A Journey through Space and Time to the Quakers of France

Judy Pocock

We travelled in the print of olden wars; Yet all the land was green; And love we found, and peace, Where fire and war had been. They pass and smile, the children of the sword— No more the sword they wield; An O, how deep the corn Along the battle field!

By Robert Louis Stevenson writing as W.P. Bannatyne, epigraph to Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, 1879.

Introduction to visit the Quakers of Congénies in the south of France. I had learned about this As I travelled on the high speed train small Quaker group from a fellow student south from Paris, I really had no idea the in my internet Quaker Studies course, and I world I was entering. If I had, I would have was on my way to visit him and his Meeting. looked more closely and found memories To me, the south of France was more of and words to capture the feeling. I do an exotic legend than a reality. Two Euros remember speeding near and sometimes got me on the local bus from Nimes and, as through craggy untamed mountains and it wound south from one tiny medieval stretches of green fields. I was on my way village to the next, I hung on to my suitcase

Canadian Quaker History Journal 81 (2016) 99 The Quakers of France worried that I really didn’t have a clue if I requisite shutters. Off they went for their was going in the right direction to the right mid-afternoon nap and I was left alone to place. Finally the driver, nodding, pointed explore. Wearing my lightest clothes, I to the door and, dragging my suitcase, out I ventured into the sauna-like outside world dropped. Watching the bus pull away, I and explored the walled compound—the found myself on a crocked uneven road little graveyard with its warn stones bereft lined by walls of ancient houses. The street of names in the old Quaker tradition, the was empty, the little shop closed up tight, garden full of colourful flowers--all and the windows shuttered. As I stood on dominated by the large simple meeting the street I was completely alone—no house. The streets beyond the wall were people, no cars, and no bikes— in a silence still empty and the houses closed up and as broken only by the sounds of birds. The I wandered I felt like I had stepped back in houses, all shuttered and silent, seemed time with nothing but the odd parked car to unlived in. The air was heavy with heat, remind me of the twenty-first century. moisture, and exotic smells. The sun was beating down and the sky was the most Where did these Quakers come from? beautiful blue I had ever seen. Which way to turn and where to go? Truly dazed and French Quakers seem like an oxymoron. confused and beginning to panic, I finally France, nominally secular yet steeped in its looked up and saw a sign on the corner of Catholic history, seemed a strange place to an old stone house, Avenue des Quakers, and find a group of Quakers, especially in the struggling up and down the steep coble hedonistic South. Where did they come stone street, I arrived at number eleven, my from and how long had they been in this destination. Mediterranean valley bordered by the High walls enclosed a tiny graveyard, a mountains of the Cevennes? What I had sprawling garden, and a Meeting House-- learned of their story from my fellow making up The Quaker Centre of student and internet friend Denis was Congénies. I was welcomed into the intriguing. During the American Revolution Meeting House, built in 1822, by the (1775-83), France and England, always at Resident Friends and settled into an upstairs each other’s throats, found themselves on bedroom, kept cool by thick walls and the different sides once again. French aid for

Canadian Quaker History Journal 81 (2016) 100 The Quakers of France the American rebels provided the perfect privateers fitted out by his father’s pretext for Britain to declare open season house, and desires the owners or their on French ships travelling back and forth agents to apply to Dr. Edward Long across the Atlantic. British ships were Fox, Hotel d’Yorek, Rue Jacob, a encouraged to attack and loot the French Paris.2 ships they encountered on the high seas with impunity. The owners of three ships The notice caught the imagination of took advantage of the policy, armed their many in France. Piracy was such an integral trading ships, and plundered any French part of the culture of sea, war, and empire ship they came across amassing a huge that the idea of an individual foregoing the fortune in the process. One of the owners spoils of war and volunteering to of the ships, a Quaker Joseph Fox,1 was compensate an “enemy” for the damage appalled when he discovered what his done was a novelty worth gossiping about. partners had done. As an objector to both So, not only the French ship owners directly war and theft, Fox first tried to stop his involved responded to the news, but the partners’ piracy, and when he was unable to story spread, including into the Southern accomplish that, he determined to make area of Languedoc. whatever amends he could. In 1785 he A community of religious like minds who placed the following full page ad in the called themselves Les Couflaires had existed official Gazette de France and sent his son to in and around the village of Congénies Paris. since at least the late 17th Century. When members of the group heard about the ad Paris, Feb.24. The principles of peace and the pacifist Quakers they immediately and quietness which characterize the became curious. They too were pacifists, Society of Quakers forbid them from and soon they found about other taking any part in wars, and does not similarities between themselves and the even suffer them to partake of any Quakers. Like the Quakers they did not profits which may arise from such a have professional paid ministers and meet source. One of these peaceable in unprogramed worship, quietly waiting people was inevitably concerned in direct inspiration from God. They too some privateers, which his partners believed that God dwelt within each would fit out during the late war, individual and communicated directly notwithstanding all his remonstrances without the need of ministers, creeds, or and opposition, and having received books to facilitate communication. Feeling his share of the profits, has sent his that they had stumbled on a group with son to this city to endeavour to find which they had much in common, five of out the owners of the vessels taken the Couflaires were designated by their […] and restore to them the part he community to contact Fox and learn more has received of those prizes, for about the Quakers. Letters were written but which purpose he has published the war intervened once again and when the names of all the vessels taken by the Congénies community heard nothing back

1 No relation to George Fox, a founder of the Society of Friends. 2 Charles Taylor, “Appendix: The Quakers of Congéniès” in The Camisards (London: Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., 1893), 442-43.

Canadian Quaker History Journal 81 (2016) 101 The Quakers of France they set out for London to meet these like- minded strangers. Experience confirmed the affinity between the Couflaires and the Quakers, and in 1788 the first Quaker Meeting in France was established at Congéneis and, through the ups and downs of the last 230 years, exists there today.3 But where did these French Quakers come from? Were they influenced by a travelling Quaker missionary—after all early English Quakers did send missionaries all over the world carrying their message? Or did this little group spontaneously develop a theology so close to British Friends that on first contact they recognized their soul mates in every sense of the word? What forces shaped these Quakers and from what milieu did they spring? Were they part of a larger movement like their English compatriots, or were they unique, developing in isolation? story by insisting on placing it in the midst The Bigger Picture: Dark Times in the of the chaotic English Revolution. If Larger World English Quakers emerged in the midst of what Hill called the world turned upside These questions sent me on another down, then French Quakers emerged in a journey—a journey to understand the world turned topsy turvy. In the sixteenth, essence of the world that I was entering seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and the Quaker presence in that world. Europe was rocked by crises—in religion, Too often we spin narratives we call history, politics, the economy, and social relations. in isolation. Without context, without taken The world of Couflaires and their ancestors into consideration the forces at play was ravaged by war, famine, social surrounding and shaping the Quaker disruption, and disease, as fragmented experience, I could never begin to feudal regimes painfully coalesced into understand it. Context may not be nation states. Historians Andrew everything in creating history, but, without Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell, describe taking context into consideration, history the period as one “characterised by can just become stories. apocalyptic expectations, eschatological My model is historian Christopher Hill speculations and millenarian dreams.”4 who captured the early English Quaker Suddenly, with Luther’s points nailed on the

3 “Quakers and the non-conformist tradition in the south of France,” Centre Quaker de Congénies: Quakers in France, http://www.maison-quaker-congenies.org/origins-of-maison-quaker (Accessed 10 July 2017). 4 Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine and Death in Reformation Europe, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000),1.

