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ACTA COMENIANA 27 (2013)

Eva Hajdinová (Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague)

Bohemian Non Catholics and Languedoc nouveaux convertis: Prophetic and Sectarian Movements in a Comparative Perspective

Prophecy and eschatological movements were a relatively common part of religious practice in both the Catholic and Protestant communities. At the same time, they repre-sented an ambiguous, even a contradictory element in their existence. Prophecy was fre-quently criticised by representatives of the legal churches as a heterodox notion. How-ever, during times when spiritual hardship was at its greatest, it also revitalised declining piety amongst believers and led to a reinvigoration of the underground movement.

The following article is an attempt to compare early modern eschatological visions and ideas amongst Bohemian non-Catholics at home and in exile with those of the se-cret French Huguenots in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These intentionally chosen contrastive cases1 raise some interesting questions and conclusions. The living conditions and religious practices of secret non-Catholics in Bohemia do, however, dif-fer fundamentally from the illegal, albeit very vital religious life of the French secret Huguenots. To begin with, it will be helpful to give a brief description of the situation that existed in the two countries in the context of the Catholic Reformation endorsed by the state and church.

Life underground: the French nouveaux-convertis and Bohemian non-Catholics

From the second third of the seventeenth century, the fate of the various groups of descendants of the Bohemian Reformation and of the French Huguenots developed in the context of the formation of early-modern confessional states. Even though the so-cially more diverse group of non-Catholics in the multi-confessional environment of Bo-hemia diff ered signifi cantly from the more urban character of the exclusively Calvinist population, the methods of re-Catholicisation in Bohemia shared many characteristics with the methods used by the French monarchy to purge itself of the Huguenot heresy. In both cases, the complicated international situation – the contention between the

1 This study focuses almost exclusively on cases from the province of Languedoc, which func-tioned in both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a privileged centre of operations for prophets and their adherents. At the same time it has enjoyed the greatest amount of attention from researchers.

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Catholic and Protestant camps within the Holy Roman Empire in the case of seditious Bohemia, and the climaxing battle for power of Louis XIV with the Dutch Republic and England in the case of France – played an important role in the process of positioning the Protestants outside the law.

While Bohemian and Moravian non-Catholics had faced religious persecution since the 1620s, and the Peace of Westphalia meant in practice the extinction of hope for any improvement in their diffi cult situation, the Huguenots enjoyed religious tolerance, albeit increasingly limited, until the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes on 18 October 1685.2 In any event, the increasing persecution of Protestants in the seventeenth century provided fertile ground in both countries for the emergence of prophetic and eschato-logical visions of Godʼs punishment and the approaching redemption of the chosen people.3 As in Bohemia, many non-Catholic priests left the country after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, leading in turn to a drastic disruption in shared divine services. Religious life was restricted to the family circle and the reading of forbidden literature. Just like many post-White Mountain Bohemian, and primarily Brethren theologians and ordinary believers, the majority of French Calvinists saw the end of religious freedom as a punishment for their sins and inconstancy in belief.

However, the diff erences in the illegal life of the two communities grew deeper as time passed, and this also had a fundamental infl uence on the development of the phenomenon of eschatological visions. Thanks to the support of the Calvinist centres abroad and the determination of a group of several lay preachers, France, after 1715, underwent a gradual but systematic renewal of its Reformed synods and consistories.4 Thanks to the so-called Lausanne seminary,5 a renewal of the secret church, with or-dained pastors and working on presbyterial-synodal principles became possible. At the same time the French Huguenots, in their attempt to maintain their cultural practice and identity had, unlike the non-Catholics in Bohemia, the fundamental advantage of mono-confessionality. In Bohemia, the re-Catholicisation had two crucial outcomes.6

2 See Elisabeth LABROUSSE, La révocation de l‘Édit de Nantes, Paris 1985.3 More on the self-identifi cation of Bohemian religious exiles as the chosen people in Vladimír URBÁNEK, Patria Lost and Chosen People: The Case of Seventeenth-Century Bohemian Protestant Exiles, in: Balázs TRENCSÉNYI – Márton ZÁSKALICZKY (eds.), Whose Love of Which Country? Com-posite States, National Histories and Patriotic Discourses in Early Modern East Central Europe, Leiden 2010, pp. 587–609.4 From the great amount of literature available see in particular Edmond HUGUES, Actes et règle-ments des synodes nationaux et provinciaux tenus au désert de France de l‘an 1715 à l‘an 1793, 3 Vols, Paris 1885–1891; and from more recent works Samuel MOURS – Daniel ROBERT, Le protes-tantisme en France du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours 1685-1970, Paris 1972; or Hubert BOST – Claude LAURIOL (eds.), Entre Désert et Europe, le pasteur Antoine Court (1695-1760), Paris 1998. 5 As early as 1715 the idea arose amongst the predicants and preachers of Languedoc and Vi-varais of a provisional seminary for Calvinist ministers, which would produce a new generation of itinerant, yet theologically educated and ordained preachers. The seminary was founded in 1726 in Lausanne. The most detailed study so far is: Claude LASSERRE, Le séminaire de Lausanne (1726-1812). Instrument de la restauration du protestantisme français, Lausanne 1997.6 There is a great deal of literature on the re-Catholicisation of Bohemia. See Jindřich FRANCEK (ed.), Rekatolizace v Českých zemích, sborník příspěvků z konference v Jičíně konané 10. září 1993

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Thanks to the gradual improvement in the network of parishes the Catholic faith was successfully disseminated and inculcated by believers. In addition, there was a deliber-ate limiting of the infl uence of Protestant ministers who would try and get into Bohemia from the border regions and revive inside the country the practices of secret shared gatherings and receiving the sacrament.

