Protestantisme et utopie en France aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles

Abstract

Calvinism and Utopia in the 16th and 17th Century Since its first appearance, Calvinism has been doomed to remain a minority phenomenon in France, so that the Huguenots had to develop a minority mentality. This mentality finds one of its best expressions in the utopias and the utopianism. It's not a coincidence if the first French utopia, Antangil (1616), an anonymous work, is a Huguenot utopia, nor that six of the eight most important utopias or utopian descriptions of the Louis XIV time are Huguenot or converted Catholics works. Antangil is a nostalgic and «monarchomatical» utopia, still deeply rooted in the French soil. The Grand Dessein of Sully is an international and European utopia. The Louis XIV time utopias, for their part, are marked by the acceptance of the diaspora status and also by the mental and geographical disorientation which follows its exile and growing distance to France and also to God. One only utopia, L'île d'Eden, from Henri Duquesne, still remains in many ways a true French Huguenot utopia.