units was a necessity and that individuals resisted negative perceptions circulating through their communities. Widowers did not hesitate to take a second wife, and they usually found quite soon a partner willing to become a stepmother. For these women, being a stepmother was not necessarily the experience of a lifetime or what defined their identity. Their experience depended greatly on factors such as the length of the union, changing family configuration, and financial dispositions taken by their husbands. By a policy adopted at the beginning of the 16th century, adulterous women during the ancien régime were sentenced to a lifetime in a convent unless pardoned by their husbands and were rarely allowed to remarry even if widowed. Religion Prior to the French Revolution, the Catholic Church was the official state religion of the Kingdom of France. France was traditionally considered the Church's eldest daughter (French: Fille aînée de l'Église), and the King of France always maintained close links to the Pope. However, the French monarchy maintained a significant degree of autonomy, namely through its policy of "Gallicanism", whereby the king selected bishops rather than the papacy. During the Protestant Reformation of the mid 16th century, France developed a large and influential Protestant population, primarily of Reformed confession; after French theologian and pastor John Calvin introduced the Reformation in France, the number of French Protestants (Huguenots) steadily swelled to 10 percent of the population, or roughly 1.8 million people. The ensuring French Wars of Religion, and particularly the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, decimated the Huguenot community; Protestants declined to seven to eight percent of the kingdom's population by the end of the 16th century. The Edict of Nantes brought decades of respite until its revocation in the late 17th century by Louis XIV. The resulting exodus of Huguenots from the Kingdom of France created a brain drain, as many of them had occupied important places in society. French exploration and colonies Age of Discovery French colonization of the Americas French colonial empires Literature French Renaissance literature French literature of the 17th century French literature of the 18th century Art French Renaissance French Baroque and Classicism French Rococo and Neoclassicism See also French Enlightenment Paris in the 17th century Paris in the 18th century Notes References and bibliography Behrens, C.B.A. Ancien Régime (1989) Cobban, Alfred. A history of modern France: vol 1 1715–1799 (1963) free to borrow Doyle, William, ed. The Oxford