Huguenots

Cultural  

1. French Protestants of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who were frequently persecuted by the government and by the Roman Catholic Church. For a time, the Edict of Nantes allowed them to practice their religion in certain cities. When the edict was revoked by King Louis xiv in the late seventeenth century, many Huguenots left France. Some emigrated to America.

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Example Sentences

The late 1600s and 1700s saw about 200,000 Huguenots flee France in the face of the persecution of Protestants.

From BBC • Mar. 3, 2025

The French Wars of Religion, lasting from 1562 to 1598, pitted Catholics and Huguenots against each other, fighting for the soul of France.

From Salon • Sep. 26, 2022

The wars, which first erupted in 1562, were partly about politics, with Catholics and Huguenots vying to claim power in Paris and reinforce their regional power bases.

From Slate • Nov. 17, 2020

There is no evidence that Meyerbeer saw the massacre of the Huguenots as an allegory of anti-Semitic violence; there is also no reason to reject such a reading out of hand.

From The New Yorker • Oct. 15, 2018

The ships were loaded with guns and other munitions, gold, silver, foodstuffs, livestock, and nearly a thousand sailors and Protestant colonists called Huguenots seeking freedom in the New World.

From "Shipwrecked!" by Martin W. Sandler