Protestantism in the Calais Area in the XVIth and XVIIth Centuries.
Le protestantisme en Calaisis aux XVIe-XVIIe siècles
Abstract
The history of Protestantism in France grants very little room to the reformed communities that lived in northern France in the XVIth and XVIIth centuries. These communities, with few members and often short-lived, focus little attention. The north- western part of the French Kingdom was yet marked by the presence of a large reformed Church, that of the Calais region and the reconquered countries. This Church, that experienced hard beginnings under the English occupant, was to develop essentially thanks to a powerful immigration that brought to the region, in the second half of the xvith century, numerous Protestant refugees that fled the Spanish Catholic repression in Flanders and Artois. In the early years of the xvnth century a reformed Church started to organize itself to eventually live and thrive all through this century under the leadership of its ministers and its Church session. It is thus a community that was thriving, active and secure in its faith that a young Englishman, student in theology, White Kennett, visited in 1682. The study of the Journal kept by this stu- den allows us to bring this community to life again on the eve of the Repelling of the Edit de Nantes.