eBay

VERY RARE Original Book
by French Camisard Prophet - Elie Marion

Clavis Prophetica
First edition
1707

For offer, a rare early French book printed in London. Fresh to the market. Never offered until now. Vintage, Old, Original - NOT a Reproduction - Guaranteed !! Clavis prophetica : ou la chef des propheties de Mr. Marion, et des autres Camisars. Avec quelques réfléxions sur les caractères de ce nouveaux, envoyez, & de Mr. F ... leur principal secrétaire. Traduit de l'anglois. A Londred [i.e. London], 1707. 46 p. 6 1/4 inches. Marion was a mystic and prophet, founder of the "French prophets", who's message became millenarian, heralding Christ’s coming and his reign for a thousand years. Complete text. Unbound - looks to have been taken from a binder's collection, and still has leather remains on spine. In good to very good condition. A few small spots on title page. Please see photos. If you collect religion, prophets, mystics, theology history, etc., this is a treasure you won't see again soon. Add this to your bibliophile book library or paper / ephemera collection. Genealogy research information as well! Combine shipping on multiple bid wins! International s/h is more. 2616

Élie Marion

Élie Marion was born at Barre des Cévennes (Lozère) in 1678 in an influential family. He was 7 years old when the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was pronounced. He was therefore obliged to attend a school run by the parish priest but, as he mentions it in his memoirs, in the evening at home his parents did away with Catholic teachings.

He studied law in Nîmes and in Toulouse. He repeatedly thought of joining the Refuge movement. But in 1702 he became acquainted with« prophetism » and this was to change his life.

A prophet and camisard

On 1 January, 1703, Élie Marion had a mystic and prophetic illumination. He joined the troops under the camisard leader la Valette. In 1704 he became one of the camisard leaders and was appointed secretary for the troops. His prophetic action was limited.

After Jean Cavalier’s surrender, in 1704, Élie Marion kept fighting with a handful of camisards. But he was defeated and negotiated their surrender with the military authorities. In 1705 he was exiled to Switzerland, and in 1706 went to London with a few comrades.

It was in Lausanne and a little later in London that the camisard prophets’ message became millenarian, heralding Christ’s coming and his reign for a thousand years. It was similar to the puritans’ message in England. Along with a few fellow camisards Élie Marion started prophesying and attracted numerous eager people to London. He became the leader of the movement “God’s children” (“enfants de Dieu”) also the so-called « French Prophets ».

Some French people gathered in writing the « inspirations » of the prophets, notably Maximilien Mission who in 1707 published these testimonies entitled Sacred theatre in the Cévennes (Théatre sacré des Cévennes). This work was immediately translated into English. At the same time Marion also published his prophetic warnings (avertissements prophétiques). The books had much success and brought numerous English personalities to the movement.

The French church in London, however, condemned the prophets and refused to give them the Lord’s Supper. The resulting quarrels were the talk of London in 1707 and 1708. A battle of pamphlets and libels followed with more than 150 publications. Riots broke out against the prophets. Marion’s prophetic warnings were condemned by a judge as being seditious. Newspapers all over Europe reported on this as, for instance, Pierre Bayle in his News of the Republic of Letters (Nouvelles de la République des Lettres), publishedin the Netherlands.

The spreading of such news attracted numerous adepts and an increasing agitation was noticeable. The false claims of a resurrection resulted in the split up of the group. Marion tried to reunite it by establishing a system of organisation and a hierarchy.

Marion's tour in Europe (1711-1713)

The « French prophets » began missions outside London. English followers would travel all over England, Ireland and Scotland. Marion and a few comrades were to bring the « Spirit’s message » (« message de l’Esprit ») to Europe.

In 1711 they were warmly welcomed in Germany by the German pietists in Halle, Leipzig and Erlangen. But the Lutheran and Calvinist clergy showed hostility. The prophets were sent away or threatened with prosecution. The second journey, to Stockholm in 1712-1713, was a total failure. While travelling through Poland they were arrested and jailed for two months. In prison Marion had a fever. When freed he was still sick but went on to Halle, to Moravia and Constantinople. The prophets sent messages to the sultan and to the king of Sweden imprisoned in Constantinople, but to no avail. They boarded a ship to Italy and went to Rome. But Marion, at the age of 35, was to die on the way there on 28 November, 1713.

