Protestantism in Besançon

As the Protestant Reformation grew in Europe, it arrived in Besançon between 1520 and 1540 through the work of the theologians Guillaume Farel[1] and Théodore de Bèze, and the local writer Claude Goudimel (1510-1572), a composer of Protestant hymns.

In the 1520s, Besançon officially recorded the existence of the Reformation in its acta capituli ("acts of the chapter").

It was forbidden to speak to Lutherans in 1527, and the emperor issued a defensive order for Franche-Comté in the same year.

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,[5] when the signing of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, allowed Protestants to live in the city unconstrained.