Edict of Nantes
The Edict of Nantes, Edit de Nantes granted the Calvinist Protestants ( Huguenots ) in France Catholic religious tolerance and full civil rights, fixed the other hand, Catholicism as the state religion. That he put a temporary end point behind the era of religious wars between Huguenots and Catholics kingship.
Henry IV, who had converted to Catholicism even after his accession to the throne of Protestantism, and after his victory over the attempted him to pacify the country warring Catholic League, the edict was signed on April 13, 1598 in Nantes. It granted the Calvinists freedom of conscience and the free exercise of religion in public, except in Paris and the surrounding area as well as in cities with episcopal or royal palaces.
Huguenot nobles were not allowed public worship in their homes. The Protestants were allowed churches ( temples called ) build their pastors should be paid by the state and be released from certain obligations. The edict ensured the Protestants at the same time full civil rights, such as the right to hold public office, and it established at the Parlement of Paris own chamber, the Chambre de l' Edit the disagreements should mediate, resulting from different interpretations could result in its provisions. In addition, should the Protestants those fortified cities which they had in their power in August 1597 ( 100 ), allowed to keep for another eight years as places de sûreté; the deployment costs of crews should be paid by the King.
The edict also confirmed Catholicism as the state religion and provided the opportunity to practice the Catholic religion everywhere restore, where she had been suppressed during the previous wars. In fact it made any further spread of Protestantism in France impossible. Nevertheless, the pope ( Clement VIII ), the Catholic priesthood and the Parliaments' in France braced against the edict; one she was seeking restrictive as possible to interpret.
Cardinal Richelieu, in turn, looked at the policy provisions of the edict as a threat to the absolutist state and canceled in places, in 1629 at the Peace of Alès.
On October 18, 1685 King Louis XIV revoked the Edict total in the Edict of Fontainebleau, Edit de Fontainebleau. Thus the French Protestants of all religious and civil rights were deprived. Within months, hundreds of thousands fled, especially in the Calvinist areas of the Netherlands, the Calvinist cantons of Switzerland and Prussia ( Edict of Potsdam).
The act of signing of the Edict of Nantes is shown on a relief at the Geneva Reformation Wall.