In October 1626, around twenty Scandinavian and German princes and ambassadors on diplomatic missions in Paris celebrated a Holy Communion under the presidency of the Swedish pastor Jonas Hambraeus, in one of their embassies. In 1635, the scholar Hugo Grotius was appointed ambassador of Sweden to Paris. He set up a chapel in a salon of the embassy, 7 quai Malaquais, then at the Hôtel de Cavoye, 52 rue des Saints-Pères. He engaged Pastor Jonas Hambraeus, who officiated until 1660, when he was succeeded by another pastor.
In 1679, faced with the persecutions of the absolute monarchy towards French Protestants - the dragonnades - the legate Nils Bielke extended the extraterritoriality of the embassy to the chapel. This status ensured the celebration of a Protestant worship within the confines of Paris, whereas it was forbidden to the French by the Edict of Nantes of 1598. At that time, Parisians went to the temple of Charenton, southeast of the capital.
After the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685, which revoked the Edict of Nantes, the Swedish parish welcomed baptisms of French Protestants, like other embassy chapels of Protestant countries: Holland, Brandenburg, England, and Denmark.
Registers were kept throughout the Ancien Régime, despite the prohibition and persecutions.
At the same time, French Protestant refugees, called Huguenots, were welcomed at the French Reformed Church in Stockholm. Freedom of worship, conscience, and expression was only established in 1789, during the French Revolution, with the installation of a French Protestant temple at the church of Saint-Louis-du-Louvre, which moved in 1811 to the Oratoire du Louvre.
