What is the significance of edict of nantes

It was the major act of Henry IV, which brought peace to France after thirty-six years of religious wars. Article : The Edict of Nantes In the 16 th Century, France was to know a religious split : the great majority of the country remained faithful to Catholicism, whilst an important majority joined the Reformation. Coexistence of the two confessions throughout the Kingdom showed itself to be inapplicable.

War could no longer be avoided and civil tolerance had failed. Eight wars of religion were to succeed each other throughout 36 years, with periodic interruptions of fragile peace.

The wars will cease with the Edict of Nantes 30 th of April , an edict that established a limited civil tolerance. The confessional duality established throughout France in was to wear away little by little until the revocation of the edict in The Protestants were prisoners of their own loyalty to the King. Is it possible for a nation to remain peaceful and united with more than one variation of Christianity in the country? To many in the sixteenth century, the answer was a resounding NO.

There had been one church throughout the middle ages, and the toleration of any other religion seemed unthinkable. Both before and after the Reformation, a war had followed the rise of sects. As the ideas of the Protestant Reformation spread throughout Europe, governments, as well as the church, were affected as each adopted one form or another of faith.

Most government leaders believed that allowing more than one sect would threaten the unity of a country. This was the situation in sixteenth-century France.

For over sixty years the country had tried to find a political solution to the country's religious divisions. Persecutions, wars, and massacres disrupted the country as Catholics tried to maintain their majority faith while the Huguenots as French Protestants were called attempted to worship freely and even to seize power.

In , backed by the king, Catholic forces used the royal wedding of the Huguenot Henry of Navarre--in line for the throne--as a pretext to rid the city of the Protestants that they detested. The French Calvinists, who were known as Huguenots, were only in a minority in France, but they had created a virtual state within a state and held numerous fortified towns.

Now, after skilful persuasion by Catholic diplomats and much hard bargaining, they accepted a document of ninety-two articles granting them a measure of religious toleration as well as social and political equality. Huguenots were to be entitled to worship freely everywhere in France in private, and publicly in some named towns and on the estates of Protestant landowners.

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