even the letter of the law, but to natural rights and empathy.
- Subjects
FRANCE; ENLIGHTENMENT; RABAUT, Jean-Paul, 1743-1793; CALVINISTS; FRENCH Revolution, 1789-1799; FRENCH Huguenots; HISTORY
- Publication
French History, 2018, Vol 32, Issue 1, p25
- ISSN
0269-1191
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/fh/crx069