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church door, a new template for looking at Geneva who caught the imagination of the the world began to infiltrate and then sweep French looking for an alternative to the across Europe and France was no established Catholic Church. exception. Although Luther had a following It is important to note that we enter a it was Calvin and his social experiment in period where there is a complete conflation

Canadian Quaker History Journal 81 (2016) 103 The Quakers of France of politics and religion.5 Traitors were the peasantry’ [in the South] made these heretics, and heretics were traitors. The farmers and shepherds some of the most Catholic hierarchy and monarchy spoke zealous defenders of Calvinism, as Europe with the same voice and in spite of would witness.”7 differences, and there were many, some The Huguenots even gained influence in ruthless, it was within the framework of court. Power of a precarious sort was in the one world view. The popularity of a new hands of the King’s regent, the Queen reformed Christianity not only threatened Mother Catherine de’ Medici. An Italian the Catholic Church theologically, but outsider, Catherine was a Catholic of the threatened the very basis of the social and modern Machiavellian type, and for her, political power. protecting power and stability for her At first a few intellectuals were attracted dynasty trumped religion. She appears to to the new religion, but soon Calvin’s ideas have no particular aversion to these new spread far and wide. Initially Protestants Christians, even seeing them as an met in secret but in 1559 the first Protestant interesting counter balance to the powerful Reformed Church was established in Paris Catholic Church and its allies, including the and people, even members of the court, ruthless Guise family. However, as the flocked to hear revolutionary sermons. The Protestants grew stronger and bolder, the Calvinists, who soon became known by the attacks against them became more strident. name Huguenots, discovered Théodore de Calvinism was denounced as a “monstrous Bèze’s French vernacular translation of the Heresy, arisen to ruin the world’ with ‘blood Psalms, and enthusiastic singing of these and flames’[…T]his new Babylon’ was the Psalms spread like wildfire.6 Some ‘origin of all evils’ in France.”8 And when historians contend that almost half of the full Catholic counter attack was French nobility drifted to the new faith and launched it was devastating. converts also came from the bourgeoisie, France fell into more than thirty years of artisans, and peasants. But it was in the perpetual war. Between 1562 and 1598 South that the new faith rooted and thrived, France saw nine wars of religion, most especially in Languedoc and the mountains lasting for one to two years, each one ended of the Cevennes. According to historian by a treaty that occasionally improved the Brian E. Strayer, a “‘Protestantization of lot of the Calvinists. Strayer estimates that

5 In understanding the force of religion in this period, I have found it useful to look at my own time and remember the words we used to express our hopes and dreams and wonder if sixteenth-century “millenarian dreams” and “apocalyptic expectations” stemmed from those same hopes and dreams. Literary scholar Northrop Fry argues that the biblical belief that history has meaning leading to a trauma filled struggle that ends with the birth of a new perfect world “is essentially a revolutionary form of thought and rhetoric” which enters secular thought with revolutionary movements in the eighteenth century (82-3). He argues that “For Marxists and other revolutionaries, a worldwide revolution is the central future event [like the apocalypse] that will constitute the antitype of history as a whole” (86). Frye’s insights helped me understand how so many brilliant minds could firmly believe that the Apocalypse and the return of Jesus was around the corner and contemplate how so many of my generation, the sixties idealist, believed we were on the cusp of a revolution that would transform our twentieth-century world. 6 R.J. Knecht. The French wars of religion, 1559-1598, 3rd ed. (New York: Longman, 2010), 13. 7 Brian E. Strayer, Huguenots and Camisards as Aliens in France, 1598-1789: The Struggle for Religious Toleration (Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press, 2001), 8. 8 Strayer, Huguenots and Camisards, 14.

Canadian Quaker History Journal 81 (2016) 104 The Quakers of France over one million Catholics and Calvinists the French Wars of Religion, but historians were killed, and 300 towns flattened. now agree there was really a continuation Churches and Protestant Temples were of this war under a different guise. a cold destroyed, fields burned, pastors (and (and sometimes warm) war replaced the priests) assassinated, and children taken raging hot war. The 1598 agreement, while from their parents and forced into convents granting Protestants many concessions, was and Catholic schools.9 Thousands left if often framed in ambiguous legal language. they could, others were forced to convert, However, in spite of their minority position and still others were executed, burned, or and the intensity of attempts to annihilate broken on the wheel. Women who refused them, in 1598, the Huguenots emerged to convert were imprisoned and men were from the wars with “a formidable power sentenced to life in the galley slave ships. In bloc in France with its own structure, spite of the repression and almost perpetual methods of military conscription, special war, many Huguenots continued to meet, passwords and codes, war treasury, and reject the Latin mass, and lustily sing their fortified towns.”13 In 1594 the Huguenots Psalms in vernacular French. in the South were strong enough to form a This thirty years of war is best known for state within a state, with a federation of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, a nine provinces. With the 1598 Edict, night and a day of terror which ended in Protestants won the right to have an the mass murder of between two and four independent existence, and the right to thousand people, the looting and worship in 951 places (none in Paris or destruction of Protestant homes, and Cathedral towns). The Calvinists could now elimination of a generation of Protestant theoretically attend any schools, hold State leadership.10 De’Medici’s scheme to smooth office, entry all professions, and have access over differences with the old method, to bipartisan legal tribunals. These rights dynastic marriage, (marrying her Catholic were framed by ambiguous legal language daughter to the Protestant King Henry of that was constantly challenged by the Navarre) collapsed in a sea of blood and Catholic Parties and in many places these the wars became even more intense and rights were only briefly honoured if ruthless. The war continued to a bloody honoured at all. In some places Protestants draw, while the Protestant leader, Henry of enjoyed their new freedoms for limited Navarre, realizing that his military victories periods of time; in others the executions were not enough to ensure power, did the and imprisonment continued, either by a practical thing: commenting that “Paris is particular reading of the law or vigilante worth a Mass,”11 converted, and was then “justice.” This so-called peace treaty lasted crowned Henry IV of France.12 The until 1685, but during the chaos of the carnage officially ended with the Edict of entire period Protestants engaged in an Nantes in 1598. ongoing struggle to hang on to or gain the This Edict was once considered an end to rights they were thought to have won.

9 Strayer, Huguenots and Camisards, 57. 10 Knecht, French Wars, 50. 11 Knecht, French Wars, 53. 12 Henri of Navarre, a consummate pragmatist, changed his religion six times in his life (Strayer, Huguenots and Camisards, 24). 13 Strayer, Huguenots and Camisards, 11.

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assumption that assimilation of the Protestants into the majority Catholic Community would gradually but inevitably occur. This “peace” continued for over a hundred years and in spite of difficult times, the Huguenot community survived. Although thousands emigrated after the St. Bartholomew massacre and countless others followed Henry IV and converted, the community continued to grow, especially in the South. But a new King embraced a new approach. Asserting that “the king, my grandfather [Henri IV] loved you and didn’t fear you; the king, my father [Louis XIII], feared you and didn’t love you; me, I neither fear you nor love you,”14 Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes and launched a viscous attack on the very existence of Calvinism in France. Pastors were expelled and executed if they Given the state of political power in remained behind. Believers were France, it was no surprise that this was such imprisoned or faced life as galley slaves. a chaotic and contradictory time. Europe Temples were destroyed and the Protestant was riven by wars and intrigues as nation assemblies and the singing of the Psalms states emerged and the once hegemonic banned. By decree, Protestants disappeared universal Christian Church painfully in France to be replaced by New Catholics splintered. The court and government was who were forced to choose conversion or split between bellicose Catholic factions and death. Children were seized from parents Protestants supported by pragmatic and placed in Catholic Schools and “friends.” During periods of foreign convents. Babies, born of Protestant involvement, when the King needed parents, and thus deemed illegitimate, were support from all his Protestant citizens and seized, baptized, and placed in orphanages. their friends abroad, there were periods of “New Catholics” did not dare miss a mass toleration. When the King needed money, or be caught not venerating the Host as it the wealthy Catholic establishment would was paraded through the town. Bodies of offer help under conditions that once again those who had refused the Last Rites were limited toleration. The chaos of the time is stripped naked and dragged through the revealed by the nineteen assassination streets. These mass “conversions” were attempts on Henri IV’s life, and the final reinforced by occupying troops, often successful one carried out by a Catholic billeted in the homes of the “new conspiracy in 1610. Catholics” and an army of missionaries The Edict of Nantes had been reluctantly spread across France. A Jesuit commented accepted by the majority under the that the King’s “‘kind violence’ had

