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Destruction of the Charenton Temples

First Temple
(1607-1621)

In the middle of the XVII century the young Dutch gentlemen, de Villiers, who came to Paris to improve their skills in etiquette did not omit in their journal some notes on their attendance in divine service. We went for the first time to Charenton and heard there the sieur Jean Daille who is a very good minister, and a very eloquent and knowledgeable man. The congregation there is wonderful. Most of the ranking people of our religion come to Paris on business or to visit the court and thereby increase the number. The crowd is so great that each one takes whatever place he can find. - We found at Charenton, the sieur Drelincourt who delivered a very good sermon. - We particpated in the celebration of the Lord's Supper. - We went to Charenton where M. de Turenne who had recently returned from his campaigns also made his devotions. - We stayed as long as Good Friday without drinking or eating, and we must admit that fasting is a great help in prayer and devotion.

Up to l'Estoile we still had the echoes of an excellent sermon preached at Charenton by a young minister from Annonay, only 24 or 25 years old. His theme was on a passage of the psalms 'I love my God', which he treated very gently and sensitively, something appropriate for a people that takes in more through the ears than by argument. In the end he drew tears from the eyes of most of those in attendance, even from Mr. Sully. And the writer added candidly: I would have liked to hear more of his preaching had it not been that at Paris everybody is so foolish and corrupt... Fanaticism dogged the reformed folks almost to the gates of the capital and celebrating their worship under the sanction and watchful eye of the authorities was the only uneasy lull that preceded the upheaval.

Do not forget the first explosions under Louis XIII of the sectarian fury against the temple which Henri IV had permitted to be built - the place where M. de Sully came to make his devotions. Already one morning in 1615 one found all the benches broken up, the pulpit of the minister vandalized and windows broken. In September 1621, we are told by Elie Benoit, and official testimony corroborates her account, that the populace of Paris, highly excited by the news of the death of the duke de Mayenne, vowed to avenge his death on the Parisian reformed folks who were the most peaceful people in the kingdom. The whole week between the 21st until Sunday the 26th passed in angry upheaval... On Sunday the faithful returning from Charenton were attacked. Insults from the rabble became blows and some were even killed under the eyes of guards and archers who were there to escort the reformed people. The whole city was aroused. The next day, not daring to undertake any mischief in the city where they wouldn't have been at their strongest, the rabble went to Charenton to continue their violence.

One reads in the Mercure de France: some hundred drifters, knaves, and other troublemakers were joined by a few students, laborers, and numerous apprentices in various trades. They broke down the first doorway to the temple; destroyed the shops of the booksellers; and when the main door of the temple was broken, some got busy gathering together the benches, chairs and books. Finding a lit straw, they set fire to the temple...


First Temple being pillaged and set on fire in September 1621

They succeeded too well. When the civil lieutenant went to take stock of the situation and see what had happened, he saw the temple totally gutted except for a few vestiges of ornate woodwork. Some joists and pillars of the galleries that were standing were still burning. From there we went to the large house belonging to the temple, destined to become a college, in which we found the doors, floors, and windows broken and burning. The fire was still raging inside. Then we entered the old house belonging to the caretaker which we similarly found burning. The fire was still raging and one room was totally engulfed. At the rear of the house is a well in which someone had thrown a quantity of books and papers.

It took two years to rebuild the destroyed sanctuary according to the plans of Solomon de Brosse - days that were too short and filled with happy vitality. However the sky didn't delay getting covered with clouds that grew more and more ominous, and all the more dastardly because the next time it happened it wasn't a popular uprising, but one of legalized destruction, skillfully and ruthlessly prepared.


The First Temple

Second Temple
(1623-1685)

For more comprehensive details regarding the last few days of Charenton refer to O. Douen's authoritative book. [See Bulletin XXXIV P. 388]

Month by month new edicts were handed down, each one more restrictive and implacable than the last. There were three hundred and nine edicts before Louis XIV solemnly promulgated the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. By order the temples were closed. Any pretext was considered sufficient to justify this and the fatal iniquity was the small number of those who were still officially registered at Charenton. But if the flock persisted in their hope against hope which they clung to with even more eagerness, the pastors held no such illusions.