In both the Bohemian and French cases, however, we encounter prophetic visions almost exclusively in the fi rst generation after the Protestant confessions became illegal. This statement, however, should not be too surprising. Eschatological revelations tradi-tionally appeared in Christian history as a reaction to a time of exceptional spiritual and material suff ering. They drew inspiration from biblical, and especially Old Testament tradition7 and during these diffi cult periods they provided believers with some hope that they could overturn their unhappy fate. While in the French case the eschatological vi-sions began among forcefully converted believers within the territory of France, in the Bohemian case the visions broke out mostly, if not exclusively, in exile and abroad. There is a very important diff erence here. First, in Bohemian case we are discussing just few individual prophets (such as visionaries under Comeniusʼ protection), as well as a not very numerous group of non-Catholic burghers who refused to convert to Catholicism, gave up their respected positions and left, with their families, to exile communities in the border areas. Secondly, even though these exiled non-Catholic visionaries remained practically without direct contact with the mass of non-Catholics still in Bohemia, the impact their visions had back in their homeland cannot be denied.

In both cases, the gradual decline of millenarian visions started at about the same time, in the second or third generations of believers, although naturally for diff erent reasons. In France, the wave of prophetic revelations came to an end as a result of the consolidation of offi cial doctrine in the illegal Calvinist congregations after 1715. In Bohemia, they ceased owing to at least three factors. First, the death of the protago-nists or their retirement played an obvious role. Secondly, the group of religious exiles lost hope in the readmission of the Protestant confession in the Habsburg monarchy. Finally, the new generation of non-Catholics adapted to their secret existence without either priests or confessional continuity with the earlier traditions, and even the exiles abroad accepted this.

That said, in both cases the impact of eschatological visions reverberated well into the eighteenth century. Was this an echo of the earlier visions or rather a new phenom-enon connected to the changed milieu of secret Protestant minorities, whose struggle to restore religious tolerance took on new shapes in the eighteenth century? This article

[Re-Catholicisation in Bohemia: Proceedings of a Conference in Jičín, 10 September 1993], Par dubice 1995; Robert BIRELEY, The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450–1700, Washington 1999; and Howard LOUTHAN, Converting Bohemia: Force and Persuation in the Catholic Reformation, Cambridge 2009.7 Most frequent biblical sources of eschatological prophecies were the books of Amos, Hosea, Zechariah, Isiah, Ezekiel and especially Daniel. “L’espérance d’une intervention rapide et miracu-leuse de Dieu est une constante de la mentalité des chrétiens persécutés, surtout, lorsque comme des réformés, ils sont nourris de l’Ancien Testament qui leur off re tant d’exemples de cette intervention pour sauver le peuple élu.” Philippe JOUTARD, Les Camisards, Paris 19942, p. 64.

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suggests one possible answer. The French researcher Hubert Bost writes in one of his studies about the regulated transition of secret Huguenots from religious sect into a real church during the eighteenth century.8 Both older and more modern French and inter-national historiography in general accepts this interpretation of the gradual renewal of the doctrine in the illegal Calvinist congregations after 1715, which corresponded to the initial structure of the Reformed Church in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. French researchers call this phenomenon the birth of the Eglise du désert. This is the term that the Huguenots themselves used for their collective gatherings, led initially by lay preachers, that took place in very remote and diffi cult to reach places. The allusion here is to the forty years that Moses’s people wandered in the desert before they reached the Promised Land. Bost’s aptly chosen metaphor can also serve as our initial postulate for the Bohemian case.

Over a long period of time the theological and church authorities in Saxony, Lusatia and Hungary had tried to keep watch over the offi cial dogma of Bohemian non-Catho-lics in exile and, through religious literature, also in Bohemia and Moravia themselves. However, they never quite managed to prevent all the unorthodox interpretations of the Scriptures and the eschatological visions. Despite repeated attempts, their eff orts foundered on numerous obstacles and on the unwillingness of Protestants at home and in exile to give up their own religious convictions and the liturgy with which they identi-fi ed themselves. This hypothesis of the fi nal “loss of doctrinal purity” of the Bohemian Protestants is not, of course, a new idea. The opinion of the uncertain confessional iden-tity and practices of the secret Bohemian and Moravian evangelicals is discussed e.g. in Marie Elisabeth Ducreuxʼs studies of literary culture.9 Zdeněk R. Nešpor also writes of the “decline of confessional (self)identifi cation” of non-Catholics,10 emphasising the anti-Rome and anti-Catholic views of Bohemian believers and analysing in particular the culmination and outcome of this process in the period before and especially after the issuing of the Patent of Toleration by Josef II. The aim of the following study is to stress the analogy between the obstacles to and criticisms of the eschatological visions that both Bohemian evangelical Protestants and French Huguenots had to grapple with. The study will also show to what extent the believersʼ unorthodox visions and doctrinal practices infl uenced the development of their image in wider society.