14 Strayer, Huguenots and Camisards, 103.

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‘exterminated from France a dangerous when people see its temples and alters Party’ and brought 1,000,000 ‘precious demolished, it infants snatched from pearls’ into the true church.”15 With all the their mother’s arms, its goods familiar tropes of othering and genocide, plundered, its liberty violated; when it the Calvinists were seen as “as alien and as sees itself without sacraments, dying insidious as the Jewish microbe.”16 without consolation; when it sees its compatriots… threatened with death, The Lense Focuses: The South’s massacre, pillage; when it finds itself ‘Church in the Desert’17 imprisoned within its own realm… All this… Sets the mind afire.19 In spite of repression, imprisonment, torture, kidnapping, and murder, Protestant And with their “minds afire,” they built a Christianity did not disappear from France. very different kind of church. This Church In spite of the havoc let loose by the in the Desert, as it became known, moved revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the into the home and out to the rugged Calvinist community in the South continued wilderness of the Cevennes mountains. to grow. But this community was very With no official ministers, all became different from its antecedents. Stripped of ministers; with no buildings to meet in, their pastors, books, and temples and hundreds assembled in protected mountain abandoned by their wealthy and more valleys; with no educated teachers to pass educated elites, the future of the on the creed, the home became the center Protestants of France fell into the hands of, for religious education and women became according to an historian, the “ignorant the teachers; with no official religious or peasants and artisans who remained behind political leadership, the people took up this in “Babylon.”18 task and organized; and without Bibles, These peasants, shepherds, and small books, or literacy, ordinary men, women, artisans of the South were forced to re- and children became prophets who invent their Church in order to survive. channeled the voice of God. Primarily illiterate with their own language In the Desert, hidden away in mountains of Occitan, with no pastors or church or isolated corners of the valleys, this organization to lead and guide them, and no organic and charismatic congregation built contact with the outside world, these its church. First hundreds and then “simple” people took their future into their thousands would gather, under the nose of own hands and rebuilt their illegal the state and its military power, and hold underground church from scratch. A letter, their sacred assemblies, where ordinary by one of the banished pastors circulated in peasants became pastors and the voice of 1685, eloquently sums up the obstacles and God echoed through mountains and valleys. challenges facing these pioneers: In the 1680s a new phenomenon swept through the Cevennes and the valleys of

15 Strayer, Huguenots and Camisards, 172. 16 Strayer, Huguenots and Camisards, 173. 17 The title adopted by the Southern Reformed Church (Calvinist) was a reference found in Genesis to the wandering of the Hebrews for forty years. 18 Strayer, Huguenots and Camisards, 204. 19 Strayer, Huguenots and Camisards, 184.

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Languedoc: more and more people received violent, embracing tactics of passive the gift of prophecy. Generally the resistance rather than active rebellion. But Prophets were young, often women, and these Prophets had a new message. No many children. Falling into trances or longer willing to wait patiently for God to waking from dreams they preached, in punish their oppressors and open up the perfect French,20 the word of God, the way to God’s world, these Prophets called importance of fidelity to the truth of their for a “holy war against the clergy” and their Church, and the need to prepare for Jesus’s prophetic visions “predicted the overthrow coming return. Nineteenth-century century of the Catholic Church and the imminent historian Charles Taylor, in recounting an end of the world and the re-establishment interview with Durand Fage a witness to of God’s persecuted Church.”22 Taking the prophetic meetings, describes the advantage of the wild mountainous terrain, euphoria of those early days: a peasant army waged a guerrilla war against the power of the French state. This army, The people ran to these meetings known as the Camisards, with its innate with the utmost eagerness. knowledge of the land, overwhelming Sometimes, in the midst of his support of the people, and the courage of sermon, the preacher would send out their convictions, were able to carry out some of his audience to raise a lightning attacks and then quickly retreat to sonorous hymn which was echoed caves in the mountains until their next from the woods and rocks and served ambush. W. Gregory Monahan captures as a guide to such as were still seeking the essence of the historic Camisard War their way to the meeting. “As soon as (1701-4): we heard these divine psalmody,” says Fage, “we flew to the spot; words Their rebellion was a bundle of cannot express the ardor which burns contrasts: the last of the violent with in us; we thought not of French wars of religion and an early weariness, we became as light of foot example of guerrilla warfare; an as young deer.21 apocalyptic rising against the Beast of Revelation and the struggle for The state’s repression, kidnapping, and liberty; a war of brutal intolerance murder had its effect but never succeeded and ritual murder and a fight for in wiping out the Church and in 1700 tolerance and freedom of worship.23 another wave of prophets began prophesying. Up until this time the Church in The Camisard guerilla war not only the Desert had always been resolutely non- weakened the established political and

20 The fact that the Prophets, who were all Occitan speaking, prophesized in French was seen as miraculous. My suspicion is that years of signing the Psalms in French must have created a familiarity with French even though their spoken language was Occitan. 21 Charles Taylor, The Camisards: a Sequel to The Huguenots in the Seventeenth Century, (London: Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., 1893), 68. Note: Includes an Appendix: The Quakers of Congenies. ATL Historical Monographs Collection: Series 1,13 Century to 1893. 22 Taylor, The Camisards, 297-8. 23 W. Gregory Monahan, Let God Arise: The War and Rebellion of the Comisards (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 2.

Canadian Quaker History Journal 81 (2016) 108 The Quakers of France religious structures but also further opened imprisoned indefinitely in The Tower of the way for women. While men fought, Constance, a prison built specially for them. religion retreated into the household and One woman, punished for marrying in the women became important teachers Church in the Desert, spent thirty eight years expanding their roles through the agency of in the Tower emerging only when it finally prophesy. This often reversed “traditional closed in 1768. An estimated one million gender roles in the family creating an children were declared bastard, many losing interesting if temporary matriarchal their families and all losing the rights of leadership, which they were reluctant to citizenship and inheritance. surrender once the rebellion had ended.”24 The full force of the army and their The Camisards, led by their young Catholic allies was not the only obstacle the prophets whose strategy emerged from charismatic egalitarian Church in the Desert their dreams and visions, would rise up faced. As the French became distracted by from their hiding places in the mountain wars and crises, pastors and Calvinist caves, strike blows against the powers of theologians were able to filter back into the state, and quickly disappear. Southern France with the task of re- Foreshadowing the guerilla wars of the asserting the conventional Reform Calvinist twentieth century, this early “people’s army” Church. The returning leadership managed to wreak havoc on the French denounced prophetism as fanaticism, Army and their Catholic allies. However in women’s leadership as dangerous, and the 1704 this resistance was finally crushed radical Camisard roots best forgotten. leaving the “Heroic Church in the Desert” (1685-1760) on its own to face the And Finally, Back to the Quakers/ ongoing repression of the state. Coufleurs Once again all the familiar brutal methods of repression were let loose on the people, Like many movements, the believers of but this time one group was the particular the prophetic Church in the Desert may have focus of attention. The Church and the suffered common grievances, but they did State held the women of the Cevenes and not all embrace the same path forward. Lagudoc as particularly responsible for the There were some who eagerly joined in rebellion. The strength with which children with the non-violent movement but rejected resisted conversion was blamed on mothers the call to armed struggle, the Camisard who taught their children the elements of Wars. This group clung to the belief that their faith. With men away fighting, women “thou shalt not kill” was fundamental to led assemblies, preached sermons, and true Christianity and refused to participate baptized babies.25 Some even took up arms in the violence of the Camisard uprising. and fought against the dragoons who were This was the group that became known as billeted in their homes.26 Seeing these “new the Couflaires and later found a home with women” as a particular threat, campaigns the Society of Friends. were waged to drive them back into their But there must be more to the origins of domestic role, and hundreds were the Couflaires, these French Quakers.

24 Monahan, Let God Arise, 3. 25 Strayer, Huguenots and Camisards, 372. 26 Monahan, Let God Arise, 89.

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Their interchange with Fox proves their They traced their tradition to the brilliant presence in 1785. I was sure there must be lawyer and author Claude Brousson, who more to discover. Where did they come was known for leading the Church in the from and how did they fit into the Deserts wide-spread campaign of passive complicated fabric of religion and peasant resistance. Vowing to “fight only with the life in the Cevennes and its neighbouring sword of the Spirit which is the Word of villages? Looking for Quakers in the many God,”28 in 1793 Brousson along with a books on France’s Wars of Religion and the group of leading pastors of the desert Camisards is like looking for a needle in a church, launched a campaign of hay stack. Finally I found a reference to an “concentrated and non-violent resistance”29 appendix in a book called The Camisards by to the regime. Peasants in Languedoc, someone called Charles Taylor. This book, Dauphine, and Vivarais responded to the published in 1893, was hardly the product destruction of 122 of their temples by of modern scholarship, and Taylor, in the occupying them and holding religious one reference I discovered in a scholarly services in their ruins.30 Brousson was book, was dismissed as a romantic.27 But, forced to flee but returned clandestinely Taylor was all I had so it was Taylor who I until he was finely captured in 1698 when must use. Some internet digging revealed he was brought to the scaffold, strangled, that Charles Taylor was a British Quaker and broken on the wheel leaving behind a historian who had written a number of large collection of inspirational writings books on France and its Huguenot that circulated widely.31 minority. With the failure of the non-violent As archaic as Taylor’s style and campaign, the majority of people rejected research methods might be, he did have a the tactics of passive resistance and were no significant advantage over contemporary longer “convinced that the use of the historians. Although the story he was sword is forbidden by the gospel.”32 unearthing had its roots more than a According to Taylor, there were some who hundred years earlier than his life in the 19th received Brousson’s Declaration who were century, the Quakers of Congénies, had a still convinced that “the use of the sword rich oral tradition. Taylor appears to have was forbidden by the gospel [and] were spent a significant time exploring the area ready to make every sacrifice rather than and talking to local Quakers, many of take up arms for their religion or repel force whom were descendants from the original by force.”33 How did this small group “Couflaires.” The stories they told him were emerge and what gave them the courage to often fragmentary and even contradictory, defy both the regimes violence and the but all anchored their history in the practice of their fellow peasant Camisards? Prophets of the Church in the Heroic Desert. The first Quaker origin story Taylor

