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 When the edict was revoked by King Louis xiv in the late seventeenth century, many Huguenots left France.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

It was here that Louis XIV's soldiers were billeted during the persecution of the Protestant Huguenots - ancestors of the modern population - in the 17th Century.

From BBC • Sep. 25, 2021

As of 1560 fully 10% of the people of France were Huguenots, many of whom represented its dynamic middle class: merchants, lawyers, and prosperous townsfolk.

From Textbooks • Jan. 1, 2020

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