8 Hubert BOST, De la secte à lʼEglise: la quête de la légitimité dans le protestantisme méridional au XVIIIe siècle, Rives nord-méditerranéennes 10, 2002, p. 53.9 Marie Elisabeth DUCREUX, Kniha a kacířství, způsob četby a knižní politika v Čechách v 18. sto-letí [The book and Heresy: Methods of Reading and the Politics of the Book in 18th Century Bohemia], Literární archiv 27, 1994, p. 62. See also EAD., L’encadrement des lectures de la popu-lation de Bohême au 18e siècle, in : M.E. DUCREUX – Martin SVATOŠ, Libri prohibiti. La censure dans la Monarchie des Habsbourg, Leipzig 2005, pp. 151–166; EAD., Lire à en mourir. Livres et lecteurs en Bohême au XVIIIe siècle, in: Roger CHARTIER (éd.), Les usages de l‘imprimé, Paris 1987, pp. 253–30310 Zdeněk R. NEŠPOR, Náboženství na prahu nové doby. Česká lidová zbožnost 18. a 19. století [Reli-gion on the Threshold of the Modern Age: Bohemian Folk Piety in the 18th and 19th Centuries], Ústí nad Labem, 2006, pp. 410f.

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Bohemian Protestant prophecy in the seventeenth century

As has already been noted, in both the Bohemian and French cases the violent pro-hibition of the Protestant faith led immediately to an increased occurrence of proph-ecy and prophetic visions. 11 Ideas about the coming of the millennium were related on the one hand to the development of historical chronology and the encyclopedic movement, whose well known representative was, for example, Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588–1638). On the other hand, these views were caused by the tensions between the opposing confessional camps. Protestantismʼs feeling of being under threat went hand in hand with an increased expectation of the Second Coming of Christ and an intensify-ing of personal piety.12 The signs of Christʼs Second Coming, given in the Gospels and the Book of Revelation were intensively discussed once again.

A lot of people saw the beginning of the new century as a moment of crisis. The year 1600 represented not only the sharp confl ict between the confessions and the huge advancement of the Catholic Church, but also the threat to Christian Europe from the Turks. In addition, numerous comets and other astronomical phenomena were seen in the sky. All this helped to instigate the revival of prophecy, which was also a reaction to political events of the time. Twenty years later the situation of the Bohemian Kingdom under the Palatine ruler would be perceived in a European context as one of the events known from the Apocalypse.13 In the early years of the seventeenth century Bohemia, just like Germany, was awash in a huge number of pamphlets, learned texts, allegorical engravings and medals, which disseminated more or less off ensive propaganda against the growing pressure from the Catholic Church. These countless written or illustrated propaganda items also played a very important role in the revival of eschatological vi-sions. The lack of clear ideas in the Protestant camp for achieving the Reformation went hand in hand with the growth of cabbalistic or gnostic-theosophical thinking and such phenomena as the Rosicrucian movement. In Bohemia and Moravia, a multitude of texts and images circulated representing biblical and apocalyptic beasts which personifi ed the fi ght against the forces of evil, i.e. against the papacy and the Catholic political camp.

The Reformed in both the Empire and in Bohemia sought more and more intensively their rex pacifi cus, who would also personify the longed-for fi dei defensor. When, in 1612, a suitable candidate for the Bohemian crown was being sought within the framework

11 On the theme of seventeenth-century prophecy the older study Josef VÁLKA, Problém výkladu revelací v Komenského životě a díle [The problem of interpretation of revelation in Komenskýʼs life and work], SCetH 17, 1977, pp. 114–119 is still useful, or the newer work Wilhelm SCHMIDT-BIGGE-MANN, Comeniusʼ politische Apokalyptik. Die Prophetien-sammlung „Lux in tenebris“ und die Habs-burger, SCetH 32, 2002, Nos 67–68, pp. 52–69; also Vladimír URBÁNEK, Eschatologie, vědění a politika. Příspěvek k dějinám myšlení pobělohorského exilu [Eschatology, Knowledge and Politics: A Contribution to the History of Though in Post-White Mountain Exile], České Budějovice 2008.12 Jana HUBKOVÁ, Fridrich Falcký v zrcadle letákové publicistiky: letáky jako pramen k vývoji a vní-mání české otázky v letech 1619–1632 [Frederick, Elector Palatine in the Mirror of Pamphlets: Broadsheets as a Source for the Development and Perception of the Bohemian Question in 1619–1632], Praha 2010, p. 345.13 Ibid., p. 358.

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of the Protestant Union, the choice fell on Frederick, Elector Palatine, who was elected King of Bohemia in August 1619. He was identifi ed with such a role in many of the pe-riod pamphlets and allegories.14 In the well-known German pamphlet from December 1619, Factum est a Jehova et est Mirabile, which portrays the new royal couple, Frederick and Elisabeth are depicted as the leaders of the united forces of European Protestantism against the might of Catholicism. The upper left border of the image shows a tranquil time of peace and freedom ruled over by the trio of reformers Hus, Calvin and Luther. The other side of the propaganda pamphlet reveals an apocalyptic scene of military pandemonium in the form of Godʼs anger falling upon the fl eeing Catholic clergy.

The confrontation between the heraldic symbols of the individual coalition factions, i.e. the Habsburg eagle with the Bohemian, English or Palatine lion, became a ste-reotype as it matched the prophecy from the fourth apocryphal book of Ezra on the struggle between the lion and the eagle (2 Esdr 11: 12). Initially, these eschatological and also propagandistic fi gures asserted themselves most fully during the government of the Estates Directorate and the short rule of the Winter King, and then again in the Bohemian exile milieu during the Thirty Years War.