27 Strayer, Huguenots and Camisards, 305. 28 Brian E. Strayer, Andrews University, “The Bellicose Dove: Claude Reconsidered, 1647-68,” 3. www.oakwood.edu/historyportal/Ejah/ASDAH/Claude Brousson Reconsidered.htm (Accessed 17 July 2017). 29 Strayer, Huguenots and Camisards, 190. 30 Strayer, Huguenots and Camisards, 135. 31 Strayer, Huguenots and Camisards, 396. 32 Charles Taylor, “Appendix: The Quakers of Congéniès,” 431. 33 Charles Taylor, “Appendix: The Quakers of Congéniès,” 431.

Canadian Quaker History Journal 81 (2016) 110 The Quakers of France retells is one he collected from Emilien returned to the Church in the Desert, Frossard, a Nimes pastor. Claiming he against the ‘Inspired,’ and especially against received this story from local Quakers, women preachers.”35 Frossard traced Friends back to the action Taylor found another origin story in a of one prophet: Quaker manuscript compiled in 1786: “A summary Account of the Friends of “[N]one of the prophetesses,” he Congénies, Calvisson, and St. Gilles, near said, “attracted so much attention or Nimes, in Languedoc, called by the World enthusiasm as Lucrèce – the moral Quakers or Fanatics.” This account dates influence which she exercise was so the founding of the Couflaires twenty years powerful as to cause uneasiness to the before the story of the Prophet Lucrèce: leaders of the Church, and as she persisted in speaking in the public The first Friend36 whom their records assemblies a positive order was sent mention to have suffered persecution to her to refrain. On receiving this was Claude Craistan, who, having command, Lucrèce rose up, and in an preached about a quarter of an hour inspired tone exclaimed ‘Let whoever in a meeting of Friends assembled in loves me follow me.’ Many hastened a field, was seized, and suffered after her and filled her house, which himself to be taken like a lamb. He from time to time became a place for was condemned to be hanged for religious meeting.”34 having preached (as his sentence expressed it) by the inspiration of Taylor’s pastor is unclear about the issues fanaticism, [on the] 12th mo.15,1698.37 that divided the Prophet Lucrèce and her followers from the church “leaders” but Another Friend, Kamaini, was also one can surmise the pacifism of the little sentenced to be executed in that same year band was part of the problem. However, but was allowed to escape by sympathetic more central to the group’s expulsion may captors. According to Taylor, another young have been the prophet Lucrèce herself. It prophet was claimed by the Congénies was in 1715 the established reform church Quakers as their ancestor, Daniel Raoul. returned and launched their campaign to Raoul is remembered as abandoning his bring the desert church back into line. The plough and became a wandering preacher to “fanaticism” of prophesizing was bring his message to ordinary people. suppressed and women were banned from Acknowledging, as an illiterate labourer, preaching. Taylor suggests that this incident that he did not have the skills of the may have been the result of a “crusade banished pastors, he none the less served undertaken by Antoine Court, a leader of the desert church faithfully: the Reformed Church who clandestinely

34 Charles Taylor, “Appendix: The Quakers of Congéniès,” 431. 35 Charles Taylor, “Appendix: The Quakers of Congéniès,” 432. 36 Here Taylor refers to the Couflaires as Friends well before they would have discovered the Quakers. It is unclear when the Couflaires become Quakers. They themselves self-identify as Quakers as early as their 1785 letter to Fox but English Quakers seem to date their Quaker identification from the time they are official accepted as Friends by British Friends. 37 Charles Taylor, “Appendix: The Quakers of Congéniès,” 432.

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You see before you one […] who crimes of your enemy are no cannot even read; but I am one of justification of yours […].You have the stones spoken of in the Scriptures enjoined on the authority of St. Paul who cry out when those which would to cherish and love even towards your otherwise have aroused you from enemies. This is the true mark of the your slumber have been removed.38 Christian charity is patient and gentle; it takes no offense, but suffers and In 1702 Daniel Raoul and three of his endures everything. In your case, it is followers were captured and condemned: not permitted to oppose force by Raoul and one of his companions to death, force [...]. Blind people! Have you and the others to the galleys or the army. By forgotten that is never permitted to this time most of Raoul’s comrades had do evil that good may come?[…] embraced armed resistance to the church Drive therefore to obtain the end not and state that oppressed them, but he by the works of darkness which you faithfully up-held the Prophets traditional are committing, but by the sanctity of stance of non-violent resistance. While in a good life.40 prison, Raoul got news of the Camisard uprising and dictated a letter to his Raoul not only articulated pacifism, a trait comrades, “a warning,” according to Taylor, that would become a hallmark of the “so solemn, and set forth in such forcible Couflaires of Congéneis, he also levelled his language, that it may almost be compared to criticism at both the Catholic Church and the handwriting which Belshazzar saw on the Calvinist Reformed Church: the wall”:39 As the dove, is a cleanly and pure We know well, my dear brethren, the bird, so our church must be pure, violence you have suffered in being true and free from all defilement; but forced to go to mass and to send your this cannot be said of the Church of children to the School of error. We Rome, nor of the Church of Calvin, know how the soldiers hem you in, lie w41hich incessantly defile themselves in wait for you, and pounce upon you with all kinds of vice, impurity and like wolves on lambs when you meet murder. They have honey on their in secret to worship God; […] We are tongue, but gall in their heart, and sensible how hard it is […] to resist their savage hands are always ready to the violent motion of nature, which, shed innocent blood. in spite of ourselves, rising in the depths of our hearts […]. But This was not a church to be reformed, but remember that you are Christians [… one, like the Catholic Church to be and] the word of God incessantly denounced. admonished and taught you that the The charge levelled against Raoul reveals

38 Taylor, The Camisards, 67. 39 Taylor, The Camisards, 110. 40 Taylor, The Camisards, 112. According to Taylor “The authority on which this letter is ascribed to Daniel Raoul is that of a manuscript document preserved by a small body of Christians, chiefly inhabiting the Vaunage, whom we may call the Quakers of Congénies.” 41 Qtd. in Taylor, The Camisards, 113.

