Camisards
Camisards
(probably from French: camise, a black blouse worn as a uniform)
A sect of French Protestant fanatics influenced by the literature and preaching of the French Calvinists , who originated after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685 ), and existed in the beginning of the 18th century . In defense of their civil and religious liberties they started an insurrection in the Cevennes, and much suffering and persecution followed. By 1729 no traces of the Camisards could be found in the French Court, and although they fled to England they were soon wiped out. A band of Catholics known as the Cadets of the Cross or White Camisards, organized to check the black Camisards, eventually fell into the same atrocities and were disowned by Montrevel.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Camisards
(Probably from camise, a black blouse worn as a uniform).
A sect of French fanatics who terrorized Dauphiné, Vivarais, and chiefly the Cévennes in the beginning of the eighteenth century. Their origin was due to various causes; the Albigensian spirit which had not completely died out in that region, and which caused Pope Clement XI to style the Camisards “that execrable race of ancient Albigenses”; the apocalyptic preaching and literature of the French Calvinists, such as Jurieu’s “Accomplissement des propheties”, on which they were nourished; and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), along with the singular methods of conversion employed by the agents of Louis XIV. If the Camisards withstood the armies of Louis for wellnigh two decades, the reason is to be found in the desultory manner of warfare which the latter adopted, in the failure of Louis’ generals, de Broglie, Montrevel, Villars, etc., properly to realize the danger of the situation, and also, to a very great extent, in the support given them by the Protestant house of Nassau, then in control of Holland and England. The insurrection began in the Cévennes. Du Serre, an old Calvinist of Dieulefit in Dauphiné, became suddenly “inspired”, and his religious hysteria spread rapidly. The murder of the Abbé de Chaila, inspector of the missions in Cévennes, in 1702, was tantamount to a declaration of war. Armed bands led by Séguier, Laporte, Castanet, Ravenel, Cavalier, and others carried on a sort of guerilla warfare till about 1705, when they either surrendered or were destroyed. In 1709 Cavalier, who had sought refuge in England, tried, though without much success, to rekindle the revolt in Vivarais. There were a few more disturbances as late as 1711, when a treaty of peace with England deprived the Camisards of a powerful support. On the 8th of March, 1715, by medals and a proclamation, Louis XIV announced the entire extinction of the sect.
Much has been written on the “prophets” of the Camisard uprising. Fléchier and Brueys believed in a school of prophets, wherein Du Serre gave a systematic training, chiefly to young recruits. The prophetic inspiration, of which there four degrees, avertissement, souffle, propheties, dons, was communicated by breathing upon subjects who had gone through severe macerations, memorized long Biblical texts and formulae of imprecation, learned to perform the strangest contortions, and generally wrought themselves into a sort of trance. On the other hand, Court and Arnault, themselves Calvinists, deny the very existence of such a school. They cast aside as obviously fraudulent a number of so-called spiritual manifestations. The rest they trace to an overheated imagination, pietism, excessive fasts, the reading of the Prophets and Jurieu’s pastoral letters, and also to the peculiar temperament of those Southern mountaineers. If such is the case, there is no need of admitting with Görres, Mirville, and H. Blanc supernatural influences — diabolical, of course — to account for the Camisards’ antics.
Though Calvinists, the Camisards should not be too closely identified with Calvinism. Many Calvinists condemned their cruelties and despised their visions. The Synod of Nîmes, 1715, enacted two statutes, evidently aimed at the Camisards: that women and unauthorized persons be debarred from preaching; and that Holy Scripture be adopted as the sole rule of faith and source of preaching. Fourteen years after that synod Court had organized in Languedoc a strong Calvinist community, in which no traces of the Camisard spirit could be discerned. It is true that those who had fled to England did try to propagate their “mystical phalanx” in London, and published in 1707, in the British capital, a mass of Camisard literature: “Le théâtre sacré des Cévennes”; “A cry from the desert”; etc.; but the Consistory of the French Church in the Savoy pronounced their ecstasies to be assumed habits. Voltaire (Siècle de Louis XIV, xxxvi) relates that Elie Marion, one of the refugees, became unpopular, both on account of his writings (avertissements prophetiques) and false miracles, and was at last compelled to leave England. Catholics, too, organized under the name of White Camisards, or Cadets of the Cross, the better to check the black Camisards, but they soon fell into atrocities similar to those they sought to punish, and were disowned by Montrevel.