In the fi rst years following the waves of post-White-Mountain exile, many of the ex-iled still believed they would return to their homeland. Their hopes, however, gradually faded. At the time, it was not just motifs of apocalyptic beasts which fi lled up their manuscript diaries and other “ego-documents” ever more frequently. Their ideas of an imminent revelation and the coming of the new thousand-year kingdom projected them-selves into the descriptions of the various signs and phenomena that appeared in the sky and that were supposed to announce the arrival of positive or negative events. Amongst these were unusual planetary positions, comets, eclipses of the sun or moon, aurora borealis, etc. These were perceived to be divine signs that were a warning before an im-portant event and that enjoined people to repent. Other phenomena and warning signs included sudden changes of weather and natural catastrophes such as thunderstorms, hail storms, drought or destructive fl oods. These real or imagined scenes merged to-gether and were linked to eschatological visions of the struggle between good and evil. In exile milieu this struggle was identifi ed with the coming of the army of the north, which would clash with the army of the south.

One such vision was noted down in his memoirs by the Bohemian noble emigré Jan Jiří Harant of Polžice and Bezdružice (1580–1648). In 1628, in the sky over the town of Sanderburg15 in the principality of Pomerania, a strange phenomenon appeared. An army coming from the midnight side was seen to engage in a bloody battle with an enemy army that approached from the south. The northern army was eventually victori-ous and its triumph was accompanied by a colossal radiance, lightning and thunder.16

14 Jaroslav MILLER, From Conquerors to Martyrs: protestant propaganda and the Palatine Myth in Early Stuart England, AC 17 (XLI), 2003, pp. 73–98.15 This is evidently the small town of Sanderburg in Schleswig Holstein.16 Ferdinand MENČÍK (ed.), Paměti Jana Jiřího Haranta z Polžic a z Bezdružic od r. 1624 do r. 1648 [The Memoirs of Jana Jiří Harant of Polžic and Bezdružic from 1624 to 1648], Praha 1897, pp. 36–37.

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Harant did not neglect to set down that all this warning came from “the army of the Swedish king of midnight”.

Apart from Harant, whose memoirs are well-known to older Czech historiography, there were other exiles who also left descriptions of similar extraordinary events. Václav Nosidlo of Geblice (1592–1649), a citizen of Litoměřice, a syndic and a non-Catholic, left Bohemia because of his religious convictions. From 1629 he settled permanently in Pirna in Saxony, which was one of the important exile centres. In his manuscript chroni-cle Nosidlo noted down in an openly anti-Catholic tone, with plenty of mockery and contempt, the main events of the re-Catholicisation underway in Bohemia, as well as of life in Saxon exile between 1629 and 1639.17 In his notes we fi nd numerous references to natural disasters and various astronomical phenomena which predicted the arrival of the army from the North.18

During the long years of military confl ict, Bohemia, just like Saxony, Lusatia and other countries, was occupied by foreign armies that brought both material and spiritual suff ering to the inhabitants. Forced conversion, poverty and pervasive violence led to a renewal of millenarian speculation. Visions of the arrival of a holy army began to spread, at the head of which God was to place a preordained leader. In the tense wartime period these marvellous visions and similar warnings off ered the exiles a certain hope that there would be some change in their bleak situation. The foreign Protestant powers were the great hope of Bohemian non-Catholics after White Mountain, both at home and in exile. Foremost among these was Saxony, which naturally proved a disappointment after the “betrayal” by Johann Georg I, Elector of Saxony, and it soon lost its privileged position in emigrant eyes.19 Now the exiles turned their hopes towards Denmark and especially Swe-den. It was in 1629 that the number of marvellous visions happenings noted in Nosidloʼs chronicle reached its maximum. That same year, Ferdinand II’s Edict of Restitution was

17 The original of Nosidloʼs chronicle is held in the library of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and is available in digital form (KNAV, TC 23.). There is also a manuscript copy from the 18th century known as Pelcʼs copy – IXI B6 held in the Czech National Library.18 For example, on 26 April 1629 a kind of halo was seen above Pirna. In the sky, between six and seven in the morning, four suns were seen in a dark cloud, each turned towards one of the four corners of the Earth. At about eight a bright light, like a rainbow, began to be emitted from the sun facing the midnight side. After that a sort of aureola formed around the sun and lasted for several hours. On the same day above the town of Torgau an eagle enthroned in the sun was seen, but it was suddenly pulled down by a lion that appeared from the clouds, expelling the eagle and taking its place. See Martina LISÁ, Pirenská exulantská obec během třicetileté války očima kroniky Václava Nosidla z Geblic [The Pirna Exile Community during the Thirty Years War as Seen in the Chronicle of Václav Nosidlo of Geblice], Sborník Národního muzea v Praze. Řada C – Literární historie, 54, 2009, Nos 1–4, p. 22.19 On 21 March 1620 Johann Georg, Elector of Saxony, switched sides and joined Ferdinand II. In September 1631 he did also make what was for him at that time an advantageous alliance with the Swedish king Gustav II Adolf and allowed his generals to invade Bohemia with an 8000 strong army. The siege of Prague, however, resulted in pillage and plunder. With the treaty of Prague, signed on 30 May 1635, Johann Georg obtained Lusatia once and for all and at the request of Emperor Ferdinand III he gave up the requirement for the return of non-Catholic emi-grants to Bohemian and Alpine lands.

