Religious persecution in the countries of Ariège in the 17th and 18th centuries
Michel Begon June 1994
A previous article on the religious wars in the countries of Ariège in the 16th century wanted to show how the ideas of contemporary historians of the Reformation may reflect a logical schisms and fighting bruised counties of Foix and Couserans and the Diocese of Mirepoix, between 1559, when the reformers were already a majority in Pamiers and 1598, when the Edict of Nantes.
These designs qualifies or inflect the previous assumptions, identifying Protestantism to the bourgeoisie (Karl Marx) or capitalism (Max Weber), since both the bourgeoisie of the big cities, Toulouse and Bordeaux, did not yield much the Reformation and even the first major capitalist banks, the Caisse de Saint George in Genoa or pawnshop across Europe, were strict Catholics. They focus instead on the difference, which did not escape the contemporary, between the mercenary and mobile professionals, with fiscal year was based on books, currency or accounts, and sedentary stationed in their local community , manor, village, parish or district, where the economic acts were done locally and in-kind view. One might almost say that in 16th century Protestantism opposed to Catholicism as a religion of the Scriptures as sacred as accountants, an eye and ear witness, Reverend apparitions, monstrances relics, carved buildings, the holy images and the liturgical songs. On the altar of a temple, the Bible only replaces the crucifix and the tabernacle. This was not an innovation, moreover, since in the first century Jewish zealots are already opposed to the Talmud and idolaters, and then at the 7th century, Islam nomadic traders, venerating the Book of the Prophet challenged the Byzantines, brought communities iconodoules, worshiping icons. Psychoanalysis there would not she duality Lacanian symbolic and the imaginary?
To use the categories of lawyers, one suspect in any case the cleavage between, on one hand, personal property securities or cash accounting, as well as bank loans or commercial, on the other hand, real estate funds on goods, livestock or homes. Under this legal clarification, we would see that the reform accompanied the emergence of a market economy and the rise of new social groups, compelled to geographical mobility, literacy, trade and monetization of transactions: merchants and mostly artisans, besides number of aristocrats, and even "people mecchaniques" aka industrial workers, migrants and paid in cash (instead of farm workers, paid in kind), but that the Church of the Counter-Reformation to the 19th century continued to focus on the real property of the clergy and the rent of tithes and rents, these pillars of the ancien regime.
That besides the Calvinists will ideally be identified in Israel, the "chosen people", certainly, but also the "wandering people", and the Papists to the Holy Land, a term of the Crusades and pilgrimages, Is that not even the index of a spiritual divide between personal property and real property?
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However, the market economy has developed in the 15th and 16th centuries, not in the rich farming regions and big rent, but rather in geographically disadvantaged areas, away from the Protestants often passed for "beggars" or "rabble".
Indeed, towns and villages of the plains silt could thrive in near-autarky of cereals or feeder cattle, even convents and priests were levied on their part, however, that the poor hamlets of the marshes or mountains were expatriate their youth and export their handicrafts to survive poorly in not seeing the monasteries as lazy gluttons. Industry draping of Flemish cities arose among the coastal region of swamps and poorly drained, before they were drained and converted into polders. Similarly, the proto-industrialization touched all the better and the sooner the relief they had a surplus labor, reduced unemployment by long winters, an abundance of rivers, to move the hammers of the forges or clean skins tanneries, last but not least raw material most useful, namely wood and charcoal, mineral deposits outcropping, skins and horns of livestock raised on mountain pastures, and even dye plants that are better on the hills ...
It's all cleavage ecological southwest of the kingdom was in the 16th century, divided. The plains of Toulouse and Bordeaux remained faithful to Rome and Paris monarchy, while the periphery of the Albigensian mountain to the Black Mountain and County of Foix in the Gave de Pau, embraced the Reformation and formed a kind of Calvinist republic. However, the same distribution repeated in detail and on a smaller scale within the countries of Ariege, since the late 16th century the county of Foix and especially Pamiers hilly lands for industrial and already then, were past mostly to Protestantism, but, conversely County Couserans and the bishopric of Mirepoix, rich peneplains and remained more rural, remained in the Church. In finer detail even at very short scale, the denser limestone membered Plantaurel forming the Canton of Mas d'Azil, left little room for agriculture or unlikely to Rome, while the nearby fat and tear Sérou remained rural and papist. In 1633, there were only 40 Catholics Sabarat, 15 edges, 3 or 4 in St. Felix of Salenques and one at the Mas d'Azil, but the Church met almost unanimously at the Bastide de Sérou.
note in passing that the reiteration of a same structure at different levels of geographic scale is now well explained mathematically by fractal geometry, as the self-similarity or dilation internal identically replicating this structure within itself in a function exponent non-integer or real.
Given this, the problem is why the Reformation was frozen from de1600, then declined in Ariege, as in France, while in Europe and North America, presided at the Protestant the growth of the economy market capitalism and Anglo-Saxon. Up in the early 17th century, 15% of the population of the kingdom and, presumably, the majority within the current department of Ariege, the strength of the Reformation fell to 1% and 5% respectively at of the Revolution.