Canadian Quaker History Journal 81 (2016) 112 The Quakers of France other ways that this preacher and prophet so desperately defended themselves was a forerunner of the Congéneis against the armies of Louis XIV and Quakers: "the crime (…) for which Raoul XV, they held the unlawfulness of was condemned was that of having war.43 instructed young people in fanatical practices, and having impiously boasted that We can see the Quaker like origins of Les God had shed his Holy Spirit in his Couflaires not only in the prophets who heart."42 This “indwelling Holy spirit” and inspired them but also in those who they the “fanatical practice” of prophesying inspired. The family name Benezet appears mirror beliefs and practices of the early in the earliest records of the Congénies Quakers of both England and Congéneis. Friends. In 1715 Jean Etienne Benezet’s fled Although the origins of French Friends is religious persecution taking with him his still mostly a mystery, we do have an two-year-old son, Antoine, eventually account from Christine Majolier, a making it to London and then Philadelphia. Congénies Friend only a generation Antoine, later known as Anthony, joined removed from the earliest days: London Friends at fourteen and, with his family, immigrated to Philadelphia.44 There My father and mother's parents Anthony Benezet became a towering figure belonged to a sect which had sprung in the anti-slavery struggle. Like his friend from the "Prophets." Less visionary John Woolman, Benezet played a central than these, though holding some of role in the debate within the Quaker their views, and more spiritually- community but his thought and writings minded than the Protestants who also had a profound effect on the world surrounded them, they had adopted outside the Society of Friends. According principles as to the spirituality of the to Brycchan Carey, Benezet was “an able Christian dispensation, ministry, and natural philosopher, a knowledgeable worship, very similar to those of geographer, and a balanced historian.”45 Friends, before they knew of the His Observations on the inslaving, importing and existence of such a religious body. purchasing of Negroes (1759) became one of They met in silence to worship God the most important documents of the and waited for the influence of the abolitionist movement. According to Carey: Holy Spirit before they expressed anything in their assemblies; and they this pamphlet was the opening shot in considered that as the gift of the an international, ecumenical ministry is freely received it should be campaign against the slave trade. freely exercised. Contrary to the Although Benezet could not know it, practice of their forefathers, who had that campaign would lead to the slave

42 Taylor, The Camisards, 113. 43 Christine Majolier Alsop [1805-1879], Memorials of Christine Majolier Alsop (1805-1876) “Her own Autobiography furnishes the record of her early life, and has been largely used. Letters, journals, and papers supply the rest.” comp. by Martha Braithwaite (London, England: H. Longstreth, 1882), 4. 44 Taylor, “Appendix: The Quakers of Congéniès,” 433-34. 45 Brycchan Carey, From Peace to Freedom: Quaker Rhetoric and the Birth of American Antislavery, 1657-1761. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), 212.

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trade being outlawed across the become frequent and so public and Anglophone world by the start of the numerous that more than 3000 19th century.46 persons have been present […]. The churches are abandoned; parents have The Quaker/Couflaires peasants of ceased to send their children to Congénies were the well spring of one of schools; and those whom we have the most influential Quaker prophets and with great care brought up in the intellectuals to ever live. doctrines of the church, … readily In spite of the hardships that the Church in f a l l b a ck i n t o e r r o r. … T h e the Desert continued to face, they punishment of the fanatics has made experienced a few years of benign neglect but a feeble impression.”49 that gave both Calvinists and the Couflaires sect some breathing room. The concerns And finally from the Secretary of State, St. expressed by the authorities reveal their Florentin, in 1724: “I am informed in some slipping control of the unruly Calvinists. provinces the priests find themselves alone The reports sent back to the Centre note an in their churches: the bell for mass on “alarming” consistence of the Protestant Sunday serves for the meetings of the presence: “Everywhere meetings are being religionists.”50 held; one hears Psalm singing, without any This pause in the intensity of state attempts at concealment, both in the open repression must have been a bit of a relief country and in the towns.”47 The for the Couflairés as well as the other Dauphiné’s Intendant sent back the members of the Church in the Desert; following report: however this momentary space allowed for another obstacle to intensify. Already The Protestants number a fourth part separated from their fellow Huguenots by of the population. They are quiet, but their commitment to pacifism and very obstinate in their errors. They opposition to the Camisard War, this pause are called New Catholics, but nothing allowed elements of the established can induce them to perform a Calvinist Reformed Church to once again Catholic act. They refuse to send exert their influence on the equalitarian and their children to us for instruction, innovative Desert Church. Beginning in 1715, and if all the relapsed were to be the Calvinist church bureaucracy was re- punished, no one would escape.48 established, and the unorthodox egalitarian and prophetic tradition of the Desert Church And from the Bishop of Alais in 1723: was purged. Women were once again excluded from leadership and the The heresy has made during the last “fanatical” practice of ordinary people three years more progress than in 35 preaching and prophesying condemned. years before. The meetings which The Couflaires, who held true to traditional formally were few and secret have practices, were further marginalized. The

46 Carey, From Peace to Freedom, 212. 47 Taylor, The Camisards, 261. 48 Qtd. in Taylor, The Camisards, 261. 49 Taylor, The Camisards, 262-3. 50 Taylor, The Camisards, 263.

Canadian Quaker History Journal 81 (2016) 114 The Quakers of France brief window allowing a measure of to pray. The attitude in which they sat religious freedom for the dissenting sects of was well known to their neighbours, Languedoc was soon slammed shut not to who in derision gave the nickname of begin to open again until the eve of the Conflairés.52 He learned that the French Revolution. Conflairés long preserved the I found little about the French Quaker prophetic gift [of] their Camisard experience during this difficult period of ancestors.53 the eighteenth century. Froussard, the source for the Lucrèce origin narrative, tells As little as Taylor or other sources have to Taylor that after 1715 “the traditions leave a offer on the mid- to late-eighteenth-century vacuum, and are silent […]. They only Couflaires he does discuss one of them, represent [this community] as acting in a Paul Codognon. Codognon compiled a unique and independent manner, forgotten book on the community, and set out for by the crowd of enthusiasts, participating in Holland with the hope of having it their ill fortune, but probably without published. He failed in this goal but, while following all their practices.”51 However by in Holland, he learned about the Quakers in speaking to some of the descendants of the Britain and North America. In 1769 he set original Couflaires prophets, Taylor was out, mostly on foot, for London to find out able to glean a bit more information about more about these Quakers and attended the the early life of this group. He was taken to Friends meeting in St. Peter’s Court, a “retreat” where [the Quakers] used to Westminster. However, hampered by what worship “from the earliest times”: Taylor calls his “reserved temperament” and, as an Occitan speaker, his lack of [I]t was a wine cellar of the Brun knowledge of either French or English, family, and was provided with a recess significant contact with the English in the wall in which the Bibles and Quakers would have to wait.54 However, he Psalters were concealed. Here the did return home with two of their books in simple people were custom to sit in French, No Cross No Crown and Rise and silent worship, waiting with bowed Progress of the People Called Quakers, heads until the Holy Spirit should “concealing them under his shirt.”55 move any among them to preach or It was not until Fox’s advertisement

51 Taylor, “Appendix: The Quakers of Congéniès,” 435. 52 Although Taylor contends that the term Couflairés had a derogatory connotation [“Patois for Gonfluers, that is to say, Pouters”(436)], Françoise Tomlin in her article, “Quakers—in France and the World,” translated from the French by Sara MacVane, does not identify it as such but defines the term as “filled,” inflated’ or “sighing” in Occitan, the local dialect. Tomlin is a current member of the Quaker Meeting at Congénies and has deep roots is the area including a familiarity with the Occitan language so I tend to find Tomlin’s definition more persuasive than Taylor’s. However there is no question that these Friends faced marginalization and discrimination. In his 1787 letter James Ireland reports that “other Protestants despised the Friends, clapping their hands at them as they walked along the streets” (446). 53 Taylor, “Appendix: The Quakers of Congéniès,” 436. 54 I was surprised that Taylor and the letters from Quaker visitors to Congénies did not mention that most of these Quakers were not French speakers. One wonders how much of the simplicity and low level of understanding these foreign Quakers sometimes saw in their new fellow believers might be influenced by the fact they often did not speak the same language. 55 Taylor, “Appendix: The Quakers of Congéniès,” 435.