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published following his recent victory over Denmark. The wave of emigration from Bo-hemia had also peaked after the issuing in 1627 of the re-Catholicisation patent. It is possible to mention evidence of other similar marvels, for example the chronicle of Jiří Kezelius Bydžovský, who lived in exile in Meissen from 1627 to 1639.20

Among the exiles who turned for hope to the Protestant rulers and from whom they sought assurance of peace and freedom of religion for the Bohemian lands Jan Amos Comenius occupied a prominent place. Under the infl uence of the works of Johann Heinrich Alsted and Johannes Piscator, he believed that humankind was living during the sixth millennium after the creation of the world and that it would soon see the Sec-ond Coming of Christ on Earth.21 Later, a trio of visionaries – Kryštof Kotter, Kristýna Poniatowská and Mikuláš Drabík – played an important role in Comenius’s life. These individuals and the content of their prophecies became well known not just in the Bohe-mian exile community but later practically in the whole of learned Protestant Europe. The French theologian Pierre Jurieu was no exception, and he referred to the trio of visionaries with admiration in his Accomplissement des prophéties.22

Visions of these three prophets were translated into Latin by Comenius and published in two famous editions Lux in tenebris and Lux e tenebris. They predicted the imminent end of the suff ering of the persecuted evangelicals and the glorious victory of all their undertakings. The visions of all three prophets are similar in the way they project the experience of wartime confl ict into a scheme of the clash between the Antichrist and the representatives of the true faith, i.e. the persecuted evangelicals. They predicted the downfall of the Habsburgs and the Pope and focused on the eschatological expectation of the fi nal struggle between the faithful and their opponents. At the same time, these prophecies combined a degree of biblical quotation and paraphrase with a level of direct conversation between a prophetic fi gure and God about the current political situation. These visions, with their strongly anti-Habsburg tone, caused criticism not only of their authors but primarily of Comenius as their editor and eff ective protector. The last of the prophets, Mikuláš Drabík (1587–1671), a former Brethren priest and Comeniusʼs fellow student from the town of Strážnice, was eventually charged by the court in Pressburg for his prophecies against the emperor, imprisoned, and on 16 July 1671 publicly executed.

20 Kezelius‘s manuscript chronicle (Kronika města Boleslavi Mladé, obsahující dějiny města toho od založení vůbec, podrobněji zvlášť od r. 1334-1627, 1639-54 [A Chronicle of the Town of Mladá Boleslav, containing the history of this town from its founding, and especially in 1334–1627 and 1639 –1654]) written in 1654 was edited by Zdeněk KAMPER (ed.), Kronika mladoboleslavská od Jiř iho Bydž ovské ho sepsaná [A Chronicle of the Town of Mladá Boleslav written by J. Bydžovský], Praha 1935.21 Vladimír URBÁNEK, Utopie, millénarisme et antimachiavélisme: J. A. Comenius – Komensky, in: Chantal DELSOL – Michel MASLOWSKI (eds.), Histoire des idées politiques de l’Europe centrale, Paris 1998, pp. 215–228.22 “Cotterus qui est le premier de ces trois prophètes, est grand et magnifi que, les images de ses visions ont tant de majesté et tant de noblesse que celles des anciens prophètes nʼen nʼont pas dʼavantage, Elles sont aussi admirablement concertées, tout sʼy soutient et rien ne se dément. Il mʼest incon-cevable comment un simple artisan peut avoir imaginé dʼaussi grandes choses, sans le secours de Dieu […] Drabitius a aussi ses grandeurs, mais il a beaucoup plus dʼobscurités”. Pierre JURIEU, Lʼaccomplissement des prophéties, Rotterdam 1686, p. 3v.

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Poniatowská versus Isabeau Vincent and other prophetesses

Kristýna Poniatowská of Duchník, the second of the prophets, has traditionally re-ceived a great deal of attention in historiography. 23 In particular Kristýnaʼs physical actions during her visions, and the systematic use of biblical parallels, were very similar to the manifestations that broke out amongst simple French herdswomen in the years just after the suppression of Calvinism in the country in 1685.

Comenius met with Kristýna during the winter of 1627–1628 at the castle of Branná near Jilemnice, where she enjoyed shelter in the service of the evangelical noblewoman Angelina Zárubová of Hustířany. The young girl was sixteen years old when she had her fi rst visions, accompanied by epileptic seizures and ecstatic hallucinations. After her very fi rst vision, which was quite similar to the divine warning in the heavens mentioned above24 that Kristýna saw on 12 November 1627, the girl fell ill with great pains around her heart. Other visions always came unexpectedly, very often as if torn from a deep sleep similar to a fatal paralysis. Kristýna would come back to life in front of the eyes of the people watching her and remain in a state of trance that could last for several hours.

