There is something weird with Calvinist Aquitaine.

Let me explain :

Since the Middle-Age, Aquitaine (and Occitania) were way less pious than northern France. The Court of Bordeaux under Aliénor of Aquitaine is a good exemple of it : people had fun, were drinking wine, they invented love poems, and had many bards and singers. (This is one of the reasons why she didn't get along with the King of Franks, she was finding him boring and overzealous towards Christianity).

They were a huge center of Catharism (especially around Bordeaux) which was about free will and being pure and nice towards sinners and stuff.

They are known to be merrier than Northern France, and have always been.

So do you know why they adopted such a strict flavor of Reformation as Calvinism, instead of, I dunno, creating their own version or something ?
 
Let me explain :

Since the Middle-Age, Aquitaine (and Occitania) were way less pious than northern France. The Court of Bordeaux under Aliénor of Aquitaine is a good exemple of it : people had fun, were drinking wine, they invented love poems, and had many bards and singers. (This is one of the reasons why she didn't get along with the King of Franks, she was finding him boring and overzealous towards Christianity).

They were a huge center of Catharism (especially around Bordeaux) which was about free will and being pure and nice towards sinners and stuff.

They are known to be merrier than Northern France, and have always been.

So do you know why they adopted such a strict flavor of Reformation as Calvinism, instead of, I dunno, creating their own version or something ?
Perhaps the Calvinists originated from a minority of people who disliked this more liberal atmosphere? Therefore they became more radical in opposition to what they percieved to not proper christianity.
 
Let me explain :

Since the Middle-Age, Aquitaine (and Occitania) were way less pious than northern France. The Court of Bordeaux under Aliénor of Aquitaine is a good exemple of it : people had fun, were drinking wine, they invented love poems, and had many bards and singers. (This is one of the reasons why she didn't get along with the King of Franks, she was finding him boring and overzealous towards Christianity).

They were a huge center of Catharism (especially around Bordeaux) which was about free will and being pure and nice towards sinners and stuff.

They are known to be merrier than Northern France, and have always been.

So do you know why they adopted such a strict flavor of Reformation as Calvinism, instead of, I dunno, creating their own version or something ?

You should read my thread: https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ut-not-in-the-rest-of-southern-europe.461745/.
 
I don't think, that, Protestantism is really adequate for Spanish territories. It doesn't fit with Spanish culture.
Catalans are descendants of migrants from Southern France that joined the reconquista and Spanish and there is a continuum between the culture of Southern France and Catalonia...I think Val D'Aran and North Catalonia can go Calvinist..
 
Perhaps the Calvinists originated from a minority of people who disliked this more liberal atmosphere? Therefore they became more radical in opposition to what they percieved to not proper christianity.

Maybe they could initiate the Reformation in Southern France without it becoming Calvinist, and create a brand new kind of Reformation
 
The specific beliefs matter less than the fact that religious dissent has often been a proxy for economic or particularist dissent. At that time, latching onto religious fervor was the easiest way for a "nation" to rebel especially before nationalism existed.
 
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