Keywords

• In the second half of the sixteenth century
• the Huguenots participated in the French unsuccessful attempts to establish military outposts and to found colonies in Brazil and Florida. The Huguenots played also an important role in the creation of New France. Their migration ? interrupted by the war of religion ? resumed after the Edict of Nantes
• and it was officially halted when all Protestants were excluded from New France on 1628. Therefore
• Calvinism became an important element in the settlement of the New World only during the first half of the seventeenth century with the Puritan migration. The Puritansâ€
• ™
• project to build a Christian Commonwealth in New England was framed within a Calvinist theological and political vision. One of the most important expressions of this vision was the Body of Liberties
• adopted by the Massachusetts General Court in 1641
• which applied a series of rights and general protections to everyone
• beyond the norms of Common Law. The Body of Liberties was finally incorporated into the Massachusetts Constitution