Do you agree or disagree, and state your reasons?

Additionally, Frederick Wilhelmsen has some insightful things to say about Bodin in his book “Christianity and Political Philosophy,” an excellent work. In addition to inventing the modern theory of state sovereignty, Bodin was (according to Wikipedia) regarded as a Calvinist sympathizer by Church censors, who placed his works on the Index. Bodin was also absolutely fanatical in the witch hunts. So two more strikes against him.

It might be noted that Henri IV was killed by a fanatic who *thought* that he was serving the Catholic cause.

The revocation of the Edict is often viewed as a Catholic crime. It seems that after Richelieu reduced Protestant military and political power, the Huguenots generally were loyal and peaceful. Calvinism, over the generations, became less expansionistic. Then Louis XIV revoked the Edict and expelled the Huguenots, often by billeting crude soldiers in the households of Protestants so as to intimidate them into emigration. This does not fit the model of legitimate expulsions of non-Catholics from Catholic realms. Yet it should be remembered that Louis XIV was involved in the process of centralizing his power, both politically and religiously. Religiously, the heresy of Gallicanism would give the French church virtual autonomy from the Pope. Politically, Louis could not stand by as nobles or municipalities of any religious stripe held onto power of their own. Not within his state. So to some extent at least the Edict was revoked in order to restrict the operation of religions other than the royal one, which is the same reason the Gallicanists tried to limit papal influence. Royal, national consolidation were key, not so much Catholic orthodoxy. The politiques had turned on the Huguenots, and conveniently used the excuse of Calvinist heresy to justify an expansion of state power. In the next century they would turn on the Jesuits. Eventually this nationalist/statist ideology would outgrow its use for the Bourbons and would contribute to the rise of Jacobinism. So the Edict of Nantes was issued when the Huguenots least deserved tolerance, in order to advance the politiques’ secularism, then it was revoked when the Huguenots least deserved intolerance, once again to advance the politiques’ secularism. Yet Belloc notes that this is not so sad or tragic as modern anti-Catholics would make it. Whatever the justice of the revocation, France was in fact better off without a significant Protestant minority. Whatever the intentions of its authors, the revocation at the very least did provide for Catholic unity in France.

Though I am dismayed by Belloc’s rather glib account of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. He says that the bells of Paris rang that day, and that he has heard the same bells, with pleasure. Hmm . . .

That’s my current take, in any case. I have also heard that the Queen’s Jesuit confessor insisted on the revocation. So I may be mistaken. Thanks again, Bro. Andre, as I have been giving thought to the same issue recently.