Jean Claude

  • Already on 1 December 1684, nearly a year before the disaster, pastor Jean Claude told his son who held a position in Holland: Our business is frenzied here and every day we're being threatened to the extreme and also with a revocation.
  • 8 December: A revocation is being worked on. It's a sure thing. In vain he wrote on behalf of his colleagues a supreme request to the King but everything moved toward ruin with dizzying speed.
  • 2 February 1685 he wrote: Nobody is staying in all of Normandy and as for us, we're just passing time.
  • 6 July: I believe that we will make the closure.
  • 31 August: We are all well, thank God, but our troubles are at the extreme and beyond imagination.
  • 7 September: I tell you that we are reduced to the bitter end. There are no more than 60,000 men in all the provinces of the kingdom who hold to our religion. Entire cities have embraced the Catholic religion, the king not wanting to permit any more than one religion. There is pillage, plunder, rape, theft and people are being dragged with a rope around their necks to the mass. Meanwhile bulletins are being printed and sent to relations saying there is no violence and that the conversions are going on willingly... Pray to God for us because all is lost without remedy and without resource.
  • 14 September: Horrible inhumanity on one side and inconceivable weaknesses on the other. All is lost.
  • 20 September: Our affairs are almost at their last point. May God sustain us by his mercy and be entreated for us.
  • 15 October: We are on the eve of a terrible catastrophe and if not today, then tomorrow I will put our people in hiding.
  • 19 October: Daily we expect other soldiers to come and do what they've done everywhere else. Everything here is in the final state of desolation and confusion. Everyone is trying to save himself but time has run out because all the exit gates are being closely guarded. A public ordinance has been published and displayed commanding all the provincial refugees who have been here for one year to return to their homes and to leave within 4 days. We think that our temple will be closed on Sunday. So that's the situation here. Judge for yourself whether this is very tranquil.

    In anticipation of the upcoming closure of the temple, the old pastor made, in his sermon of 9 October, his final farewell to his flock, recommending the faithful to trust in Providence since the State would even try to prevent them from praying in the future. The whole assembly was in tears.

    The edict of revocation was signed on Wednesday the 17th, before Claude's last letter, but it wasn't acted upon until the 23rd so that soldiers could be sent to Charenton to surround the assembly during which time the archbishop of Paris, or the bishop of Meaux, would mount the pulpit when some hirelings and false brothers would shout 'Reunion, Reunion'! Thereby the clergy would try to obtain by surprise a mass conversion which would effectively ensnare the rare churches still holding out. But Claude, aware of the perfidy that was about to take place, warned the faithful and so a last worship service was cancelled - one for which Allix had prepared an energetic and touching exhortation on the farewell of St. Paul to the Ephesians: I take you today as a witness...

    The time of separation had in effect come. As if anxious to realize the word, Smite the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered, on the eve of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, notice was given ordering the exile of the pastors of the Church of Paris within two days while their colleagues in the province were granted fifteen days to leave. As for Claude, showing the extreme resentment of the clergy in which he was held, he was granted only twenty-four hours. A footman of the king came to inform him of his expulsion and to accompany him to the border. The official letter he carried bore the signature of the King and Colbert. Fleeing to Holland, he died there two years later, but he still had time to publish his admirable Complaints, which will remain as an immortal protest of one's right to resist tyranny in which history offers but few examples.

    Allix and Mesnard turned their eyes toward England. At the time of leaving forever their native country, they requested safe conduct for their wives, children and the nannies of their infants, and for permission to take away their books and belongings. This was a final vain hope. Their furniture and books were all confiscated while the wet-nurses were refused an exit. Thus deprived of being breastfed at the beginning of the wintry season, and during the long and weary trip, Thomas Allix and Henriette Mesnard died enroute.

    After the pastors, the temples were dealt with. Louis XIV wished that these testimonies of Protestant piety be erased permanently. The king is convinced that these temples cannot be converted into Catholic churches and that they therefore must be razed. And he was correct in his reasoning because on these very ruins one saw more than once a cry and prayer being raised from so-called 'new Catholics'. Also he gave the order that on the day following the promulgation of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the King's Commissioners, appointed by the Parlement, be sent to Charenton to oversee the demolition of the temple, and the monarch, as per the letters of Seignelay which are authentic, wished in his impatience, to be kept informed several times per day, of everything that was happening for its complete destruction.


    Click to enlarge.