Arguably the stabilization and demographic decline of the 17th century, if not conducive to commercial production. We must also ask whether the Edict of Nantes was none previously the case, which delineate strictly expected that the fortresses and places of worship of both parties, permanently confining the Reformation in the mountains (with the exception of La Rochelle), while industrialization was going to conquer the big cities and coastlines after 1650.
may even wonder whether the strategy was not Catholic to determine the relationship between Protestantism and the market to weaken both of them. From the 16th century, the business community of Lyons, as persecuted Huguenots, was transported to Geneva, where they made fortunes, but outside the borders of the kingdom. At the smaller scale of the county of Foix, it seems that the primary objective was to remove the Reformed City Pamiers city of textile industry and export port, including wines by the Ariege and from Bordeaux.
Already the Edict of Nantes Protestants attributed to several places of safety on the moraine hills of Ariège: Foix and Tarascon Montgaillard, or among the hills of the Piedmont: Varilhes, Montaut and Saverdun, but excluded pamiers, the economic capital.
Then, throughout the 17th century, took the punishment for the strategy of requiring priority noblemen and wealthy families to convert or exile, so to decapitate heresy by depriving it of its elites. If the exodus to the country of refuge only affected 15% of French Huguenots and only 4% of Protestants Ariège, it was the work of those who had enough capital to afford the investment of such emigration. Two episodes illustrate the strategy, its obstinacy and its effectiveness.
In 1619, religious wars resumed, when Louis XIII wished to revoke the privileges of the Reformation in Béarn and to restore to the Church the land that he confiscated Albret. Baron de anima Léran uplift the country of Foix, especially Mazeres and Pamiers. In 1619, the Catholic party seized Varilhes with 600 killed. Then in March 1628, the Prince de Conde, head of the royal army with the help of the peasants took Pamiers after a siege of five days. The destruction of the Protestant party was both physical and economic or moral. The top 200 Huguenot leaders were hanged or sent to the galleys; people were alive, but their property was made available to the Prince of Conde religious orders were being returned, seventy years later, their immovable property and rights to rent the castle of Pamiers called Castella, was destroyed, the temple was transferred to the Protestant bishop of Pamiers, pending reconstruction the cathedral.
pressures against the notables Huguenots gradually grew stronger until the repeal of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Historians blame the devotee to the party and the "new converts", they sometimes even more zealous to punish their former coreligionists they had to be forgiven by the Court their prime allegiance to the RPR (RPR). Often cited Françoise d'Aubigné, granddaughter of the poet of the tragic, became queen and Madame de Maintenon morganatic. For the Ariege, should be appointed Usson Solomon, born Mas d'Azil, made after his conversion Marquis Bonnac-Bonrepaux State Councilor, superintendent of the Navy, Ambassador etc..
must also admit the role of the lobby of the bishops "(Leroy-Ladurie), eager to regain their omnipotence in countries formerly reformed. Discerned in the letter that Bishop Peter's Brew, Bishop of Mirepoix, sent August 22, 1685 to Louvois:
"The zeal I know you've got to religion, Sir, I am take the liberty to propose a way to convert Viscount Léran of which, as you know the house of Mirepoix and the only lord of all Huguenot this country. I Croy that if the King gave him the honor to write a letter to squabble honnesteté and threats and that Mr. Intendant and myself we spare the effect of this letter, we could convert. However, it would is one of the biggest blows we can hit, because it is certain that his name alone holds, in addition to all his vassals, who are in great numbers, most of the Huguenots in my diocese and the country of Foix.
Thus cut off by the force of the updraft that carried the old and new world towards a market economy, the Protestants of the mountains gradually lost their original mobility and stood still even in the traditional privileges . The Huguenots of Ariège do not they now spend most of their children to public service, as Catholics and Lay the department? Therefore spokesman economic freedoms were not, in France, the Calvinists, but Encyclopedists such Quesnay or Turgot, and why both the liberal ideology of staining it Voltairianism and anticlericalism, as it has remained until today.
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therefore contains in their mountains, the Huguenots took them until today a defensive mentality, who distinguished himself mainly by the Cevennes and the Camisards War, but the long resistance of the mas of Azil is another prime example. The glorification of this resistance by many books over the past century allows us familiar.