Also in the case of France, in the last third of the seventeenth century, as a result of the violent persecution of the Protestants, there was a revival of eschatological visions. The dragonnades that in the years 1681–1685 gradually reached all the Huguenot re-gions in the country were a deeply traumatising experience that fomented a series of mystic-apocalyptic visions in a number of young women. As in the pages of Harantʼs memoirs,25 in France, too, the visions mainly took place in young women, peasant chil-dren and most frequently ordinary shepherd girls – individuals with no education, with-out deeper theological awareness. Under the infl uence of Old Testament teachings and without pastors, who had for the most part left France under threat of being sentenced to the galleys according to the fourth paragraph of the Edict of Fontainebleau, the prev-alent idea amongst believers was that their bleak situation was a result of Godʼs punish-ment for their lukewarm faith.26 Just as with the marvellous visions in the community of Bohemian exiles, these signs in the sky and natural disasters were perceived by the Huguenots as proof of their sin and doubt. The exceptionally dry periods that aff ected

23 In addition to the authors mentioned in the footnote No 11, see also Pavel HEŘMÁNEK, Kristýna Poniatowská und Jan Amos Komenský, eine Visionärin und ein Gelehrter. Versuch einer zusammen-fassenden Interpretation einer problematischen Frage der modernen Komeniologie, SCetH, 42, 2012, Nos 87–88, pp. 144–160.24 On this occasion Kristýna saw a fi ery besom in the sky above the castle courtyard.25 Harant writes about the prophecies of young women and children inspired by extracts from the Bible, and about the fact that miraculous signs were seen in the sky. The girls were most frequently inspired by God to persuade their neighbours not to switch to Catholicism. F. MENČÍK (ed.), Paměti Jana Jiřího Haranta z Polžic, pp. 36, 42–43, 45, 51.26 Cf. a manuscript prayer from around 1687, which was found in the settlement of Bécédelle in the heart of Cévennes, fi fteen kilometers from Saint-Jean-du-Gard: “[Notre tout puissant], tu as démoli notre temple, parce que nous lʼavions profané par notre impiété, on y lisait ta parole, et nous remplissions ce saint lieu de murmures et dʼentretiens profanes, on y prêchait ton évangile et nous entretions nos esprits des pensées du monde, nous sortions aussi corrompus que nous y étions rentrés.” Quoted in P. JOUTARD, Les Camisards, p. 33.

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Languedoc and the mountains of Cévennes in the summers of 1684 and 168627 were replaced by unusually cool winters, and these fl uctuations were seen as warning signs. It was precisely in the inhospitable surroundings of the Southern French mountains and strong familial piety that the fi rst prophets appeared. Calvinist preachers immediately saw in these young simple, “untouched by sin” messengers of God a parallel with the prophet Joel (2:28).28 The culmination of these activities was the secret renewal of collective religious meetings which were run by lay preachers or acolytes. During the winter months of 1686, in the remote and diffi cult to reach areas, the Huguenots began to come together for the secret désert cult. “The messengers of God” themselves began to take part in these meetings.

An interesting case is documented by the story of Isabeau Vincent which began on the night of 3 February 1688. This was the fi rst time that the orphan Isabeau, a fi f-teen-year old shepherd girl from the village of Saou (the modern département of Drôme in the province of Dauphiné), fell into delirium. In the house of her adoptive parents the girl began to cry out from her sleep. It proved impossible to wake her up until she herself woke from her ecstatic state, in which she spoke with God and interpreted his words. Over several weeks the girl fell repeatedly at night into a trance, during which sometimes she preached and prophesied, sometimes in dialect and sometimes in French.29 Accord-ing to witnesses, she always sang a few psalms with her eyes shut, after which she would recite parts of the Bible in French before fi nally speaking in Occitan about the evil deeds of the Catholic Church. When she awoke from her half-sleep she could not remember anything that had happened before and she was unable to speak French. The theme of her communications was a message to all believers to leave their deceitful lives behind, to stop attending Catholic mass, and to remain faithful to their religious convictions and to the Ten Commandments.

In her delirium, Isabeau assured the faithful that their tormentors would die out along with their rage and that they would be “reaped like straw from a dried up fi eld”.30 Her prophecies consisted of biblical passages that closely corresponded to the conditions of the constant persecutions. Former Huguenots from a wide area began to gather at the home of Isabeauʼs parents in order to listen to the Holy Spirit speaking through her. She predicted that in September 1688 the long awaited moment of redemption of all Reformed believers would take place, naturally accompanied by extensive persecutions. After several weeks had passed, the girl even began to preach like a minister and to lead a kind of divine service in her trance. Some believers noted down her words and these

27 Emmanuel LE ROY LADURIE, Histoire du climat depuis lʼan mil, Paris 1967, pp. 49, 52.28 “La prophétie de Joël/ Il sʼaccomplit, mes frères/ Je vous dis quʼau dernier temps/ Verrons ces grandes merveilles/ Vos fi ls et fi lles prophétiseront/ Vos veillards feront des songes/ Vos jeunes gens auront des visions/ Ce nʼest point de mensonges.” Extract from “Complainte touchant les prophé-ties”. Charles BOST (ed.), Poésie populaires huguenotes du Vivarais, Paris 1940, p. 32.29 Above all P. JOUTARD, Les Camisards, pp. 65–67; Clarke GARRETT, From the Old World to the New World: Origins of the Shakers, Baltimore 1998, pp. 20–27.30 “Les méchants périrront avec leur méchanceté et seront fauchés comme lʼherbe des champs qui est séchée”. Quoted in Charles BOST, Les prédicants protestants des Cévennes et du Bas-Languedoc, 1684–1700, Paris 1912, Vol. I, p. 13.

