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A number of the leading figures of nineteenth-century Czech nationalism were Protestant, either by upbringing (Kollar, Safarik, Palacky) or by conversion (Masaryk). Another Protestant - the French historian, Ernest Denis - became the leading national historian after Palacky. They opposed the Czech 'genius' to the Austrian 'genius', defining the latter in terms of Catholicism and the former in terms of Hussism, and portraying Hussism as the first expression of the typically Czech aspiration to a freedom of the spirit and of the people. This prominence of Protestants happened at a time when Protestants represented only 2.3% of Czechs. Bohemia poses, therefore, the same enigma as France of the Third Republic: how could two countries almost entirely Catholic allow historians and statesmen favourable to Protestantism (re-)write the national narrative and set in motion a process of laicisation? The answer lies in the fact that in each case the adversary to a modernisation ardently sought (in the form of Third Republic in France and national independence in Bohemia) was conceived as fundamentally Catholic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the traces of Protestantism in contemporary French history and political culture. After contextualising the legacies of Protestantism and Catholicism and recalling the latter's primary role in conceptions of French identity, the study focusses on how Protestant cultural influences came to bear. The article weighs the contributions of renowned Protestant historians and politicians, in the case of the latter, right down to the contemporary period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]