[Menydh]

Notes:

1. Compare That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew (1523) to later texts, such as Against the Sabbatarians (1538).
2. The accusation of “literalism” is, of course, outrageous when one keeps in mind the extraordinary variety of interpretations of the Jewish Bible in the talmudic and rabbinic traditions. Ignorance of the Talmud, and a systematic refusal to learn about it, may indeed be the largest blind spot in the history of Christian thought.
3. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1989), book 2, ch. 16, p. 505, book 3, ch. 14, pp. 770, 772, book 3, ch. 23, p. 958.
4. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2:16, p. 509.
5. Théodore de Bèze, Sermons on the Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus-Christ, 1590, quoted in Patrick Cabanel, Jews and Protestants in France: A Friendship of Choice, 16th-21st Centuries (Paris: Fayard, 2004), p. 26 [French].
6. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3:21, p. 509.
7. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3:24, pp. 986-987.
8. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4:20, p. 1505.
9. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2:10, p. 440.
10. I Corinthians 10:1-2.
11. Romans 11:2, 29.
12. Although figures are hard to come by, it is likely that as the great French Religious Wars began in 1562 (two years before Calvin died), Protestants accounted for 10 to 12 percent of the entire French population and over 30 percent of the nobility.
13. The likeliest origin-although it is still disputed-is a French deformation of the German word eidgenossen, or Confederates, which was given to an association of Swiss cantons who supported the Protestant party during the Religious Wars. Thus were the Protestants given a foreign name as a sign that they were the party of foreign powers. This has become part of anti-Protestant declarations until today, and is one of the many themes that anti-Protestantism and anti-Semitism have had in common. See Jean Baubérot and Valentine Zuber, A Forgotten Hatred: French Anti-Protestantism Before the Laic Pact (Paris: Albin Michel, 2000) [French].
14. Louis had become king in 1643 at the age of five, but he had been content to let Cardinal Mazarin, his mother’s favorite, wield power until the latter’s death in 1661. He then assumed direct responsibility for ruling the country until his own death in 1715.
15. See Janine Garrisson, The Edict of Nantes and Its Revocation: A History of Intolerance (Paris: Threshold, 1985) [French]. This long manipulation of an existing law in order to satiate the majority’s hatred left a deep impression in French Protestant memory. We Huguenots thus share with the Jews the knowledge that the law is meaningless when those who wield it are driven by prejudice and hatred. We are, therefore, more skeptical than most Europeans in the face of the modern world’s ambition to establish the rule of law in international affairs. For example, when the United Nations, charged with implementing equal laws for all, distorts these laws beyond all recognition to assuage its members’ pathological hatred of Israel, Huguenots-at least, those of us who know our own history-understand very well what is really going on.
16. See Cabanel, Jews and Protestants.
17. Interest in the Huguenot experience can still be found among Jewish historians, as shown by the considerable work on this topic by the francophone Israeli historian Myriam Yardeni.
18. Jacques Basnage, History of the Jews: From Jesus to the Present Time, vol. 13 (The Hague, 1716), pp. 356-357.
19. Cabanel, Jews and Protestants, p. 182.
20. No relation to the current president Jacques Chirac.
21. Quoted by Pastor Jacques Gruber in a speech to the Jewish-Christian Friendship Association, June 10, 2002, at Historique.relations [French].
22. Philippe Boegner, ed. The Diary of Pastor Boegner (Paris: Fayard, 1992), pp. 59, 65, 86, 159 [French].
23. René Gillouin, I Was a Friend of Marshall Pétain (Paris: Plon, 1966) [French].