Major Dates
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1702
Start of the War of the Camisards
In 1702, The Abbot of Chaila was murdered on July 24 in Pont-de-Montvert. Repression was fierce in Languedoc in the Cévennes. A desperate armed revolt then broke out. It officially ended in 1704 with the negotiations conducted by the Maréchal du Villars in the name of the king and Jean Cavalier for the rebels. Sporadic outbreaks continued until the end of the decade.
Article : The war of the Camisards (1702-1710)
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1726
Creation of the Lausanne Seminary
Antoine Court and Benjamin Duplan founded the Lausanne Seminary in Switzerland. All Protestant schools had been closed since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. This institution therefore aimed to train ministers who were sent to France to clandestine Protestant communities of the “Desert” in theology and practical service.
Article : The Lausanne Theological seminary
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1762
The Calas affair
Jean Calas, a Protestant merchant from Toulouse, was sentenced by the Toulouse Parliament to torture on the wheel and was executed on March 10, 1762, on the unsubstantiated accusation of having murdered one of his sons who was reputed to have converted to Catholicism. Voltaire, informed of the “affair,” had the conviction overturned and Calas was exonerated in 1765. This affair remains the symbol of partisan injustice.
Article : The Calas affair
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1787
Edict of Tolerance
Two years before the Revolution, Louis XVI re-established the civil rights of Protestants when he promulgated the Edict of Tolerance on November 29, 1787. They could have their births, their marriages and their deaths recorded. But Protestants were still excluded from public office and there was no question of practicing their religion.
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1789
Declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen
At the start of the French Revolution, in August 1789, the National Assembly ratified the Declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen, whose article 10 proclaims that “no one shall be harassed for his religious opinions.” Religious freedom was recognized.
Article : Religious Freedom
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1791
Freedom of worship
Religious freedom is not synonymous with freedom of worship: collective practice, with possible outside events that might disrupt the peace. The 1791 Constitution established freedom of worship, which had to be circumscribed by law.