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manuscript copies of her prophecies circulated amongst Protestants from the whole Midi area of southern France. One of these manuscripts was sent to Amsterdam where it was published under the title Abrégé de lʼhistoire de la bergère de Saou près de Crest en Dauphiné, imprimé à Amsterdam lʼan 1688.31 The whole aff air caused great uproar. On the 8 June 1688, Isabeau was fi nally arrested and imprisoned in the town of Crest, where she was interrogated repeatedly. The judge was not able to clarify precisely what the cause of her condition was and the girl was fi nally interned in a nunnery in Greno-ble, where all trace of her was lost.

Very soon, the Holy Spirit began to speak through various other young girls and stable boys who could only speak in their local dialects. In the literature of the time (whose terminology has been adopted by modern historiography) they were named “petits prophètes” referring to the Twelve Minor Prophets of the Bible. However, during their visions they spoke literary French and foretold the imminent redemption of the faithful from their life in the “Babylonian captivity” of the Catholic Church. Contem-porary researchers most frequently explain this phenomenon of surprisingly accurate prophecies from a doctrinal point of view through a good knowledge of the French translation of the Bible, which was passed on orally between believers. The manuscript prophecies continued to circulate amongst the Protestants in Dauphiné and Languedoc for several years after Isabeauʼs arrest.32

Similar to Isabeauʼs strange physical states and visions, Kristýna Poniatowskáʼs be-haviour was subject to examination. Kristýna, unlike Isabeau, avoided interrogation in jail, but in April 1628 she underwent a thorough investigation in Leszno by a council of eminent doctors33 including Jan Jonston (1603–1675), a Scottish-German physician in Poland, who became a friend of Comenius. Jonston, who despite his eff orts to maintain an objective viewpoint was more impressed by Kristýnaʼs millenarian message than the other doctors, translated a shortened version of her revelations into French which was fi rst published in Holland and subsequently in Geneva.34

Kristýnaʼs fi rst revelations were visions in which the girl was visited by angels and an Old Man35 who introduced her to Jesus, her bridegroom. Gradually her revelations increased in intensity and changed into apocalyptic visions in which animal fi gures ap-peared such as the lion and the eagle. For example, on 13 January the “Lord”, i.e. Jesus, took her to a beautiful heavenly garden in which two lions appeared to her, a blue and a red one, clutching swords in their front paws. The lions gradually tore to pieces in their

31 The author was the lawyer Gerlan of Grenoble who was personally present during Isabeauʼs visions during the night of 20 to 21 May 1688. 32 C. GARRETT, Spirit Possession, p. 19.33 P. HEŘMÁMEK, Kristýna Poniatowská, p. 146 (note 9), 150.34 Histoire en forme de iournal des admirables visions et revelations d´une ieunne Damoiselle de Boheme, nommée Christine Poniatoue de Duchnik: lesquelles elle a eues en Boheme & en Pologne depuis un an & plus, Arnheim 1629; Relation très-véritable, & miraculeuse, d‘une jeune fi lle de Bohème, demeurant à présent à Lesno en Pologne, laquelle, depuis un an en çà, a eu diverses extases, & révélations, Genève 1629.35 The Old Man is a reference to the Almighty, or literally the Ancient of Days from the book of Daniel (Da 7: 9–17).

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talons a two-headed white horse and a two-headed eagle with four wings which sat at the top of a tree and believed itself to be inviolable.36 Later the old man led Kristýna to a beautiful house and told her that despite its size and magnifi cence it was a godless house, a Babylon, whose end was approaching. Immediately afterwards the two lions appeared again, and with them a third, white lion, and they levelled the house to dust and sand.

Although in Kristýnaʼs fi rst visions the allusions to the Pope and Emperor were only indirect, her later ecstasies became more specifi c, with a clearly and sometimes off en-sively anti-Habsburg tone. Kristýnaʼs visions, like those of Kotter and Drabík, were fi lled with millenarian expectations of the fi nal struggle. Apart from the imminent destruction of the enemy Emperor that was supposed to be brought by the white lion from the tribe of Judah (Rev. 5:5), Kristýna also prophesied Wallensteinʼs approaching fall. Although many factors and reasons for her unusual physical condition are still unconvincingly explained, there is no doubt that her knowledge of the Bible, together with the echoes of the other prophecies of that time, combined with the hope for the destruction of the House of Habsburg. Kristýnaʼs hopes were clearly invested in a liberator, primarily the Swedish king Gustav Adolf II, and also in someone who had already been overthrown, Frederick, Elector Palatine, who was living in exile.

French prophecy thrived in a simple, domestic environment in the distant provinces of the kingdom. For that reason it never had an evident anti-monarchical and anti-state character. Unlike the Bohemian exiles, the secret Huguenots of the 1680s and 1690s did not request change for the French throne. The visions of children, and later the adult “prophets” did not call for a change in the political and dynastic relations and did not call for the coming of a foreign liberator. The traditional loyalty of the Huguenot minority towards the French ruling class, advocated since the accession of Louis XIII to the throne, was characteristic of Calvinist theology and the faithfuls for the whole of the seventeenth century.37 The writings of the Monarchomaques of the sixteenth century were rejected forever. The majority of secret Calvinists saw the revocation of the Edict of Nantes primarily as Godʼs punishment for their lack of outspokenness, inconstancy and lukewarm attitude towards faith. The same motif can be found in the Bohemian visionaries, particularly strongly in Comenius.38 Godʼs punishment, according to the generally accepted exposition of the Calvinist theologians, could only be atoned for