    On 22 October at 2:00 pm, commissioners and ushers arrived at the entrance to the temple, along with the provost marshal of the Ile de France, twenty horsemen of his company, twenty archers and twenty carpenters. But, just as they were about to go to work, a great storm broke out. In a heroic poem dedicated to the ruin of Charenton and to the praise of Louis XIV by the former prosecutor in the parlement of Metz, Le Noble [a copy of which pastor Dannreuther has just donated to our Library], we find a vivid description.

    ... of the frightful skies,
    And the noisy claps of thunder which followed,
    Redoubling the horrors of the sudden unexpected darkness.
    The rain that poured down and the heavy blows of sleet,
    The sheets of lightning,
    Everything tumbled out of the sky pell-mell,
    And the frequent bolts of lightning that struck the eyes,
    Giving only days of fright;
    Interrupted by the prompt fury of the violent storm,
    The artisans are forced to abandon their work,
    Cowering inside the temple ...

    Le Noble saw in it the supreme effort of Satan to save his forbidden church, and to move it away from the dreadful fate that he could not avoid. But then the Almighty Himself intervened and made the demons return to their dens:

    Then the wind no longer blew and the sky cleared up...
    From the useless shelter the people left to trample it down,
    And promptly a calm prevailed that surprised even the architect
    Who recalled the hammers that went to work...
    The walls under the great blows of the hammers that struck them
    Until the very foundations crumbled and snapped;
    Everything is broken up, everything falls under their arms;
    To a far distance expands the noise of the enormous upheaval,
    As the harmonious concert of Heaven resounds
    But in the bottom of hell the demons do roar;
    And Paris sees no more the arrogant Babel
    That defies up to its eyes its victim, the Church.

    The destruction could not be accomplished as quickly as the author of L'Heresie Detruite (The Heresy Destroyed) would have us believe. On the first day they had to content themselves with breaking up the benches and taking prisoner the poor servant of the caretaker. They took her to the Convent of the New Catholics. Early the next day an army of two hundred labourers, bricklayers, roofers, carpenters, and tradesmen began implementing its systematic demolition, made more difficult by the excellence of the construction and the three and a half feet of thickness of the walls. So it wasn't until October 27 that the chief contractor was able to write to the lieutenant-general of police: Finally, Sir, our mission is nearing completion. The main structure of the temple is no longer there, having been demolished to no more than five feet from the ground floor. The funeral monuments were not spared; they were destroyed including those of Marshal de Gassion and his brother who had so gloriously fought for France.

    The material of the temple and the bell - between eight to ten thousands of lead - destined for the Hopital-General, were transported by boats to Salpetriere. A religious order, said to be Nouvelles-Converties, obtained the enclosure of the temple and the remaining buildings to establish a branch. The location was also chosen to be as bad as possible, as explained by the lord of Charenton. The tombs of the fathers and the ruins of the temple are objects which oppose all the care that has been taken for the instruction of Protestants who we would like to convert... The Nouvelles Catholiques were able to keep only young children at Charenton. They eventually sold the property to a community of the Perpetual Adoration to expiate what was called the desecrations of the heresy. The temple of Charenton is destroyed, and there is no further exercise of its religion in the kingdom. It is a miracle that we didn't believe we would see in our lifetime. wrote abbot de Rance.

    Eighteen years later, on November 8, 1703, a charitable society of mutual relief was formed in London called the French Protestant Refugees of the Church of Paris. At the head of their Discipline newsletter printed in 1708, was a reproduction of the view of the temple rebuilt by permission of Louis XIII in the year 1624, and demolished by order of Louis XIV on October 22, 1685 followed by a poem, In Praise of Charenton - trite, perhaps, for the readers of today, but how very moving for the exiles.

    O Charenton, dear hamlet,
    That every eye
    Sees along the water's edge
    Of the great river Marne,
    Where, on the day of rest,
    The Son of God calls
    To His faithful bride
    To hear His words;
    Hamlet divine
    Where my delighted soul
    Eats of the bread of Heaven...

    Those who had abandoned everything to preserve this delighted soul which their song mentions [and how many examples could be cited among the parishioners and the elders of Charenton!] - when they showed this image of their sanctuary to their children, and when they re-read the familiar stanzas of the poem - wouldn't they experience the same feelings as David who reflected on the time when he could go to the house of the Lord, or of the Jews who still weep at the old wailing wall of the temple at Jerusalem? Members of the Church of Paris in the twentieth century, let us together praise God for his mercies without number, and let us be faithful. We also have great relics of the past!