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FLECHIER, Recit fidele in Lettres choisies (Lyons, 1715); BRUEYS, Hist. du fanatisme de notre temps (Montpellier, 1713); CAVALIER, Mem. of the Wars of the Cevennes (London, 1726); COURT, Hist. des troubles des Cevennes (Alais, 1819); BLANC, De l’inspir. des Camisards (Paris, 1859); DUBOIS, Sur les prophetes Cevenols (Stasburg, 1861); ARNAULD, Hist. des protestants de Dauphine (Paris, 1876; LEGRELLE, La revolte des Camisards (Braine-le-Comte, 1897); See also ROSBACH in Hist. gen. du Languedoc, XIII; MONIN in La grande encyl., s.v.; VERNET in Dict. de theol. cath., s. v.
J.F. SOLLIER Transcribed by Herman F. Holbrook Credo et unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IIICopyright © 1908 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, November 1, 1908. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Camisards
(from the French camise, a peasant’s jacket), a sect of fanatics (made such by oppression) in France toward the end of the seventeenth century. The predictions of Brousson (q.v.) and Jurieu, as to the coming downfall of the papacy and the end of the world seem to have given a bent to the minds of the Protestants of Dauphine and Vivarais. In 1688 five or six hundred Protestants of both sexes gave themselves out to be prophets, and inspired of the Holy Ghost. They had strange fits, which came upon them with faintings, as in a swoon, which made them stretch out their arms and legs, and stagger. They struck themselves with their hands; they fell on their backs, shut their eyes, and heaved their breasts. The symptoms answer to those produced by inspiring nitrous oxide, and, were the fact then discovered, we should have been tempted to suspect imposture. They remained a while in trances, and, coming out of them, declared that they saw the heavens open, the angels, paradise, and hell. Those who were just on the point of receiving the spirit of prophecy dropped down, not only in the assemblies, but in the fields, and in their own houses, crying out Mercy. The least of their assemblies made up four or five hundred, and some of them amounted to even three or four thousand. The hills resounded with their loud cries for mercy, and with imprecations against the priests, the pope, and his and Christian dominion, with predictions of the approaching fall of popery. All they said at these times was heard and received with reverence and awe. The government finally interfered with a violence which naturally increased the disorder. In 1702 a number of the Camisards were put to death with torture. A war arose, in which Cavalier, a young baker, became prominent as an able leader. The Marshal de Montrevel was sent by the court to quell these disturbances, and, after him, Marshal Villars; and, after a long series of the most barbarous massacres and perfidious cruelties, these wretched people were finally, in 1705, put down. Cavalier submitted, and afterward went to England. Ravance, Catinat, and Franceze, three of their leaders, were burned alive, and Vilas and Jonquet,also commanders of their forces, together with two merchants who assisted them, broken on the wheel. Many of these Camisards fled to England. See Smedley, Reformed Religion in France, vol. in, ch. 25; Theatre Sacre des Cevennes (London, 1707, by Max Misson, the chief source ofinformation); The Wars of the Cevennes under Cavalier (Dublin, 1726); Schulz, Geschichie der Camisarden (Weimar, 1790); Court, Hist. des troubles des Cevennes (Villefranche, 1760); Histoire des Camisards (Lond. 1744); Peyrat, Hist. des Pasteurs du Desert (Paris, 1842); Hoffmann, Gesch. des A ufruhrs in den Cevennen (Nordlingen, 1837). SEE FRENCH PROPHETS.