Huguenot - End of Persecution and Restoration of French Citizenship

End of Persecution and Restoration of French Citizenship

See also: Persecution of Huguenots under Louis XV

Persecution of Protestants diminished in France after 1724, finally ending with the Edict of Versailles, commonly called the Edict of Tolerance, signed by Louis XVI in 1787. Two years later, with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789, Protestants gained equal rights as citizens.

The government encouraged descendants of exiles to return, offering them French citizenship in a 15 December 1790 Law:

"All persons born in a foreign country and descending in any degree of a French man or woman expatriated for religious reason are declared French nationals (naturels français) and will benefit from rights attached to that quality if they come back to France, establish their domicile there and take the civic oath."

This is thought to be the first law offering the right of return.

Article 4 of the 26 June 1889 Nationality Law stated: "Descendants of families proscribed by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes will continue to benefit from the benefit of the 15 December 1790 Law, but on the condition that a nominal decree should be issued for every petitioner. That decree will only produce its effects for the future."

Foreign descendants of Huguenots lost the automatic right to French citizenship in 1945 (by force of the Ordonnance du 19 octobre 1945, which revoked the 1889 Nationality Law). It states in article 3: "This application does not however affect the validity of past acts by the person or rights acquired by third parties on the basis of previous laws."

In the 1920s and 1930s, members of the extreme-right Action Française movement expressed strong animus against Protestants, as well as against Jews, and freemasons. They were regarded as groups supporting the French Republic, which Action Française sought to overthrow.

Today Protestants in France number about one million, or about two percent of the population. They are most concentrated in Alsace, in southeastern France and the Cévennes region in the south.