The Reformed worship is attested from 1562, the Mas d'Azil and Carla. From 1566, the Azilians opposed to collecting benefits for clergy. A consular certificate of 1599 found that the buildings of the Benedictine Abbey of Le Mas had been razed and its temporal sold. Both the township's population was almost unanimously passed it to Calvinism. But in 1625, the royal army of Marshal Thémines took and razed the castle Comrade, before turning the seat around the Mas d'Azil, whose Albret had a strong city, by providing the same cave walls and iron gates. However, all seats of Mas successively failed before the resistance of the population, and that of 1625 as the previous ones. Some reinforcements came from the Cevennes and 300 men descended by ropes from the plateau above the cave in the small fortified. The bombing of the city from the heights cannon proved vain, and the siege was probably the ultimate military victory of the Huguenots for the whole kingdom. The captain of the besieged was the marshal of Amboix Larbont, whose descendants remain to this day the principal chiefs of the Protestant community of Mas. Even today, retain a privileged few stone ball, fired cannon royal, as a sign of honor and loyalty. However, the Peace of Alès imposed in 1628 to dismantle the walls and Cardinal Richelieu blew up the house facilities at the cave.
ensued, then perhaps more than elsewhere, the long ordeal of persecution. An endless guerrilla war opposed the gentlemen glassmakers Gabre the gentlemen farmers of Sérou on the ridgeline separating the mountain forests of the fertile depression. And on the Gabra, we still tells the exploits of a sword to Sir Robert, aka "Big Garrils. More crucial for the development of thought, the death threats against the son "and relapsed heretic" of the pastor of Carla Bayle forced to flee in Rotterdam and write his Dictionnaire historique et critique, which makes the first the "philosophers" of tolerance and the precursor of the Encyclopedia. His birthplace in Carla-Bayle is now a museum memory.
A revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, Bishop Bertier, bishop of Rieux, presided at the Mas d'Azil a ceremony of abjuration collectively, under the hall surrounded by the dragoons of the king. While the reformers in the 16th century read the Bible translated by Calvin and spoke among themselves in language of oil, forms of abjuration imposed on them were signed in langue d'oc:
"Joun N. .. a horn and humiliate reconesqui contrite and confessed before the Most Sancto Trinitat and touto celesto the court, and you other quetz aisi temoings, Aves greatly in Peccat Creusen atz hérétiquos and lours differentos Heresia, MAINLY tired of Calvin and Luter ... "
Out of fear, he made many conversions, many of them insincere. The temples were destroyed, we restore the abbey of Le Mas d'Azil with some monks, who stayed with the inhabitant, piety, and lacking the funds to rebuild the convent buildings, the present church was erected with a bulb on the model German. Then the resistance became illegal.
The main noble lineages having rallied to the king, he returned to the three families of gentlemen glassmakers Gabre, or Mane Points: Robert, of Verbizier and Grenier, mentor the people Huguenot. Forty-six of their members were sentenced to the galleys, where most perished. Three brothers were beheaded Grenier for resisting, sword in hand, the king's men. The association "The Awakened" was created in 1975 at the Mas d'Azil by the descendants of these gentlemen glassmakers to perpetuate the memory of the martyrs.
By 1697, Gardel, carpenter and preacher at the Mas, the Assemblies of anima Comrade Desert, Sabarat and Gabre. These cults were often held in secret warehouses gentlemen glassmakers, between the shelves supporting the thousands of bottles, glass cups or poron ready for sale. One of them, held August 31, 1697 to glassware from Baden, near Gabre, was surprised and, of the 200 people who attended, many were condemned to the galleys for life. The factory buildings were razed so minutely that, after three centuries, no one has yet been able to find its location.
In 1735, Mr. de Perpignan Jaillaiz mended that the Assemblies Gabre to reproduce, especially in the woods of Couderé, that "we must spare no effort to dispel the mob" and that "the insolence with which these meetings was to (him) seems a mark that these people then lift the mask. " Accordingly, four companies of grenadiers were housed and fed at the expense of the religionists, the Mas d'Azil, margins and Gabre. In 1759, new punishment for "Assemblies of religionists", heavy fines were imposed on the "new converts" Mazères, Saverdun of Carla, the Mas d'Azil, edges, and of Comrade Campaign. Historians call these vexations "dragonnades.
Here misleading expression "new converts" comes from the requirement for heretics, but often forgotten, to register their baptisms, marriages and deaths by the priest on the parish register, which catholicize the force. It took the Edict of Toleration in 1787 to allow pastors to hold their own parish register before the Revolution secularized all vital.
Temples Protestants du Mas d'Azil of Comrade Sabarat, Bordes, from Carla-Bayle and both Saverdun or Clermont, will be rebuilt after 1820, under the Restoration.
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Today, the few surviving Protestants nuclei around their temples, half-empty do not have much to do with the dynamism of the market economy . Officials, landowners or retired, they differ little from most other Ariégeois. Nevertheless, the heroic tradition of the 16th century survives in the country of Foix. For some, the veneration of the king who annexed the Huguenot France to the Pyrenees has not wavered. The Museum of Foix does he not allow the bed canopy Pailhès Castle where Henry IV would have stayed? In others, distrust is perpetuated against any Catholic and royal authority. It must be noted that the ruin of the Protestant party has not made for the benefit of a reinvigorated Catholicism, since it has been marginal as before, but radicalism and socialism lay.
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