Huguenot Preaching and Huguenot Identity: Shaping a Religious Minority through Faith, Politics, and Gender, 1629-1685

Abstract

<p>This dissertation examines the development of Huguenot confessional identity and political strategy under the Edict of Nantes through sermons. Here, sermons serve as a vital medium of ideological exchange, shaping and reflecting the mental world of France's Protestant population, while acting as a source of dialogue between Huguenot ministers, their parishioners and readers, and the crown. As a result, this study demonstrates the cultural tools that influenced how the Huguenot population made sense of their position in France in the seventeenth century, and it shows that, while Huguenots lost much of their effective political power after 1629, their ministers were active in the decades after through informal but telling channels, instructing their parishioners about proper civic and political belief, and positing for their various audiences a view of the French polity – and of its absolutist monarchy – that included a legitimate place for the Huguenot population.</p> <p>The introduction and the first chapter provide the historical and historiographical background, while also offering a detailed explanation of the training and vocation of Huguenot ministers, shedding light on their sermons and their social and professional networks. Chapters two and three provide the heart of the argument, exploring the elements of the sermons that emphasized, first, the necessity of religious particularism for Huguenots within France and, second, their abiding devotion to the crown. Together, these dual elements of Huguenot identity meant that they were negotiating their own vision for the kingdom and their place within it. The final three chapters examine the prevalence and significance of the Huguenot dual identity in diverse sermon themes, while also showing its legacy beyond the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.</p> <p>This dissertation provides an important contribution to Reformation and French historiography, while also complicating notions about religious identity and the development of absolutist thought by demonstrating a confessionally-distinct political activism that is not often recognized. It also reveals the interwoven nature of religion and politics in the Reformation era, here as it is manifested in sermons.</p>