This vol. has been built upon all of the known parish register & census evidence bearing upon the changing size of France's Huguenot population over the course of the period between the Edict of Nantes & its Revocation -- specifically, upon census figures or annual totals of baptisms for any Protestant church or community for which such evidence spans 40 or more years of the cent. This national investigation is offered in the hope that it can help to stimulate more of the detailed local studies of individual Protestant communities & of the relations between their members & their Catholic neighbors that are needed to illuminate these variations, as well as to highlight those regions where such studies might be particularly fruitful. Charts & tables.

Reproduction of the original: History of the Rise of the Huguenots by Henry M. Baird

Thinking of the text from the Dies frae (S. Matthew, XXV, 40). It is also probable that this other Saint Francis, partly out of admiration for his illustrious compatriot of Assisi and partly from a compelling urge to be superlative in all things, chose the title in opposition to the Franciscans, the Fratres Minori, l who had previously adopted this style taken from Saint Matthew, XXIII, 8. The title "Minim" was confirmed in these words" ... eosque Eremitos Ordinis Minimorum Fratrum Eremitarum F. Francesci de Paula in posterum nuncupari," taken from the Papal Bull, Meritis religiosae vitae, of 26 February, 1493. The earliest reference to the Order in France is in a fragment preserved in the Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal called, La regle et vie de Frere Franfois, pauvre et humble hermite de Paule, laquelle donne a tous ses 2 freres voulant entrer et vivre en son ordre. The dating of this manuscript should be accepted with considerable reserve; it bears a clearly legible "1474," although it seems most unlikely that any reference to an Order occurred before the Bull of 1493 or that any Rule appeared in French before the Founder's visit to Louis XI in 1483. 3 The fame of Francis and his reputation as a "guerisseur" had reached the French court where Louis XI was sick and dying; the King summoned him to the chateau of Le Plessis-Ies-Tours, but it required the intervention of the Pope to make the hermit undertake the journey