The first professed Protestants in France were Lefevre, Wolmar, Farel, Viret, Marot, Olivetan, Calvin, and Beza, all men of distinguished learning and ability; but most of them had to seek safety in exile. It was only after the successful establishment of the Reformation in French Switzerland that the movement became serious in France. Calvin and Beza may be called the fathers of the French Reformed Church. Their pupils returned as missionaries to their native land. The first Protestant congregation was formed at Paris in 1555, and the first synod held in the same city in 1559. In 1561 the theological conference at Poissy took place, where Theodore Beza eloquently but vainly pleaded the cause of the Protestants before the dignitaries of the Roman Church, and where the name "Reformed," as an ecclesiastical designation, originated. In 1571 the general synod at La Rochelle adopted the Gallican Confession, and a system of government and discipline essentially Calvinistic, yet modified by the peculiar circumstances of a Church not in union with the State (as in Geneva), but in antagonism with it. The movement here unavoidably assumed a political character, and led to a series of civil wars between those who were Catholic, led by Catherine, and the Protestants (Huguenots) who were led by the Princes of Navarre. These civil wars led to the treasonous slaughter of the Huguenots at the St. Bartholomews's Day massacre in 1572. The Reformed church again acquired status under the Edict of Nantes in 1598, but that edict was revoked in 1685 and the French Reformed Church lost nearly all of its membership.