Camisards

French religious nonconformists claiming prophetic inspiration.
Through most of the seventeenth century, France’s Protestant minority, the Huguenots, lived in peace under the terms of an agreement, the Edict of Nantes. In 1685, however, Louis XIV revoked the edict and tried, often with cruelty, to enforce religious conformity. The anger of the Huguenots was intense, both against the authorities and against the members of their own community who professed Catholicism under pressure. Many of their pastors went into exile in Switzerland and Holland and hoped the crisis would pass.
One of the most distinguished of them, Pierre Jurieu, unwisely wrote a commentary on Revelation. He foretold that the Catholic Church in France would collapse in 1690. His book was not well received by his coreligionists in general, but it gave an impulse to apocalyptic extremism. A Huguenot named du Serre, who owned a glass factory, assembled fifteen children from the peasantry of the Monts du Vivarais in southeast France and taught them (it is not clear how) to “prophesy” and preach, with physical symptoms of inspiration. Their example was infectious. Enthusiasts would go into shivering fits and foam at the mouth. Preachers, including adult ones, had convulsions and sometimes induced convulsions in their hearers. More children followed the first wave, making successful efforts to win back Huguenots who had defected to Catholicism. Soon, the phenomenon was no longer confined to children.
The Camisard movement, as it was called in allusion to the shirts worn by peasants, was accompanied by reports of miracles. Sometimes, they involved imperviousness to injury; Camisard prophets fell from heights without being hurt and stabbed themselves with knives leaving no mark. It also produced what seemed to be paranormal knowledge, together with glossolalia, the “gift of tongues,” though one of the best-attested instances is less than convincing: a so-called judgment on enemies was verbalized as “Tring trang swing swang hing hang,” at least in an English transcript of a later date.
Camisard prophets of both sexes disturbed the more responsible Huguenots, who tried to discredit them by insinuating immoral conduct and publicizing prophecies that had not been fulfilled. During 1689–90 there were clashes between Camisards and government troops in the Vivarais. Jurieu’s fateful year ended with no collapse of the Church. But despite the failure, cataclysmic events were still expected, and major trouble was brewing. Beginning in 1702, a Camisard uprising in the Cévennes brought widespread destruction of churches and large-scale massacres of Catholics, supposedly on direct orders from God. Mainstream Huguenots were appalled: this was not legitimate resistance to persecution, it was fanaticism that played into the hands of the persecutors. The French government, struggling against external enemies in the War of the Spanish Succession, struck back at the internal revolt with the utmost ruthlessness. Jean Cavalier, the ablest Camisard leader, maintained a skillful guerrilla warfare for two years but made peace with the royal commander, the Duc deVillars, in 1704.
He had obtained some concessions, but diehards accused him of betrayal and afflicted
the region with futile and dwindling hostilities for six years longer. More important was a dispersal of Camisards to other countries, many of the prophets among them. Some went to Germany and may have influenced the birth of the sect known as the Moravian Brethren and thence, indirectly, Methodism. Others, including Cavalier, found their way to England—at first to London, where they were initially welcomed as victims of the French king whom the English were fighting. It was not a general welcome. The Huguenot body already in the capital disowned them; and Cavalier himself did not help by virtually deserting them. Still, Camisard activity attracted attention, even though the prophets seemed to regard the Anglican Church as little better than the Catholic and made wild predictions of the destruction of the city and the end of the world. They acquired a chapel of their own and gained a few converts, such as John Lacy, who claimed that he could talk Latin without knowing any. More surprising was the case of the scientist Fatio de Duillier, a friend of Newton, who acted as the prophets’ secretary and recorded their utterances. He was suspected of manipulating the movement to spread ideas of his own.
Camisard propaganda reached its height in 1707 and was noisy enough to provoke rebuttals and prosecutions. Several of the leaders were punished by being stood in the pillory, where Fatio loyally joined them. Public ridicule grew. The Camisards’ inspired frenzies and contortions were parodied by comedians. They overreached themselves by predicting that a certain Dr. Emes, then on his deathbed, would rise from the grave five months after burial. On the appointed day, a crowd gathered at Bunhill Fields cemetery. Nothing happened. The prophets attributed the corpse’s lack of cooperation to their not being present themselves, owing to the danger of mob violence. After the London fiasco, some of them wandered away to Oxford and other cities, without much impact. In Manchester, however, a group under their influence remained in being for several decades and eventually attracted a young woman named Ann Lee: she emigrated to the United States and founded the sect of Shakers, which survived into the twentieth century.