Pierre Marie René Ernest Waldeck-Rousseau was a French Republican politician who served for three years as the Prime Minister of France.
Émile Justin Louis Combes was a French politician and freemason who led the Lefts Bloc cabinet from June 1902 to January 1905.
The 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and State was passed by the Chamber of Deputies on 3 July 1905. Enacted during the Third Republic, it established state secularism in France. France was then governed by the Bloc des gauches led by Émile Combes. The law was based on three principles: the neutrality of the state, the freedom of religious exercise, and public powers related to the church. This law is seen as the backbone of the French principle of laïcité (secularism). It is however not applicable in Alsace and Moselle, which were part of Germany when it was enacted.
Patrick Cabanel is a French historian, director of studies at the École pratique des hautes études and holder of the chair in Histoire et sociologie des protestantismes. He mainly writes on the history of religious minorities, the construction of a secularised French Republic and French resistance to the Shoah.
Alma Franca Maria Norsa, known professionally as Franca Valeri, was an Italian actress, playwright, screenwriter, author, and theatre director.
Shmuel Trigano is a sociologist, philosopher, professor emeritus of sociology at Paris Nanterre University. He was Tikvah Fund Visiting Professor in Jewish Law and Thought at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, New York (2009), and Templeton Fellow at the Herzl Institute (Jerusalem) program "Philosophy of the Tanakh, Midrash and Talmud" (2012-2013), (2015-2017). Elia Benamozegh European Chair of Sephardic Studies, Livorno, Italy (2002).
The education system in France can be traced back to the Roman Empire. Schools may have operated continuously from the later empire to the early Middle Ages in some towns in southern France. The school system was modernized during the French Revolution, but roughly in the 18th and early 19th century debates ranged on the role of religion.
Jean-Pierre Chantin is a French historian of religion and author, associated with the University of Lyon. He specializes in the history of religion in France, including the Catholic Church and the role of new religious movements. He has published and edited several books on the topic of religion and NRMs.
Henri Charlier was a French painter and sculptor, noted for his religious art. He also wrote essays on art and music.
Georges Marie Denis Gabriel Trouillot was a French Radical politician. He played a central role in developing the law of 1901 that governed associations such as agricultural cooperative. He was Minister of the Colonies in 1898 and again in 1909–10. He was Minister of Industry, Commerce and Posts in 1902–05 and again in 1905–06. He published several books, including both poetry and political subjects.
Xavier de Montclos was a 20th–21st-century French historian, a specialist of the history of religions and particularly Christianity.
Nadine-Josette Chaline is a contemporary French historian, specialist in religious history, especially Christians in France.
Gaston Méry was a French author, translator and journalist. He was violently antisemitic and was also hostile to the people of the south of France, whom he saw as racially impure and inferior Latin peoples compared to the Celts of the north. He founded a journal L'écho du merveilleux which was largely devoted to proving the reality of a series of visions of the Virgin Mary, Joan of Arc and Jesus reported by Marie Martel in Calvados. From 1900 until his death he was a member of the Paris municipal council.
Marianne Carbonnier-Burkard is a French historian of modern Protestantism and honorary docent at the Faculté de théologie protestante de Paris. She is vice-president of the Société de l'histoire du protestantisme français and a member of the Comité consultatif national d'éthique pour les sciences de la vie et de la santé (2013–2017).
Dominique Gonnet is a Jesuit professor and a researcher at Institut des sources chrétiennes. He is a founding member of the Société d'Études Syriaques and has co-edited, in its collection of studies, Les Pères grecs dans la tradition syriaque.
The first Textbook War was an education-related conflict in France between 1882 and 1883, after the secularization of primary education materials by the Ferry law on March 28, 1882.
Catholic congregations in France are institutions, approved by bishops or popes, which have been created over time in response to the needs or crises of the Church, and are an illustration of the Church's evolution. Novices, aspiring to religious life, become monks by making a lifelong commitment to the three Vows of obedience, chastity and poverty.
The expulsion of religious congregations in 1880 was a political event in France during the Third Republic, involving the dispersal of unauthorized, primarily male, religious congregations. These expulsions were enacted after the enactment of two decrees on March 29, 1880, by the government of Charles de Freycinet, specifically by Charles Lepère, Minister of the Interior, and Jules Cazot, Minister of Justice. The initial decree mandated the dissolution of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) within French territory. At the same time, the subsequent directive required that all other unrecognized religious groups seek legal recognition, with the implicit threat of facing the same fate as the Jesuits.
The history of secularism in France is the birth and development of this principle up to the present day.
Georges Calzant was a lawyer, journalist, and royalist activist affiliated with the Action Française movement.