Biography

Élie Marion was born in 1678 in Barre-des-Cévennes (Lozère)in a family of notables. He was therefore 7 years old at the time of the revocation of theEdict of Nantes. He had to attend the school run by the parish priest but, as he recounted in his memoirs, in the evening, at home, his parents undone Catholic education.

He then studied law in Nîmes and then in Toulouse. On several occasions, he thought of reaching the Refuge. But his "encounter with prophetism" in 1702 changed the course of his life. On January1, 1703,Elie Marion had a mystical and prophetic experience. It was then that he joined the troupe of the Camisard chief Valletta. In 1704,he became one of the Camisard chiefs and was in charge of the secretariat of the troop. His prophetic activity is modest.

After the surrender of Jean Cavalier,in 1704, Elie Marion continued the struggle with a handful of camisards. Following their failure, he negotiated their surrender with the military authorities and went into exile first in Switzerland in 1705,then in London in 1706 with some companions.

It was in Lausanne and then in London that the discourse of the Camisard prophets became millenarian: it announced the coming of Christ for a reign of 1,000 years. He thus distanced himself from the discourse of the Reformed Protestants and thus joined the discourse of the EnglishPuritans. With some Camisard companions, Elie Marion began to prophesy and attracted a crowd of curious people to London. He became the leader of the movement of the "children of God" who are also called the "French prophets".

French people collected in writing the "inspirations" of the prophets, including a writer Maximilien Mission who published in 1707 these testimonies under the name of Théâtre sacré des Cévennes, immediately translated into English. At the same time, Marion publishes her prophetic warnings. These books met with great success and the movement attracted many English personalities.

In contrast, the French Church in London condemns the prophets and removes them from the Last Supper. The ensuing controversy made the London headlines in 1707 and 1708. A war of pamphlets and libels is unleashed: more than 150 books are published. Riots broke out against the prophets. Marion's prophetic warnings are condemned by a judge as seditious. The case is relayed by the European press including the News of the Republic of letters published in the Netherlands by Pierre Bayle.

This media coverage attracted many followers and prophetic gifts multiplied, accompanied by a certain effervescence. It is even announced that a resurrection that does not take place and that causes the breakup of the group. Marion tries to reunite him by equipping him with an organization and a hierarchy.

The "French prophets" undertook missions outside London. English followers will crisscross England,Ireland andScotland. Marion and some companions will carry the "message of the Spirit" throughout Europe.

During a first trip to Germany in 1711 the reception was favorable among the German pietists in Halle, Leipzig and Erlangen. On the other hand, the Lutheran and Calvinist clergy showed their hostility. Prophets are expelled or threatened with prosecution. On a second voyage(1712-1713),Marion and her companions went to Stockholm. It is a failure. Crossing Poland,they were imprisoned for 8 months. In prison, Marion contracts a fever. Released but still sick, Marion continues the road: Halle, Moravia and Constantinople. The prophets sent messages to the Sultan and King of Sweden Charles XII, detained in Constantinople, without success. They then embarked forItaly to reach Rome. But Marion died en route on November 28, 1713 at the age of 35.

Mysticism is popularly known as becoming one with God or the Absolute,[1][2] but may refer to any kind of ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a religious or spiritual meaning.[web 1] It may also refer to the attainment of insight in ultimate or hidden truths, and to human transformation supported by various practices and experiences.[web 2]

The term "mysticism" has Ancient Greek origins with various historically determined meanings.[web 1][web 2] Derived from the Greek word μύω múō, meaning "to close" or "to conceal",[web 2] mysticism referred to the biblical, liturgical, spiritual, and contemplative dimensions of early and medieval Christianity.[3] During the early modern period, the definition of mysticism grew to include a broad range of beliefs and ideologies related to "extraordinary experiences and states of mind."[4]

In modern times, "mysticism" has acquired a limited definition, with broad applications, as meaning the aim at the "union with the Absolute, the Infinite, or God".[web 1] This limited definition has been applied to a wide range of religious traditions and practices,[web 1] valuing "mystical experience" as a key element of mysticism.

