To Deliver a Greatly Persecuted Church : Resituating the Edict of Nantes within the History of Laïcité

«To Deliver a Greatly Persecuted Church»: Resituating the Edict of Nantes within the History of Laïcité A decade ago, France celebrated the 400th anniversary of the 1598 Edict of Nantes, a royal act that traditionally has been seen as ending the French Wars of Religion and ushering in the earliest form of reli- gious toleration in Europe. Recent research instead envisions the edict as an only partially implemented religious peace. Rather than securing an early form of toleration for French Calvinists, the edict formalized and legalized the contradictions between religious universalism and personal conscience that would later become elaborated in the concept of laïcité.