Protestantism

A Protestant town

Clairac, whose motto is “Ville sans roy, soldats sans peur” (Town without king, soldiers without fear), was besieged by Louis XIII in 1621; its Protestant temple was demolished in 1685 or 1686. [B]

To be checked The date of the demolition of the first Protestant church varies according to the sources: 8 November 1685 on the plaque placed in rue Gambetta in 2017; 1685 in the booklet for the Dutilh family reunion (p. 16); “in six days, in November 1685”, after a decision of 18 October 1685, on the website of the Société des amis de Clairac [W83] [W84]; 1686 in the newsletter of the same society, in May 2018. [B] No archival record has been consulted to date.

The Reformation took hold early: from 1530, Abbot Gérard Roussel, close to Marguerite d’Angoulême, spread new ideas there, and Clairac became one of the first Protestant centres in Aquitaine. [W1] [W11] After the siege of 1621, three leaders were executed; the poet Théophile de Viau, baptised a Protestant in Clairac, left a sonnet about it. [W1] [W2]

In the 18th century, Jeanne de Lartigue, a Protestant, married Montesquieu in 1715; she owned the Vivens estate in Clairac. [W7] [W8] Wikipedia says she was born in Clairac around 1692 [W1]; the Graves de Montesquieu tourist office gives 1689 as her year of birth. [W8]

Freedom of worship returned in 1789. A first Protestant church was built in 1807, then rebuilt in the 1830s; it was listed as a historic monument in 2021. [W2]

The Société des amis de Clairac’s newsletter of May 2018 mentions a conference, “Clairac et la Réforme”, on 2 June 2018. [B] It brought historians together around Gérard Roussel, the synod of Clairac and the taking of the town in 1621. [W11]

The descendants of the emigrant families

Between 1680 and 1715, some 180,000 Protestants left France: this was the “Great Refuge”, towards Holland, England, Switzerland and Germany. [W12] In the deeds of a Clairac notary, Claude Martin also found enlistments for Louisiana in the early 18th century. [W6]

From the 1960s onwards, descendants of the emigrant families Saffin, Dutilh, Darné and Cobet came to meet Claude Martin, from Vienna, London, Frankfurt, Mauritius, Rotterdam or Philadelphia. In 1978, he organised in Clairac a gathering of several dozen descendants of emigrants. [A]

In July 2017, 70 members of the Dutilh family, from Holland, England, Switzerland, Spain and Turkey, gathered in Clairac. [B]

After 1685: leaving or staying

According to Claude Martin’s list, at least 261 Protestants left Clairac after the Revocation, against 3 274 who stayed and were registered as “nouveaux convertis” (new converts) in 1699: at least 7.4 % of the community. The deeds of the Clairac notaries show 36 families split in two by exile; in exile, 87 documented links still unite 74 Clairac families.

The Refuge in figures Those who stayed The networks of departure

In 2017, Claude Martin de Robert himself tells this history, and the origin of Clairac’s church, in an interview recorded in Clairac by Laure Leblond.

The recorded interview Huguenots The families From Clairac to the world

A museum of the Reformation

The Société des amis de Clairac writes that Claude Martin created in the Maison de Japhet “a fascinating museum of the Reformation in Clairac”. [B]

The museum