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The French Reformation seemed well-placed to succeed: there was a vigorous pre-reform movement, an apparent welcome for the work of French-speaking reformers in many quarters despite severe persecution, and the beginnings of a powerful and well-organized church structure. Yet, French protestantism remained the faith only of a minority. This book seeks to understand this apparent contradiction and to explain why protestantism failed to take hold in France.

France, 1637. Young French Huguenot Ambroise Sicard and his family desperately seek a life free from religious persecution. Determined to travel to the New World, they leave their home in France, bring only a few possessions, and depend on the kindness of strangers to stay safe. Ambroise the Huguenot follows the Sicard family as they bravely leave behind everything they know to come to a foreign, unsettled country. Told from Ambroise's viewpoint, this biography follows the young Ambroise from his home in France and his journey across the ocean to a new beginning in what would eventually become the United States of America. Esther Secor Cleveland, a direct descendant of Ambroise Sicard, thoroughly researched life in France during the 1600s to deliver this compelling tale of her ancestors' courage. With highly detailed information about seventeenth-century local history, people, food, and customs, Ambroise the Huguenot is destined to garner a worthy place on the bookshelf of anyone interested in Huguenot ancestry.

Diane Margolf looks at the Paris Chambre de l’Edit in this well-researched study about the special royal law court that adjudicated disputes between French Huguenots and the Catholics. Using archival records of the court’s criminal cases, Margolf analyzes the connections to three major issues in early modern French and European history: religious conflict and coexistence, the growing claims of the French crown to define and maintain order, and competing concepts of community and identity in the French state and society. Based on previously unexplored archival materials, Margolf examines the court through a cultural lens and offers portraits of ordinary men and women who were litigants before the court, and the magistrates who heard their cases.