French Catholic Theology, Huguenot Scripture and Esoteric Writing

French carries an exceptionally rich body of Catholic theological literature, from medieval scholastic works produced at the University of Paris, long Catholic Europe's leading center of theological training, through Blaise Pascal's Pensees and the writings of major French mystics, and French Protestant Huguenots produced their own substantial French-language biblical and theological literature before their persecution and the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes drove much of that community into exile, carrying French Protestant scholarship into Britain, the Netherlands and Germany. French has also served as a major language of Western esotericism and occultism, since nineteenth-century French writers including Eliphas Levi, whose own coinage and systematization of much modern ceremonial magic and tarot symbolism was highly influential, and the wider French occult revival of the same period produced foundational texts for modern Western esoteric traditions that were subsequently translated into English and other languages, meaning French, alongside English, functions as a major source language for modern occult and esoteric vocabulary rather than only a receiving language translating older material.