Canadian Quaker History Journal 81 (2016) 115 The Quakers of France caught the eye of the Couflaires some days of the seventeenth Century. Like the seventeen years later that the precarious tie early Quakers of the 1640s, these Friends became consolidated and this isolated were filled with the charisma of the Holy community who held so firmly to their Spirit as they upheld their prophetic particular beliefs found unlikely soul mates tradition; like early Quakers they refused to in the now well-established Quaker give up their beliefs and practices in the community in Britain. What a welcome face of terrible persecution; and again like shock it must have been to discover they early Quakers they were mostly ordinary were not alone and what a surprise for the working people, many of them illiterate, British Quakers to discover a group who who dared to throw their lot in with a shared their beliefs but whose lives and group of outsiders who embraced the culture were so different from their own. heresy that ordinary women and men could be preachers with a direct relationship to Contact Is Made the Holy Spirit. And like other Quakers, these French Friends were conscientious One of the earliest reports from foreign objectors, refusing to participate in the Friends visiting the newly discovered Army. Quakers found that “[t]heir behaviour in We can see from the response of the religious meetings recalls the state of eighteenth and then nineteenth century things at the time of the old prophets.”56 Friends who travelled to meet these new James Ireland writing home in 1787 found Friends, that the excitement and joy describes the little community he of encountering these rough peasant encountered. He estimated there were Quakers was tempered by the distance these about two hundred Friends living in in British Quakers had travelled from their Congénies and the surrounding area as well own simple roots. In the few letters from as several scattered families in the lower the period I was able to find and Taylor’s Cevennes.57 His letter goes on to add that comments on the letters and reports he was their “meetings frequently lasted three able to view, the response of the hours […] they follow mechanical “established” Quakers was warm but employment and husbandry. Few or none coupled with a note of unease. In 1788 are of independent means… They hire seven Quakers, two from England, three substitutes when drawn for the militia […]. from the United States, and another three They pay the fines imposed for refusing to from Ireland, made the long journey to ornament their houses on holy days during Congénies to find out more about these the procession of the host. They are new found Friends. winked at rather than tolerated.”58 In a lively letter written by one of the What a strange experience it must have visiting group, Irish Friend Sarah Grubb, been for Friends from Britain and America captures the joy combined with what must to encounter these peasant working people. have been an element of shock experienced It must have felt a bit like travelling back to by both sides: their origins during the heady but traumatic Our arrival drew out of their

56 Taylor, “Appendix: The Quakers of Congéniès, 448. 57 Taylor found another manuscript contending there were 250-280 Friends mostly in Congénies.footnote 446. 58 Taylor, “Appendix: The Quakers of Congéniès, 446.

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habitations the people in general: to show them a more excellent way.60 some looked at us with astonishment, and others with continents which put Taylor cites an interview that took place me in mind of Mary's salutation to with two of the same party that again Elizabeth.59 These soon revealed the excitement and joy: acknowledged us, and drew us into the house of a steady, valuable, On the coach stopping at the country widow where we were solemnly inn, a large number of people saluted and received and our minds surrounded them, manifesting the melted together, and such a stream of utmost goodwill and satisfaction [. gospel love flowed as some of us …]. The three ladies… were moved thought exceeded what we had before to tears by the affectionate reception experience, though no words were they met with, and by a sense of the used to express it. […] Our Friends “love of the universal father to his are, most of them, poor industrious children, where ever they may be.” people, but we were favoured with all The French Friends understood no that was needful, though these things English […] but the expressive that we call so are scarce […] Peace language of the heart and the eye of mind sweetens every went far to make up for the inconvenience. We found these deficiency.61 people different from our Society in their outward appearance, and in their However, unease and a note of “Christian want of settlement and sufficient condescension” creeps in again in this quietude in their religious assemblies. interview: “their appearance and manner But the humility and simplicity of bore little resemblance to those of the their meetings, attended with a lively society in England, but their honest consciousness of their own weakness, simplicity, consciousness of their defects, made them ready to embrace every and tenderness of spirit, won their hearts. offer to help that is suited to their Their behaviour in religious meetings recalls capacity and progress in the Truth. the state of things at the time of the old There are a few of them […] who prophets. At the meeting at Congénies … furnish a hope that there will be a several were strangely agitated and spoke in Society in this dark part of the world, quick succession” (448). However, the established upon the right visitors took their eldering responsibilities foundation. We soon found that to be seriously, reporting that “after a few useful to them, the visitors must be meetings had been held, and pastoral visits weak with the visited, and in Christian paid to many of the houses, the agitation condescension bear with them, till ceased, and the meetings became more Truth opened the door of utterance settled.”62 I can’t help thinking that George

59 Luke 1:41. And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost. 60 Reprinted in “Friends in France,” Friends’ Weekly Intelligencer (1844-1853); Oct.12, 1850; 7, 29; American Periodicals, 225. 61 Taylor, “Appendix: The Quakers of Congéniès, 447. 62 Taylor, “Appendix: The Quakers of Congéniès, 448.

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Fox and James Naylor would have been Friends had no one to speak or lobby for more comfortable with this group of them in the corridors of power. This working folk filled with the exuberance of changed when a Protestant noble man and the Holy Spirit, than their more staid military officer, Jean de Marsillac Le Cointe, Quaker descendants with their upper encountered the Quaker faith, quit the middle class lives.63 military, and joined the Society of Friends. The visiting Quakers parted from their Seeking out the Friends of Congénies, as an new found Friends with a sense of articulate well connected young man, he optimism, in spite of their concerns about soon became their spokesman and their undeveloped faith and practice. Sarah advocate.66 Marsillac was able to secure a Grubb ended her letter: “Truly, there is a royal edict excepting Friends from hidden precious seed, scattered up and preforming water baptism and in 1787 down … who are measurably gathered, Protestant marriages and baptisms were both from the superstitious, and the vain deemed valid. A clause was added that had world, and are seeking a foundation significant relevance for Quakers: for sects whereon they may rest the soles of their that did not practice water baptism, parents’ feet.”64 With encouragement from their declaration of birth before a magistrate was visitors, Quaker organizational practices sufficient.67 This Edict was a huge were strengthened and Congénies Friends breakthrough since it meant that finally founded a free school for both girls and children born outside of the Catholic boys in 1790. Although the acute Church (including Jews as well as persecution of the Huguenot minorities Protestants and Quakers) could not be somewhat relaxed, the law forbidding denied citizenship. religious celebration other than Roman Catholic was still intact, and Friends The French Revolution Comes worshipped behind locked doors.65 Even though the isolation of the Religious war was not the only thing that Languedoc Friends was alleviated from time rocked early modern France. Intense to time by their new relationship with poverty, repression, famine and political foreign allies, by and large they remained upheaval led to the world truly turning marginalized from the wider society. Unlike upside down: revolution. The Congénies the English Quakers who early on attracted Friends, although far from the center of a few influential members, these peasant this earth-quake, felt the ramifications.

63 In his introduction to 1961 edition of Braithwaite’s The Second Period of Quakersim, Frederick B. Tolles summarizes the trajectory of English Quaker Development into the first half of the nineteenth century: “After triumphantly weathering the turbulent and stormy waters of the Commonwealth and restoration England, this society has emerged into calmer, safer seas, and a new kind of Quaker has arrived. He is no longer the prophet, the enthusiast, the firebrand, filled with apostolic zeal to win the world for truth. He is content with a less heroic role, a less vigorous and all demanding mission. Fateful practice of the religious economic virtues of diligence and thrift has brought prosperity. The coming of toleration coinciding with the achievement of worldly success has brought respectability” (XXXII). 64 “Friends in France,” 225. 65 Taylor, “Appendix: The Quakers of Congéniès, 448. 66 Peter Brock, “Conscientious Objection in Revolutionary France,” Journal of the Friends Historical Society, 57, no2 (1995): 166. 67 Taylor, “Appendix: The Quakers of Congéniès, 446-7.

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Taylor tells us the Congénies Quakers: important sympathizers who encouraged him to lobby the new revolutionary regime. joined with their fellow citizens in the In 1790, French Quakers submitted a rejoicing which broke forth over the petition to the legislature in an effort to whole country when the National gain military exemption, exemption from Convention struck off the intolerable taking oaths, and permission to use their burdens of feudalism and priestcraft; own practice of registering births, […] They shared in the civil marriages, and deaths.71 On 10 Feburary enfranchisement which was one of 1791 Marcillac, armed with authorization [the Revolution’s] earliest fruits and it from the Congénies Quakers to act as ultimately secured to them a more Député extraordinaire des Amis de France à free exercise of their religious l’Assemblée Nationale, addressed the principles.68 Assembly, then under the presidency of Mirabeau. Brock gives us a lively account of Although the French Revolution brought the day: new freedoms to the Congénies Friends, it also brought major challenges. As Peter On the day itself the Assembly Brock points out in his article chamber was packed. Deputies “Conscientious Objection in Revolutionary attended in large numbers and every France,” the “French Revolution, with the place was taken in the galleries for the levée-en-masse, introduced the idea of public so that many "spectators" had universal military service as an instrument to be turned away. […] On entering of the modern nation-state.”69 Along with the assembly chamber the three compulsory military service, all were Quakers, according to an old custom expected to swear an oath of loyalty to the of the Society of Friends, had kept new regime. Other European nations had their hats on. They also refused to won the right to conscientiously object to wear the national cockades, though military service, Quakers now saw the pressed to do so; and they persisted opportunity to fight for that as well. in their refusal even after being told Although the peasant Quakers of that it was ‘required by law, to prevent Congénies were virtually unknown outside distinction', and that their safety their own community, British and America might be endangered through mob Quakers were enjoying “widespread respect violence generated by their failure to among France’s advanced thinkers.”70 conform on this point. Nonetheless, Voltaire’s four letters about Quakers, the despite such nonconformity […] the Quakers’ stand against slavery and the slave Quakers were given a good reception trade, and Penn’s American experiment by the assembly. [Appealing to the encouraged a positive, if romantic, view of principals of this new revolutionary Quakers, and Marcillac, now a well-known leadership], the petitioners urged, medical doctor in Paris, found a number of "You have sworn never to imbrue

68 Taylor, “Appendix: The Quakers of Congéniès, 449. 69 Brock, “Conscientious Objection in Revolutionary France,” 166. 70 Brock, “Conscientious Objection in Revolutionary France,” 167. 71 Brock, “Conscientious Objection in Revolutionary France,” 170.

