Blood & Belief: Family Survival and Confessional Identity Among the Provincial Huguenot Nobility

The story told here is one of adaptation and determination as the petty noble Lacger family of Castres in southwestern France evolved - and sometimes advanced their position - through the troubled times of the Reformation and Wars of Religion, an all too brief period of tolerance, and the later proscription, of Protestantism. In the early 1500s, the family emerged from obscurity; some later attained influential posts and amassed considerable fortunes. While some family members embraced Catholicism for professional gain, family concerns were still important, as many then bequeathed their fortunes to Protestant family members. Raymond Metzer focuses on this one Huguenot family as a paradigm for his study of the role of religious ideology in family cohesiveness in ancient regime France. The Lacger are an especially apt example of their class because the family was plainly unspectacular and; therefore, wholly representative of a more common experience. In tracing the evolution of the Lacger over the early modern period, Mentzer illuminates the familial, cultural, and economic situation of the French provincial nobility, particularly as it relates to France's shifting policies toward its Huguenot population. Blood and Belief underscores the endurance of a confessional minority in the remarkably well-documented history of a single family and thus brings fresh understanding to the broader questions surrounding family resilience in early modern Europe. As he discusses the preservation of family wealth, the role of marriage, and education and professional life, through numerous examples culled from archival sources, Mentzer reconstructs a distinctive milieu and offers a fascinating and accessible glimpse of family life.