Huguenot - Early History and Beliefs

Early History and Beliefs

The availability of the Bible in local (vernacular) languages was important to the spread of the Protestant movement and the development of the Reformed church in France. The country had a long history of struggles with the papacy by the time the Protestant Reformation finally arrived. Around 1294, a French version of the Scriptures was prepared by the Roman Catholic priest, Guyard de Moulin. A two-volume illustrated folio paraphrase version based on his manuscript, by Jean de Rély, was printed in Paris in 1487.

The first known translation of the Bible into one of France's regional languages: Arpitan or Franco-Provençal, had been prepared by the 12th-century pre-reformer, Peter Waldo (Pierre de Vaux). Long after the sect was suppressed by the Roman Catholic Church, the remaining Waldensians, then mostly in the Luberon region of France, sought to join William Farel, John Calvin and the Protestant Reformation, and Olivetan published a French Bible for them. Many of those who emerged from secrecy at this time were slaughtered by Francis I in 1545 in the Massacre of Mérindol.

Other predecessors of the Reformed church included the pro-reform and Gallican Roman Catholics, such as Jacques Lefevre (c. 1455–1536). The Gallicans briefly achieved independence for the French church, on the principle that the religion of France could not be controlled by the Bishop of Rome, a foreign power. In the time of the Protestant Reformation, Lefevre, a professor at the University of Paris, published his French translation of the New Testament in 1523, followed by the whole Bible in the French language, in 1530. William Farel was a student of Lefevre who went on to become a leader of the Swiss Reformation, establishing a Protestant government in Geneva. Jean Cauvin (John Calvin), another student at the University of Paris, also converted to Protestantism. The French Confession of 1559 shows a decidedly Calvinistic influence. Sometime between 1550 and 1580, members of the Reformed church in France came to be commonly known as Huguenots.