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your hands with blood for the sake of and abroad ravaged isolated France, these conquest. This result brings you, and informal arrangements became more and in deed the whole world, closer to more rare. Marcillac writes to a London universal peace. Thus you surely Friend about the “divers trials, which in our cannot view with hostility those who weak state we have found painful and by their example hasten its arrival.72 grievous, the civic oath, the obligation . . .to mount guard personally and to arm.”75 And Mirabeau’s response was friendly, but he even more desperate letter is sent to made his objections to the Quaker position London by Cevenes’ Quaker school master, clear: Louis-Antoine Majolier:

Don't you think the defence of The nation is in a desperate yourselves and your neighbours to be condition… The authorities seize a religious duty also? Otherwise you upon, indiscriminately, from the body would surely be overwhelmed by of citizens a large number of men tyrants! Since we have gained liberty between the ages of 16 and 50. And for you as well as for ourselves, why we, too, shall not be exempt from the would you refuse to preserve it? […] ballot. Judging dear friend, in what a My brother, if you possess the right sad state we find ourselves and what a to be free, you have also an obligation trial we are having to undergo. While to prevent anyone from making you a one law ordains that all citizens slave. Loving your neighbour, you without exception must mount guard must not allow a tyrant to destroy within the confines of their district, him: to do so would be the same as to another requires everyone, the young kill him yourself. Do you desire as well as the old, to where the peace? Well then, it is surely weakness cockade; and anyone in our area who that calls forth war. A general doesn't do this may expect to be readiness to resist would procure roughly handled.76 universal peace.73 Many of the notables who had shown In spite of Mirabeau’s response, the sympathy for the Quakers’ pacifist stance Assembly did not explicitly reject the became casualties of the Revolution’s Quakers’ petition. Instead they ordered the excesses, and faced with both internal and petition and Mirabeau’s response printed external armed opposition, the various and sent to the Comité de Constitution for governments of the day depended more examination.74 Although Brock argues that and more on armies of young men for their informal accommodation was sometimes survival. In 1792 Marsillac was arrested in made so Quaker conscripts were not forced Paris for refusing to wear the cockade and to bear lethal weapons, as the Terror took only escaped prison with the intervention over the state, and years of wars at home of Paris’ mayor. In 1795 Marsillac, with his

72 Brock, “Conscientious Objection in Revolutionary France,” 170-71. 73 Brock, “Conscientious Objection in Revolutionary France,” 171. 74 Brock, “Conscientious Objection in Revolutionary France,” 172. 75 Brock, “Conscientious Objection in Revolutionary France,” 175. 76 Letter to John Eliot, 18 August 1792, qtd. in Brock, Against the Draft, 173.

Canadian Quaker History Journal 81 (2016) 120 The Quakers of France web of connections, left for the United What has fixed itself the most in my States and soon England and France were memory is the screams and the at war. Peter Brock captures the isolation of wringing of hands which gave to my the Languedoc Friends: young and warm heart a thorough hatred of war and Napoleon.78 Henceforward, the peasant boys of Congénies, and the simple Quaker For Quaker boys it was even more villagers their parents, were left to devastating. Not only snatched away from face alone as best they could, the levée- home, land, and family, they were also en-masse and the military demands of expected to violate the most sacred tenant successive revolutionary of their sect, thou shalt not kill. Many administrations and finally of the forced to join the army never came back, Napoleonic Empire. For most of this others foreshadowed generations of war period France was at war with Britain resisters by immigrating to other parts of while America was far away: thus the world, and still others, in Taylor’s words, Quakers abroad could be of little use “in this hour of sharp trial […] drew back in helping French Quakers respond from the way of the cross, and allowed the to the military question.77 Christian testimonies which had been entrusted to them to fall from their Even though the beliefs of the Languedoc hands.”79 The chaos of the war years, the Friends were no longer illegal, their economic crisis and the effect of the levée- isolation from so recently found allies and en-masse resulted in a gutting of the new challenges brought on by the population throughout Languedoc, government were devastating. especially the population of young men. Forced conscription was a blow to all the With no Quaker men to marry, young poor peasant boys whose families eked out woman married out and merged into the a living from the land. Christine Majolier majority non-Quaker population. Although Alsop, the daughter of the school master, these conditions certainly hurt the witnesses the levée en masse of 1811 “when Congénies Friends, their faith, their boys of 16 were taken from a parental roof, prophetic traditions, and their ongoing with a certainty almost that they would perseverance in the face of adversity gave never return:” them the strength to survive if in a somewhat reduced state. Congéniès, being on the high road Their new connections with foreign from several towns and villages to Friends provided both material and spiritual Nîmes, I have often witnessed the support. Although isolated from these new anguish of the poor, disconsolate friends by the eruption of wars between relatives who accompanied their France and Britain, American Friends were children as far as our house, which free to visit and, in spite of the barriers to stood at the end of the village, and such travel, some did. In episodes of peace, there parted never to meet again. Quaker luminaries such as Elizabeth Fry

77 Brock, “Conscientious Objection in Revolutionary France,” 174. 78 Christine Majolier Alsop, Memorials, 14. 79 Taylor, “Appendix: The Quakers of Congéniès,” 450.

Canadian Quaker History Journal 81 (2016) 121 The Quakers of France visited the community and reported on eventually marrying an English Quaker but being greeted by large and welcoming she often returned to visit her family and meetings. However, in letters a note of community in Congénies. She was at home unease again creeps (and sometimes in the most sophisticated Quaker homes in thunders) in to the reports sent back by the England—homes open to “men of all visitors. For example, Richard Jordan in his countries and of all shades of colour; account of his 1810 visit expresses his Russians, Germans, Frenchmen, Swedes, discouragement “on finding very little of Greeks, Italians, and Spaniards, North the Friend among them” in “their weak and American Indians, West Indians, and many disordered state […] and the consequence of the suffering sons of Africa.”81 She met of having no rule or order of discipline to Wilberforce and Clarkson and, through her unite them in supporting and holding the mentor, William Allen, become involved in testimony of Friends.” After Jordan held the movements to abolish slavery, poverty, stern and emotional meetings with “this and reformation of the prisons. Her fluency remote, poor, hungry, destitute little in French, English, and German made her a company in the south of France” he perfect interpreter, and she travelled regained some hope that “in our passing throughout Europe with Quakers like through this country, that there was a Elizabeth Fry meeting politicians, royalty, precious seed in many places, that would, at and even some ordinary people. Her some future day, be gathered.” I cannot fluency in Occitan and her deep roots in the help thinking that in spite of the closeness Prophetic tradition of the South made her of the two communities, the peasant at home in Languedoc and must have been French Quakers, who had “not much a welcome bridge between the two Quaker appearance of the Friend about them,” and cultures. Surely she must have had many often spoke neither English or French stories to tell when she returned for her never escaped the strangeness of the regular visits. Not surprisingly her accounts “other” for their English Friends.80 of Congénies reflect none of the “Christian condescension” of her fellow English Christine Majolier: Quakers and are full of sympathy and the Bridge between Time and Space. appreciation of their simple way of life. In her journal she writes about the way of life There was one regular visitor who of French Quakers: brought a totally different perspective to her encounters with the Congénies Friends, The mode of living […] has many Christine Majolier Alsop. Born in 1805 in charms for those who love simplicity Congénies, the daughter of the school and ease, and who are imbued with master, Lois Majolier, and descended from the poetry of primitive life. It the Couflair prophets on both her mothers approaches more to having all things and fathers side, Christine Majolier was sent in common than anything I know. to England by her father in 1817. For the You can go in and out of each other's rest of her life she lived in England, houses without the least restraint. If

80 “Richard Jordan’s account of his Journey to visit Friends at Congenies and some other places on the Continent,” in Friends Weekly Intelligencer (1844-1845), Oct.12, 1850: 7, 29; American Periodicals, 225. 81 Christine Majolier Alsop, Memorials, 71-2.

