The French descendants of the Huguenots, who meet this weekend at the Mas Soubeyran (Mialet, Gard), live in heirs of a history of persecution and resistance, analyzes the historian Patrick Cabanel. They draw a “very strong identity”.
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The term “Huguenot” designates, originally, these Protestants of the kingdoms of France and Navarre of the 16th century which, persecuted, led a violent war – under this name – against the Catholics. Even today, tens of thousands of French Protestants (and around the world) consider themselves the descendants of these “comrades linked by the oath”, original definition of the Swiss word “Eidgnoots”, from which is probably from “Huguenot” . Hundreds of them from all over the world, meet at Mas Soubeyran, Mialet, near Anduze (Gard), in the Cévennes, every first Sunday in September.
In his recent work La Fabrique des Huguenots. A minority between history and memory. XVIII
é> -xxxi e century (Labor and Fides, 648 pages, 34 euros), the historian Patrick Cabanel, specialist in Protestantism, dissects the attachment of these descendants of Huguenots to their memorial inheritance. Through their history and their identity, the Huguenots, according to him, have a special place in the French, and global Protestant landscape.
Our era saw multiple identities within French society. Would you say that there is a “Huguenote” identity in France today?
Patrick Cabanel.- It exists, certainly, but it would be immediately necessary to specify one thing: this Huguenote identity does not be confused with French Protestantism in general. The Huguenots of today are the descendants of the French Calvinists who were persecuted by the royal state and the Catholic Church under the Old Regime.
That is to say that this Huguenot identity does not have the same memorial references as the Lutherans of Alsace, which were not concerned by the revocation of the edict of Nantes (1685), and a fortiori that the evangelicals of today, which are a very dynamic religious current but whose historical anchoring in France does not go up before the second half of the 20th e sup> century.
The descendants of the Huguenots are therefore a numerically modest human group – they represent some 0.5 % of the French population – but whose identity is very strong.
what are the different facets of this Huguenote identity?
Let’s start with what is probably the least central today: religious difference. The Huguenots retain the idea of a strong theological distinction between Protestantism and Catholicism. Their confession is simpler, less ritualist, less conservative, they would also say more sincere, more in line with the Gospel. In short, for them, Protestantism is the enlightened and modern side of Christianity, which can lead to a certain pride.
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