THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
Edict to the Huguenots. For twenty years he continued this gradually encroaching legislation. To mention a few of these orders: on June 20, 1665, he prescribed penalties to those who once having been " converted " to Roman Catholicism should relapse; on Oct. 24, 1665, he declared that little children who were claimed by the priests to have been " converted," that is, had used words which were interpreted as implying a preference for the Roman Catholic faith, although owing to the tender years of these children it was doubtful if they knew what they were saying, that such children were to be forcibly taken from their parents and brought up in the alleged preferred faith; in Aug., 1669, he forbade the Huguenots to leave France; on July 31, 1679, he forbade the Huguenots to hold any service while the place was being visited by the archbishop or bishop; on Oct. 10, 1679, he forbade the Huguenots to hold synods without his permission, and without the presence of a royal commissioner; on Feb. 20, 1680, he forbade Huguenot women to act as mid wives; on June, 1680, he forbade marriages between Roman Catholics and Huguenots. So it went. The Huguenots saw the walls slowly closing in on them and knew that it was only a question of time when they would be crushed. Meanwhile every inducement was held out to them to abandon their faith. On doing so their temporal fortunes immediately changed and employment of a lucrative character came to them, from which their faith had excluded them. One of the active agencies in effecting the " conversion " of those who were indifferent to worldly advantages was the dragonnades, those incursions of brutal soldiery, allowed by their officers to practise every outrage and insult and every cruelty, short of taking life, upon those on whom they were billetted until the unhappy victims were almost, and sometimes quite, willing to yield up their faith and so escape their tormentors. [It was from the ranks of the forcibly converted and their descendants that the rationalistic movement (represented by Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and others) proceeded, which had much to do with precipitating the French Revolution (q.v.). A. H. N.]
By this combination of persecution and deprivation many of the Huguenots were driven out of France and many others into the Roman Catholic Church. The king supposed that the Huguenot church had been destroyed, and as the Edict of Nantes had become a mockery he revoked it on Oct. 17, 1685. Then followed a great exodus of Huguenots. With broken hearts, at the risk of their lives, for the exodus was forbidden, with the loss of their property they turned their backs upon the land they loved so well, and in strange lands with dignity, patience, and success began life afresh. They greatly enriched the lands to which they came, for they brought with them the manufactures and the culture in which France was then preeminent.
But what of those who did not leave ? Deprived of all legal standing, proscribed by the State, spoken of as dangerous to the body politic, with a sentence of death hanging over them if they dared to meet for religious worship (and many a minister was put to death and many a layman died in the galleys
for this monstrous "crime "), these men and women, and even the children, showed the finest qualities of character. In spite of persecution they preserved their faith, both in its private and public exercises, and so when after a century a better day dawned for them their numbers showed that Protestantism had never ceased to be a faith in France. The pages of Huguenot history during this period are lighted by many a persecutor's fire, and across them move as heroic figures as history can show. Bibliography: The text of the edict and of that of revocation are in Reich, Documents, pp. 349-353, 381-386, and in Aguesse, below; translations of the edict and revocation and of related documents are in the important Tercentenary Celebration of the Promulgation of the Edict of Nantes . . by the Huguenot Society of America, New York, 1900, and in J. Fontaine, Memoirs of a Huguenot Family, New York, 1907. Besides the literature given under Du Plessis-Mornay; Huguenots; and France, consult: E. Benoit, Hist, de Vedit de Nantes, 5 vols., Delft, 1693-95; Memoires et correspondence de Duplessis-M ornay, vols. vi. sqq., Paris, 1824; E. Bonnemere, Les Dragonnades. Hist, des Camisards sous Louis XIV., Paris, 1882; Edits, declarations et arrests concernans la religion reformee, 1662-1751, ib. 18S5; F. Puaux and A. Sabatier, Etudes sur la revocation, ib. 1885; T. Schott, Die Aufhebung des Edikts von Nantes, Halle, 1885; L. Aguesse, Hist, de V etablissement du protestantisme en France, iv. 557 sqq., Paris, 1886; O. Douen, La Revocation de Vedit de Nantes, 3 vols., ib. 1894; J. Faurey, Henri IV. et Vedit de Nantes, Bordeaux, 1903; P. Bert, Hist, de la revocation de Vedit de Nantes a Bordeaux, Paris, 1908; Abbe Rouquette, Etudes sur la revocation de Vedit de Nantes en Languedoc: les fugitifs (1685-1715), ib. 1908; Robinson, European History, ii. 183 sqq., 287 sqq., 316 sqq.
NARD (SPIKENARD): A plant (Valeriana jatamansi or Nardostachys jalamansi) growing on heights and in plains of northern and eastern India, and in southern Arabia and Gedrosia, from which a favorite and costly perfume was obtained (cf. Cant. i. 12, iv. 13-14; Mark xiv. 3-5). It was brought into the trade of the West, including Palestine, by the Phenicians. The common nard unguent consisted of a mixture of oils of several aromatic plants belonging to the genus Valeriana, and was usually placed in small alabaster boxes (cf. Mark xiv. 3) or in scent bottles. Nard was used not only as an unguent but also to flavor wine, and the oil was even drunk. With such costly nard Mary anointed Christ at Bethany six days before the Passover (John xii. 1 sqq.), typifying his approaching burial, since this oil was also used to preserve the corpse from decay (Arabic Gospel of the Infancy, v.). (R. Kittel.)
Bibliography: Theophrastus, Hist, planitarum, IX., vii. 2; Pliny, Nat. hist., xii. 26-27, xiii. 2; O. Celsius, Hierobotanicum, ii. 1-11, Amsterdam, 174S; Asiatic Researches, ii. 405-417, Calcutta, 1876; W. Dymock, Pharmacographia Indica, ii. 233-238, London, 1891; DB, iv. 611; EB, iv. 4749-51; DCB, ii. 227, 671; JE, ix. 170; Vigouroux, Dictionnaire, fasc. xxviii. 1478-80.
NASH, HENRY SYLVESTER: Protestant Episcopalian; b. at Newark, O., Dec. 22, 1854. He was educated at Harvard (A.B., 1878) and at the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Mass., from which he was graduated in 1881. In 1882 he was appointed to his present position of professor of the literature and interpretation of the New Testament in the latter institution. He was also rector of the Church of the Redeemer, Chestnut Hill, Mass.,