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one person has fruit, the other cistern; the watering of the earth with partakes of it. It is a constant the foot; the ox treading out the corn; interchange of kind offices, which is the shepherd going before the sheep; little understood elsewhere. All sorts the leading of the horse or of the ass of implements for domestic use or to watering; the treading of the for agriculture -- even looms -- are winepress alone; the figure of the constantly lent and borrowed; and it man sitting down under his own vine not unfrequently happens, rather and his own fig-tree, where none inconveniently sometimes, that things should make him afraid; all these and are taken without ceremony and many other beautiful allusions, which without leave: and although a person must be lost on English children and who has been accustomed to highly all those inhabiting northern civilised life may feel the want of countries, were completely intelligible refinement, and of intellectual to me, and for each scene mentioned society, yet there is so much of real i n t h e B i b l e I h a d a c l e a r kindness, of devotedness in affliction, representation in my mind's eye. Our and of readiness to oblige, that there famous fountain at Congénies is not a little to give up when an furnished me with more than one. exchange is made for a life more There, when I used to be sent to fill artificial and refined.82 my little pitcher with water, I used to fancy I saw Rebekah going down to Life lived by these French peasants and draw water for the camels of Eleazar; shepherds was not only reminiscent of the not that I had seen camels there; but early English Quakers; we can see from very often on a summer's evening I Christine Majolier thoughts on her had seen flocks of sheep supplied in childhood experiences, it was also not that the same manner; and there also I removed from life in biblical times: fancied I could see our Saviour, sitting on the well, conversing with I must not leave the subject of my the woman of Samaria, whom I early childhood without mentioning clearly pictured to my imagination the vivid impressions which were with her pitcher in her hand, just such made on my mind by reading the a one as I had myself.83 Scriptures. Living as I did where the customs of the people as well as the I suspect Christine Majolier played a aspect of the country are so similar to pivotal role in supporting the French those described there, the Bible Friends. She resembles one of Sheila assumed a reality which I scarcely Rowbotham’s hidden-from-history-women, think possible in the case of children although in many ways she is hidden in to whom such manners and customs plain sight. She is mentioned in Taylor’s are not familiar. The vines, the fig- appendix, although mostly in passing, and trees, the pomegranates and the in her own memoir she modestly makes no olives; the wheel broken at the claims for importance. However here was a

82 Christine Majolier Alsop, Memorials, 50. 83 Christine Majolier Alsop, Memorials, 83.

Canadian Quaker History Journal 81 (2016) 123 The Quakers of France woman who passed through countless hundred Quaker families still lived in the sophisticated British Quaker homes, caring Congénies region. In spite of support from for children, the sick and the elderly, abroad, life continued to be difficult for the helping with the collection of important Quaker community. With perpetual war and men’s papers, meeting interesting and oppression, more and more escaped to progressive people, and travelling though America and the rest of Europe. Young out Europe involved at the heart of Quaker men continued to flee rather than be diplomacy, who at the same time never lost conscripted into the French Army. touch with her roots. She must have been a Although Taylor, writing in 1883, still finds constant reminder to British fellow Quakers Quakers to interview, and Quakers still hold of their “simple” French Friends far away meeting, and Christine’s description of life in both space and time, as well as a in the community is still in tack, the consistent support to her home community. community was already in decline. The last meeting for worship was held in the Quaker Life Goes On Meeting House in 1905, and the Meeting House was sold in 1907 and by 1928 the Although the French Quaker Community “last Quaker in Gard died … and the struggled on through the nineteenth Quaker tradition disappeared in the South century, times did not get easier. American of France until 1995.”86 Quaker Stephen Grellet, in an 1807 letter However this was not the end of the from Congénies, describes a meeting in Quaker presence in France or in Congénies. which police brought soldiers to break up a Near the end of her life Christine Majolier meeting who in turn “were so affected by encountered a young Parisian social worker, Grellet’s ministry, that they refused to obey Justine Dalencourt, and through her orders.”84 He describes another meeting influence Delencourt became a Quaker and that was so large people had to assemble, with others established a Quaker Meeting in like their ancestors, in an orchard, “hanging Paris near the end of the 19th century. lanterns in the trees, into which also many During World War I, French Quakers climbed in order to hear what was said. […] helped the families of soldiers at the front ‘I have,’ writes S. Grellet, ‘seldom known a and rebuilt houses destroyed in the battle more solemn stillness to prevail at a fields. With American Quakers they meeting; the Gospel descended like dew on established two hospitals for the war’s the tender grass’.”85 In 1822 the Quaker survivors which continued to operate up meeting house was built in Congénies right until 1924.87 In 1919 Le Centre Quaker next to Majolier’s school, thanks to a gift International à Paris, was founded and, in from Philadelphia. The Quaker school, with 1933, France Yearly Meeting was support from abroad, continued up until established. In 1937 French Friends the middle of the nineteenth century where, established a refugee camp for Spanish according to Françoise Tomlin, two children displaced by the Spanish Civil War.

84 Taylor, “Appendix: The Quakers of Congéniès,” 451. 85 Taylor, “Appendix: The Quakers of Congéniès,” 451. 86 Françoise Tomlin, “Quakers-in France and in the world,” translated by Sara MacVane in Evangile & liberté , 2016, https://www.evangile-et-liberte.net/2016/07/quakers-in-france-and-in-the-world/ (Accessed 10 July 2017). 87 Tomlin, “Quakers-in-France.”

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After Meeting potluck

During World War II, French Friends aided came back into Quaker hands, this time into war refugees and helped Jewish refugees the hands of a retired British diplomat who escape the Nazis and find refuge.88 Quaker used it as a private resident, calling it Villa Gilbert le Sage used his role as government Quaker. In 2003 France Yearly Meeting was administrator to facilitate the escape of able to buy the House and in 2004 the French and other European Jews through Maison Quaker was reborn and open for Vichy France, and was later given the retreats, conferences, workshops, discussion Medaille de Justice by Israel for his role. groups and overnight visitors from France, According to René Nodot, Gilbert Lesage Europe and throughout the world. And saved the lives of some 100,000 refugees.89 once again, every Sunday, Quakers gather in In 1947 American Friends Service silent worship. Committee and British Friends Service Council received the Nobel Peace Prize for Back to the Beginning their European refugee work and French Quakers shared in this achievement. French This time, when I return to Congénies, Quakers, never a large group, continue their my bus ride from Nimes will be different. It work for peace and social justice up to will still be magical -- the incredible blue today both in France and around the world. sky, the rolling green field, with glimpses of Meanwhile, back in Congénies, the the wild Cevennes mountains in the Friends Meeting House went through a distance -- but now there will be a whole number of metamorphoses until it finally other element colouring my perceptions.

88 “Quakers and the non-conformist tradition in the South of France,” Origins of Maison Quaker, Centre Quaker de Congénies, http://www.maison-quaker-congenies.org/origins-of-maison-quaker 89 René Nodot. Mémoires d'un juste. Résistance non-violente 1940-1944 (Maisons-Laffitte: Éditions Ampelos, 2011).

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Judy Pocock with long-time Congenies Friend

Will I imagine I hear echoes of Camisards belting out the psalms in unison? Will I think of the clandestine gatherings of ecstatic peasants meeting to worship in hidden mountain valleys? In my imagination, will I see of the prophetess Lucrene and those that followed her with their refusal to submit to violence or the subservient place prescribed for women? Will I think of all that blood spilled on this land as the Couflaires and their Camisard compatriots struggled to live and believe as they choose? I can’t wait to go back and, like Stevenson, travel “in the print of olden wars” and see the deep corn and green along what once was “the battle field.”

“O my Dove that art in the clefts of the rock, hidden in the steep places, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice: For Sweet is they voice, and thy countenance is gracious.” (Claude Brousson from one of his popular sermons, 1690)

The Huguenot Cross

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