Huguenots from around the world gathered here on Sunday on the site of the 18th-century Protestant revolt against the French state that gave them their modern identity.
They included a professor at a Japanese university and a Polish expert on refugee rights - both descended from Protestants who fled persecution in France more than 200 years ago.
An open-air service was conducted by the Reverend Leila Hamrat, the daughter of Algerian immigrants and pastor of a French-speaking church in London.
Mialet is in the heart of the Cevennes region around Montpellier where in 1702 Protestants rebelled against attempts by Louis XIV, the Sun King, to impose the Roman Catholic religion.
The king revoked a policy of religious tolerance known as the Edict of Nantes, and began a huge campaign of persecution against members of the French reformed church founded by Jean Calvin.
At least 200,000 French Huguenots fled to countries such as Switzerland, Germany, England, America and South Africa, where they could enjoy religious freedom.
Hamrat, 46, who comes from a Muslim but non-practicing family of immigrants in France, studied theology in Montpellier and worked as a pastor in Paris for 11 years before moving to London.
"I was lucky. I never had a religious education, which made me very relaxed about Protestantism," she said, "and very relaxed about Algeria and Islam as well."
But she added that she does not like to be seen as a model of religious integration because "my history is not typical."
She said she became a Protestant after she was taken to a ecumenical meeting by a friend, and found there "something that shook up my adolescence." The guerrilla war here, known as the war of the Camisards, is a symbolic event in the history of the Huguenots.
"My ancestors were refugees like the hundreds of thousands who exist in the world today," said Kazimier Bem, 26, whose family fled to Poland in the 18th century.
That background prompted him to become an expert in immigration law. "We should treat refugees as we would wish to be treated," he said.
John Stewly, a retired Australian, is associated with the Huguenots through his wife, whose maiden name is Barnier.
"Her ancestors went first to England, then to Ireland and finally to Australia," he said, "a journey that has lasted several centuries. Everywhere the Huguenets installed themselves, they brought their particular values: belief in education, a work ethic, honesty."
But Cedric Marx, 29, from London, said he was wary of such idealization. "I ask myself sometimes whether some people don't value the mere fact of being the descendent of Huguenots more than the moral values that the Huguenots defended," he said.
The annual gathering here brought together several thousand worshippers - not only members of the French Reformed Church, but people from other Protestant churches, as well as some Catholics, Jews and Muslims.