Protestantism in Besançon



Besançon is a city in eastern France, about 55 miles from Dijon. As the Protestant Reformation grew in Europe, it arrived in Besançon between 1520 and 1540 through the work of the theologians Guillaume Farel and Théodore de Bèze, and the local writer Claude Goudimel (1510-1572), a composer of Protestant hymns. The locals slowly embraced the new faith, although it was condemned by the national Catholic church.

In the 1520s, Besançon officially recorded the existence of the Reformation in its acta capituli ("acts of the chapter"). The Catholic Church launched actions against Protestants, who were deemed to be heretics. It was forbidden to speak to Lutherans in 1527, and the emperor issued a defensive order for Franche-Comté in the same year. In 1528, two monks, Coquillard of Reims and  Lambellin, were executed and others were banished. Several academics and humanists were arrested for being "erasmians”, “being in bad faith" or "readers of bad books”.

Tensions continued until the Battle of Besançon (also known as the Surprise of Besançon) that took place on 20 and 21 June 1575 between the Reformers and the Catholics. The Huguenots, mostly former Besançon citizens expelled for heresy, took refuge in Switzerland or Montbéliard, where they raised an army in order to take Besançon and make it a stronghold of the Reformation. Several hundred soldiers marched to the city, but part of the contingent was blocked from continuing and only a hundred men arrived, leading to a solid Catholic victory. This resulted in a definitive takeover of the region by the Catholic Church, after several decades of Protestant expansion. Despite a small resurgence in 1605, Protestantism mainly died out for 200 years until the French Revolution, when the signing of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, allowed Protestants to live in the city unconstrained.

21st Century
At the beginning of the 19th century, Protestants began to return to the city. In 1842, the Church of the Holy Spirit was officially ceded to the Protestant community. In 1999, approximately 2000 Protestants lived in the Besançon area.

In the 2020s, there are several Protestant churches in the city, including the Temple du Saint-Esprit, Mennonite, Quaker and the Evangelical Church (formerly the Evangelical Missionary Church of Besançon).