From a Far Country

From a Far Country
Author: Catharine Randall
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2011
Genre: History
ISBN: 0820338206

In From a Far Country Catharine Randall examines Huguenots and their less-known cousins the Camisards, offering a fresh perspective on the important role these French Protestants played in settling the New World. The Camisard religion was marked by more ecstatic expression than that of the Huguenots, not unlike differences between Pentecostals and Protestants. Both groups were persecuted and emigrated in large numbers, becoming participants in the broad circulation of ideas that characterized the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Atlantic world. Randall vividly portrays this French Protestant diaspora through the lives of three figures: Gabriel Bernon, who led a Huguenot exodus to Massachusetts and moved among the commercial elite; Ezéchiel Carré, a Camisard who influenced Cotton Mather’s theology; and Elie Neau, a Camisard-influenced writer and escaped galley slave who established North America’s first school for blacks. Like other French Protestants, these men were adaptable in their religious views, a quality Randall points out as quintessentially American. In anthropological terms they acted as code shifters who manipulated multiple cultures. While this malleability ensured that French Protestant culture would not survive in externally recognizable terms in the Americas, Randall shows that the culture’s impact was nonetheless considerable.

Let God Arise

Let God Arise
Author: W. Gregory Monahan
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2014-03-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0191002127

Let God Arise draws upon an extensive array of archival sources to present the first modern account in English entirely devoted to the rebellion and war of the Camisards. Combining traditional narrative with analysis, W. Gregory Monahan examines the issues that led to that rebellion, beginning with the conversion of the artisans and peasants of the remote mountain region of the Cévennes to Protestantism in the sixteenth century, its persistence in that confession in the seventeenth, and the shattering impact of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which deprived Protestants first of their pastors, and then of the itinerant preachers who attempted to take their place. Beginning in 1701, prophetism swept the region, and the prophets, who believed they heard and followed the word of the Holy Spirit, soon led their followers into violent attacks on the Catholic Church and rebellion against the crown. A persistent and occasionally successful guerrilla war raged for over two years. Monahan argues that the resulting war involved a host of often conflicting world views, or discourses, in which the various parties to the conflict, whether the king and his ministers at Versailles, the provincial intendant Basville and local officials, the foreign powers, the Church, the generals, or the Camisard rebels themselves, often misunderstood or failed to communicate with each other, resulting too often in terrible violence and bloodshed. Let God Arise tells us much about the nature of the reign of Louis XIV and the popular religion of the time in exploring the last great rebellion in France before the Revolution of 1789.

The Camisards

The Camisards
Author: Charles Tylor
Publisher: London : [s.n.]
Total Pages: 524
Release: 1893
Genre: Camisards
ISBN:

The Huguenots

The Huguenots
Author: Jane McKee
Publisher: Apollo Books
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2013
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781845194635

In this book, scholars of the Huguenot Refuge examine the situation of French Protestants before and after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France and in the countries to which many of them fled during the great exodus which followed the Edict of Fontainebleau. Covering a period from the end of the 16th to the beginning of the 19th century, the book examines aspects of life in France, from the debate on church unity to funeral customs. Its primary focus is on the departure from France and its consequences, both before and after the Revocation. It offers insights into individuals and groups, from grandees - such as Henri de Ruvigny, depute general and later known as Earl of Galway - to converted Catholic priests, and from businessmen and communities choosing their destination for economic as well as religious reasons, to women and children moving across European frontiers or groups seeking refuge in the islands of the Indian Ocean. The information-gathering activities of the French authorities and the reception of problematic groups - such as the Camisard prophets among exile communities - are examined, as well as the significant contributions which Huguenots began to make in a variety of fields to the countries in which they had settled. The refugees were extremely interested in the history of their diaspora and of the individuals of which it was composed, and this theme too is explored. Finally, the Napoleonic period brought some of the refugees up against France in a more immediate way, raising further questions of identity and aspiration for the Huguenot community in Germany.

Enlightening Enthusiasm

Enlightening Enthusiasm
Author: Lionel Laborie
Publisher:
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2015
Genre: Camisards
ISBN: 9780719089886

Developed from the author's PhD thesis (University of East Anglia, 2011) under the title The French Prophets: A Cultural Approach to Religious Enthusiasm in Post-Toleration England (1689-1730).

Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes

Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
Publisher: Cosimo Classics
Total Pages: 248
Release: 1879
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

On 23 September 1878 Stevenson set out from Le Monastier in the Haut Loire, to tramp through the wild region of the Cevennes. His only companion was a small donkey to carry basic necessities, and a commodious "sleeping sack". In the next 12 days, at a pace dictated by the donkey and carrying most of the supplies himself, he travelled 120 miles across rivers, mountains and forests. His stylish and witty account was published in 1879.