Abstract

Today, shaken by the rise of evangelicalism, historical French Protestantism is only a small remnant, very much in the minority. It survived two and a half centuries of persecution before achieving tolerance and then full citizenship. If it has survived, it is mainly because of the care it took to preserve the memory of its tribulations and weave its history. The large number of recent works covered in this chapter proves that this concern for memory and history is not only a concern of the past. Generation after generation, French Protestantism has aroused the interest of historians who have extended this concern to include the most recent events. Thanks to synthesis essays such as those by André Encrevé and Pierre-Yves Kirschleger or to monographs like those by Patrick Cabanel on the three major figures André Trocmé, Freddy Durrleman, and Marc Boegner, the recent history of French Protestantism is fortunately continuing, in an academic mode, the tradition of this memory religion