Broadly defined, mysticism can be found in all religious traditions, from indigenous religions and folk religions like shamanism, to organized religions like the Abrahamic faiths and Indian religions, and modern spirituality, New Age and New Religious Movements.

Since the 1960s scholars have debated the merits of perennial and constructionist approaches in the scientific research of "mystical experiences".[5][6][7] The perennial position is now "largely dismissed by scholars",[8] most scholars using a contextualist approach, which takes the cultural and historical context into consideration.[9]

Camisards were Huguenots (French Protestants) of the rugged and isolated Cévennes region and the neighbouring Vaunage in southern France. In the early 1700s, they raised a resistance against the persecutions which followed Louis XIV's Edict of Fontainebleau, making Protestantism illegal. The Camisards operated throughout the mainly Protestant Cévennes and Vaunage regions, including parts of the Camargue around Aigues Mortes. The revolt broke out in 1702, with the worst of the fighting continuing until 1704, then skirmishes until 1710 and a final peace by 1715. Protestantism would remain officially illegal in France until the Edict of Tolerance signed in 1787.

Etymology

The name camisard in the Occitan language may derive from a type of linen smock or shirt known as a camisa (chemise) that peasants wear in lieu of any sort of uniform. Alternatively, it might come from the Occitan: camus, meaning paths (chemins). Camisada, in the sense of "night attack", is derived from a feature of their tactics.[2]

History

16th-century religious geopolitics on a map of modern France.

Controlled by Huguenot nobility

Contested between Huguenots and Catholics

Controlled by Catholic nobility

Lutheran-majority area

In April 1598, Henry IV had signed the Edict of Nantes and the religious wars that had ravaged France ended. Protestants had been given limited civic rights and the liberty to worship according to their convictions. This "fundamental and irrevocable law" was maintained by Henry's son, Louis XIII. In October 1685, Henry's grandson, Louis XIV (The Sun king), revoked the Edict of Nantes, issuing his own Edict of Fontainebleau. Louis was determined to impose a single religion on France: that of Rome. As early as 1681 he instituted the dragonnades which were conversions enforced by dragoons, labelled "missionaries in boots". They were billeted in the homes of Protestants to intimidate them into either converting to the official church or emigrating. The Cévennes was a centre of resistance, and the policy did not work.[3]

The Edict of Fontainebleau removed all rights and protections from the Huguenots. There followed about twenty years of persecutions. Reformed worship and private Bible readings were outlawed. Within weeks of the new edict over 2000 Protestant churches were burned, under the direction of Nicholas Lamoignon de Basville, the royal administrator of Languedoc, and entire villages were massacred and burnt to the ground in a series of stunning atrocities. The pastors and worshippers were captured and later exiled, sent to the galleys, tortured or killed. Seventy-five missionary priests under the command of Abbot François Langlade were sent to the Cévennes. Soldiers carrying crosses on their muskets forced the peasants to sign papers to say they were converting, and forced them to attend mass. The peasants continued to attend illicit meetings. Huguenots with a trade fled to neighboring countries. The King responded by closing the borders.[3]

The Protestant peasants of the Vaunage and the Cévennes, led by a number of teachers known as "prophets", notably François Vivent and Claude Brousson, resisted. Vivent encouraged his followers to arm themselves in case they were set upon by Royalist soldiers. Several leading prophets were tortured and executed, François Vivent in 1692 and Claude Brousson in 1698. Many more were exiled, leaving the abandoned congregations to the leadership of less educated and more mystically-oriented preachers, such as the wool-comber Abraham Mazel. The Catholic church was likened to the Beast of the Apocalypse and the clandestine prophets claimed to have seen it in the prophetic dreams. Mazel, in a dream, saw black oxen in his garden and heard a voice telling him to chase them away. From 1700 the clandestine prophets and their armed followers were hidden in houses and caves in the mountains.[3] [4]

