RT Article
T1 Archive Wars: Record Destruction and the Memory of the French Wars of Religion in Montpellier
JF The sixteenth century journal
VO 51
IS 1
SP 129
OP 149
A1 Van der Linden, David 1983-
LA English
PB Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, Inc.
YR 2020
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1751432688
AB This article explores the long-term memory of record destructions committed during the French Wars of Religion. Although the 1598 Edict of Nantes ordered Protestants and Catholics to forget about the wars, in Montpellier the memory of archival loss continued to fuel tensions between the two communities and undermine religious coexistence throughout the seventeenth century. In the aftermath of the wars, Montpellier's priests and friars initiated multiple court cases against the Huguenot community to claim reparations and seek retribution for the loss of their records. Yet the archival destructions also functioned as a catalyst for new record-keeping practices, as both Huguenots and Catholics appointed specialists to retrieve acts, inventory records, and use archival documents as legal evidence against the other community. As such, this essay highlights the importance of record destruction and the emergence of contested memories for prolonging religious conflict in the early modern world.
K1 17th century French civilization
K1 Catholics
K1 Destruction of cultural property
K1 France
K1 French Wars of Religion, 1562-1598
K1 history of archives
K1 Huguenots
K1 Montpellier (France)
K1 Protestants
K1 Religion