WAS OUTLAWING PROTESTANTISM MEANT TO BRING CAPITALISTS TO HEEL?

"ONE KING, ONE FAITH!" LOUIS FORBIDS PROTESTANTISM*

TO ALMOST ALL CATHOLICS' ACCLAIM 

*He revokes the decree tolerating Protestantism that ended the civil wars (the Edict of Nantes in 1594).

Penalties for being Protestant have increased since the start of the reign, and dragoons billeted in Protestant homes behave with
increasing violence. Now Louis tells them they may do anything to Protestants except kill them, unless they convert.

Zoom

New missionary sent on the order of Louis the Great throughout the kingdom of France to bring the heretics back to the Catholic faith [illegible] 1686.

Much of the kingdom's most dynamic population leaves. 

Europe's first exodus means that 50,000 families emigrate, in spite of men being sent to the galleys and women imprisoned if caught:

• Voltaire's description of their impact abroad shows their economic clout:

Près de cinquante mille familles, en trois ans de temps, sortirent du royaume, et furent après suivies par d'autres. Elles allèrent porter vers l'étranger les arts, les manufactures, la richesse. Presque tout le nord de l'Allemagne, pays encore agreste et dénué d'industrie, reçut une nouvelle face de ces multitudes transplantées. Elles peuplèrent des villes entières. Les étoffes, les galons, le chapeaux, les bas, qu'on achetaient auparavant en France, furent fabriques par eux. Un faubourg entier de Londres fut peuplé d'ouvriers français en soie ; d'autres y portèrent l'art de donner la perfection aux cristaux, qui fut alors perdu en France. On trouve encore très communément dans Allemagne l'or que les réfugiés y répandirent. Ainsi la France perdit environ cinq cent mille habitants, un quantité prodigieuse d'espèces, et surtout des arts dont ses ennemis s'enrichirent. La Hollande y gagna d'excellents officiers et des soldats. Le prince d'Orange et le duc de Savoie eurent des régiments entiers de réfugiés. Il y en eut qui s'établirent jusque vers le cap de Bonne Espérance  [... ]  Les Français ont été dispersés plus loin que les Juifs.

-- Le siècle de Louis XIV de Voltaire, ed. 2015, pp. 612-613.

• In Reims, the number of looms is halved.
• Hat making moves to England and Holland.
• Over half the watchmaking moves to Switzerland.
• Previously busy ports decline.
• In Sedan, there are no skilled workers.
• In Lyons, 9,000 out of 12,000 silk weavers leave.

France takes two centuries to recover.

Les enragés de Dieu, p. 296.

• People with French names in Protestant countries are often those Protestants' descendants (as I am — Catherine Aubin, a name extremely common in France ).  

Protestants who convert keep their fortunes and are honored and rewarded. Each day the king receives hundreds of names. Sincerity is impossible. That doesn't matter. 

# # # 

At first glance the prohibition seems pointless — the heroic time of war has passed, and Protestants are fitting in:

Fathers send their sons to Jesuit schools, their daughters would rather marry a Catholic than stay single, moralists cannot keep girls from dressing up, boys from drinking and gambling with Catholics in taverns and youth generally from going to dances, the theater, participating in the Carnaval... 

As well, paying pastors' salaries and their trips to synods is expensive and some Protestants  refuse.

-- Histoire des protestants de France, dir. Ph. Wolff, 2001, p.75.

  

The edict is thought the aberration of an aging bigot isolated in Versailles.  

But if one translates "Protestants" by "nascent capitalists" 
and understands that their activities transform society* — as those of Muslim producers did those of animists* — a practical reason for making them convert appears. Is ending Protestant (capitalist) practices the real goal?

*As shown for Djimini here, for Bornu and Logone here, for Islam as interpreted by the 19th-century savannah theocracies here.

Must the converted stop working on holidays? Lending at interest? Investing money? Emphasizing austerity? Show their sincerity by donating to the Church and spending ostentatiously? In short, must they take up the traditional obstacles to growth? 

The subject has not been broached to my knowledge.  

Destruction and authority coincide, as ever:

Ceiling, Royal Chapel of Versailles by Antoine Coypel, 1689 / zoom

The image of God is directly over the king's pew.

Instead of being represented by light he is shown as an energetic patriarch, like the king.  

# # #

Like the Mauritanian nobles who raid producers for market

doesn't Louis mean, "We only want to keep you in your little corner?"  

And while the Dahomeyan king massacres captives to keep producers from obtaining them, Louis violently eliminates the producers themselves.

Like the public that cheers as the executioner brandishes heads and Senufo who approve what they admit are Nambolossé's  "crimes," most French people acclaim the forced conversions and the terrible punishment of Protestants captured in flight.

Kings protect their societies by violence when peaceful methods fail. Their subjects support them. 

# # #

The lasting effect:

By dominating multinationals' skyscrapers, 

the Grande Arche de la Défense 

proclaims State control of capitalism. 

France still regulates business

 more than most Western countries do. 

Claude Abron

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A faith specific to France