Beyond this edict where tolerance replaced intolerance, the author takes us down the paths of religious dispute. His perspective is both historical and political. He revisits the proclamation of human rights, the concordats, secularism, and the separation of church and state. It is, in fact, a general work whose title imperfectly summarizes this book. A History for Today (the subtitle being more appropriate).
The War of the Three Henrys, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, the revocation, and then one leafs through history with the revolution, the empire, the restoration, the second republic, the second empire, the third, fourth, and fifth republics, the declaration of human rights; 1905 being the pivot of this book. Pierre Joxe goes from historian to professor of constitutional law.
The Edict of Nantes is thus an introductory work on history, at the beginning of a thesis on religious tolerance. The Catholic Church, Protestants, Orthodox Christians, Jews, and Muslims take the stage where the former Minister of Worship must choose between these religions with the sole tool of the 1905 law.
Returning to Henry IV, one can argue that the Bourbon king initiated absolute monarchy and at the same time desacralized the person of the king; he could no longer, even if anointed and consecrated, be the symbol of God when several religions were practiced in the kingdom.
His grandson Louis XIV understood this well by revoking the Edict of Nantes. The seed of the revolution is in a way found in these two events: the Edict of Nantes and its revocation.
Thierry Jan
