ABSTRACT
The Edict of Nantes, proclaimed by King Henry IV of France on April 30, 1598 and registered by the parliaments of Paris on February 25, 1599, ended the series of eight wars of religion that tore the kingdom of FRANCE for thirty-six years (from 1562 to 1598). The Edict was the product of two years of negotiations between Henry IV’s commissioners and Protestant representatives. As the first sentence in Article I shows, the Edict intended above all to be an edict of pacification looking to stop the cycle of violence. “First, that the recollection of everything done by one party or the other (…) remain obliterated and forgotten as if no such things had ever happened.” Indeed, first the recollection of the preceding troubles had to be erased. Thus Article II states, “forbidding all our subjects, of whatsoever estate or quality, to revive its recollection, to attack, resent, insult or provoke one another by reproach of what took place for whatsoever cause, to dispute, contest, quarrel, nor to become outraged or offended from act or word; but to refrain and live peacefully, together as brothers, friends, and co-citizens, lest the contravenants be punished as breakers of peace and disturbers of public tranquillity.”