Protestant satirical drawing of a "dragoon missionary" converting an "heretic", 1686

Abraham Mazel

Open hostilities began on 24 July 1702, with the assassination at le Pont-de-Montvert of a local embodiment of royal oppression, François Langlade, the Abbé of Chaila. Langlade had recently arrested and tortured a group of seven Protestants accused of attempting to flee France.[5] The band of Camisards were led by Abraham Mazel, who peacefully asked for the release of the prisoners, but when this was refused, they commenced the killing.[6] The abbé was quickly lionized in print by the Catholic State as a martyr of his faith.

The Camisards worked independently of each other and during the day most merged back into their village communities. They were predominantly agricultural workers or artisans and had no aristocratic leaders. They knew the paths and the sheep tracks intimately. They called themselves the Children of God - they were inspired by religion, not by patronage or politics.

Jean Cavalier

Led by the young Jean Cavalier and Pierre Laporte (Rolland), the Camisards met the ravages of the royal army with irregular warfare methods and withstood superior forces in several pitched battles.[7]

Violence increased as atrocities were committed on both sides: massacres in Catholic villages such as Fraissinet-de-Fourques, Valsauve and Potelières by camisards. Basville, a government administrator with a reputation founded on torture, deported the entire populations of Mialet and Saumane. Then in the autumn of 1703, with the king's consent, the systematic "Burning of the Cévennes" destroyed 466 hamlets and exiled their populations.[2]

Other Protestants, like those of Fraissinet-de-Lozère, under the influence of village elites, chose a loyalist attitude and fought the Camisards. They were nevertheless equally victims, losing their homes during the "Burning of the Cévennes".[8]

White Camisards, also known as "Cadets of the Cross" ("Cadets de la Croix", from a small white cross which they wore on their coats), were Catholics from neighboring communities such as St. Florent, Senechas and Rousson who, on seeing their old enemies on the run, organized into companies to loot and to hunt the rebels down.[2] They committed atrocities, such as killing 52 people at the village of Brenoux, including pregnant women and children.

Other opponents of the Protestants included six hundred miquelet marksmen from Roussillon hired as mercenaries by the King.

In 1704, Claude Louis Hector de Villars, the royal commander, offered vague concessions to the Protestants and the promise to Cavalier of a command in the royal army. Cavalier's acceptance of the offer broke the revolt, although others, including Laporte, refused to submit unless the Edict of Nantes was restored. Scattered fighting went on until 1710, but the true end of the uprising was the arrival in the Cévennes of the Protestant minister Antoine Court and the reestablishment of a small Protestant community that was largely left in peace, especially after the death of Louis XIV in 1715.

The people

42% of the Camisards were Cévennes peasants, and 58% were rural craftsmen, of whom 75% worked as wool-combers, wool-carders and weavers[citation needed]. All spoke Occitan. There were no noblemen involved, none had been trained in the art of war. There was no concept of a single army, there was no single leader but every region had its permanent organisers and occasional soldiers.[2]

The leaders of note were:

Gédéon Laporte

Salomon Couderc with Abraham Mazel in Le Bougès and Mont Lozère.

Henri Castanet (1674-1705) in charge of Mont Aigoual.

Pierre Laporte (Rolland) (1680-1704) in the Basses-Cévennes, Mialet and Lassalle.

Jean Cavalier (1681-1704) in the plains of Bas-Languedoc between Uzès and Sauve.[2]

Religiously, ordained pastors were rounded up, and a series of prophets ministered secretly.[further explanation needed] Notable among them[according to whom?] were:

Esprit Séguier

Abraham Mazel

Elie Marion

Jean Cavalier

The visions of the prophets inspired the operations of the war, and encouraged the peasants to feel invincible. The peasants marched singing Psalms — which unnerved the opposition.[2]

1701

June: the Vallérargues affair, when people seized back captured prophets from priests.[5]

1702

24 July: assassination of François Langlade, Abbé du Chayla, two priests and Catholic family at Dévèze.

12 August: Execution of Esprit Séguier. Traditional start of the War.

11 September: Battle at Champdomergue, a hill near (Le Collet-de-Dèze) with no clear outcome.

22 October: Battle at Témélac. Gédéon Laporte killed and his head displayed at Barre-des-Cévennes, Anduze, Saint-Hippolyte and Montpellier.

24 December: Jean Cavalier took the 700 strong garrison town of Alès. He led 70 Camisards.

28 December: The Camisards took Sauve.[5][9]

1703

12 January: Jean Cavalier took Val de Barre (Nîmes) from royalist Count de Broglie.

February: Count de Broglie relieved of his duties and replaced by Field-Marshal de Montrevel. More troops deployed.

26 February: The Camisards under Castenet massacred the inhabitants of Fraissinet-de-Fourques.

6 March: Battle of Pompignan - the Camisards lost.

1 April: The royalist Moulin de l'Agau massacre.

April: the deportation of Mialet and Saumane to Perpignan in Roussillon.

29 April: Jean Cavalier defeated at Tour de Billot (Alès).

18 May: Battle of Bruyès.

12 September: massacre of Catholics at Potelières.

20 September: massacre of Catholics at Saturargues (Lunel) and Saint-Sériès .

Autumn: The Burning of the Cévennes policy-villagers were deported from 466 villages which were then torched.

Autumn: emergence of the Catholic Cadets of the Cross (White Camisards) who looted and pillaged.

20 December: Battle of the Madeleines (Tornac).[5][9]

1704

Monument at Devès de Martignargues

15 March: the battle of Devès de Martignargues (Vézénobres). Jean Cavalier defeated a Catholic regiment

March: Field-marshal de Montrevel was relieved of his duties and replaced by Field-marshal de Villars.

16 April: de Montrevel defeated Cavalier at the Battle of Nages (while waiting for de Villars arrival)

19 April: Cavalier's stores discovered in caves at Euzet

20 April: de Villars assumes command and suggests negotiation

May: negotiations start, Cavalier accepts unconditional surrender and a command in the royal army

13 August: Pierre Laporte (Rolland) dies at Castelnau-les-Valence

October: Other leaders leave France.[5][9]

Heritage

Jean Cavalier later went over to the British, who made him Governor of the island of Jersey.

A millenarian group of ex-Camisards under the guidance of Elie Marion emigrated to London in 1706, and were said to have links with the Alumbrados. They were generally treated with scorn and some official repression as the "French Prophets".[10] Their example and their writings had some influence later, both on the spiritual outlook of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and on Ann Lee, founder of the Shaker movement.

Title and illustration of an anonymous handbill printed in London in 1707. The picture shows Élie Marion, Jean Daudé, and Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, leaders of the so-called French prophets, standing on the scaffold at Charing Cross after being sentenced to the pillory for sedition.

Role in the survival of Protestantism in France

After the main active Camisard groups had been subdued in various ways, the French authorities were keen not to re-ignite the revolt and took a more moderate approach to anti-Protestant repression. Many former Camisards came back to a more peaceful approach and from 1715 onwards helped re-establish a still illegal but now much better organised Protestantism. They were under the leadership of Antoine Court and of the numerous travelling pastors who were permitted to re-enter the country.[11]

"The Camisards' legend"

In his book with the title La légende des Camisards, Philippe Joutard, a Professor of History, registered the very lively oral tradition about the Camisards which has prevailed to this day in the Cévennes region. He also observed the "attractive power" of this striking period of history where many unrelated episodes have been integrated through the oral tradition. As this oral transmission is mainly done through the families, it often highlights more of their own ancestors who were faithful to their convictions than the heroic leaders of the revolt. In so doing it develops beyond the original religious question to a general attitude of resistance and non-conformity which determines a whole philosophical, political and human culture and way of life.[12] Philippe Joutard also noted that even the minority of Catholics living in this Protestant part of the country tend to reconstruct their history in the same way as their former religious opponents.[12] The footprint of the Camisards in Cévennes is thus particularly deep and lasting.