36 [Jan Jonston] Histoire en forme de iournal, pp. 58–59. A Czech version of the revelation preserved in the Kraków manuscript of 1631 “Viděni panny Kristýny Panatowske z Duch-niku” (The Vision of the maiden Kristýna Paniatowská), which is part of the quarto manu-script collection of the Bohemian nobelwoman and exile Anna Alžběta Janovská (née of Příchovice).37 Elisabeth LABROUSSE, La doctrine politique des huguenots 1630–1685, Etudes théologiques et religieuses 47, 1972, pp. 421–429; Solange DEYON, Du loyalisme au refus, les protestants français et leur député général entre la Fronde et la Révocation, Villeneuve dʼAscq 1976.38 “The topos of divine punishment for sins, the necessity of repentance and the renewal of the cove-nant played a central role in this rethoric. This version of chosenness might be called ‚defensive cho-senness‘ and perhaps could be compared with the similar discursive strategies of the Hungarian and Transylvanian Calvinists especially in the 1640s and 1650s.” V. URBÁNEK, Patria lost, pp. 604–605.

13

through repentance, “for whom the Lord loves He chastens” (Heb. 12:6). It was neces-sary to strengthen individual belief and show God oneʼs resolution. French prophecy had an almost exclusively Old Testament character with the motif of Jehovahʼs punish-ment.

We do not know the full names of the majority of prophètesses. Unlike their male counterparts, whose full names for the most part we do know, whether from court records or even from memoirs and preserved written visions, the female visionaries were often known only by their place of origin or their Christian names.39 Others were distinguished by some unusual ability. For example, one prophetess from Vivarais would bleed from her eyes and nose, which she claimed was a sign of the Holy Spirit.40 Many, however, are known by their names, for example Margueritte Armand, the widow Ca-ton, Martine and Suzanne Bouge, the widow Ransel of Valon, Jeanne Balastière, Isa-beau Chalançon, etc.41 The prophetsʼ visions often took a very similar course. They be-gan with a sudden pain in the chest of the affl icted person, then diffi culty breathing and the ensuing collapse into paralysis at the moment when the Holy Spirit entered into the prophet. Then often tears poured from the wide-open eyes of the aff ected person, their body began to tremble without cause, at times they had powerful cramps. The bodies of the divine messengers then suddenly became immobile and words began to spit un-controllably from their lips exhorting the listeners to repent.42 Quite often the inspirés fell into momentary unconsciousness during their visions. When the faithful saw people who began to tremble, faint and at the same time to prophesy, it was easy for them to be drawn into the mass hysteria and themselves begin to pronounce the message sent down by God.

These visions did not lack in apocalyptic numerology either. The three-month period preceding the onset of the Last Judgement was reportedly predicted to believers in Vi-varais by the renowned prophet Gabriel Astier. He compared the lost, who would not be saved, to “howling wolves” trembling with fear. This further intensifi ed the desired eff ect of summoning the faithful to repent.43 State and church authorities viewed these ecstatic

39 For example “une vieille femme du Vivarais, tailleuse d’habits”, “une prophèsse de Brignon”, “une inspirée de Vallerargues”, etc. Charles-Joseph DE LA BAUME, Relation historique de la révolte des fanatiques ou des Camisards, Nimes 1874, pp. 34–37.40 C.h-J. DE LA BAUME, Relation historique, p. 35.41 Antonine Court himself – responsible for the future renewal of the Reformed Church – sup-plied a great deal of information about the prophetesses of Vivarais. Edmond HUGUES, Mémoires d’Antoine Court 1696–1729, Toulouse 1885, pp. 30–34.42 One of the most famous prophets, Élie Marion, described her condition as follows: “Ma langue et mes lèvres furent subitement forcées de prononcer avec véhémence des paroles que je fus étonné dʼentendre, nʼayant pensé à rien et ne mʼétant pas proposé de parler. Cela dura trois ou quatre minutes. Je tombais ensuite dans une espèce dʼévanousissement; mais cela se passa aussitôt et fut suivi dʼun nouveau frissonement, qui ne fi t que passer non plus; après quoi je me trouvai parfaitement libre et dans lʼétat ordinaire.” P. JOUTARD, Les camisards, p. 73.43 “Mes frères, approchez-vous de moi, amandez-vous, faites pénitence. Si vous ne vous repentez, vous serez tous perdus: criez à Dieu miséricorde. Le jugement de Dieu viendra dans trois mois. Les méchants hurlerons comme des loups: ils crieront à Dieu, faites-nous miséricorde, mais il ne les enten-

14

villagers as delirious fools, and also as the agents of emigré pastors and foreign Protes-tant powers. The fact that the “aff ected” regions were close to foreign Calvinist centres seemed to confi rm this, as did the relatively “mass character” of the visionaries there. The Bohemian prophets did not have any recognisable collective character comparable to the visions of the Languedoc and Cévennes prophètes, even if we take into account Harantʼs descriptions of visions of simple girls.

In Upper Languedoc, too, a number of cases emerged of individuals called by the Sav-iour to call for repentence and the immediate redemption of the people of Israel. During May 1688 several illegal gathering of Huguenots took place in the town of La Capelle, not far from the mountain town of Viane. No minister was present at the meetings, but they were visited by an approximately eleven year old girl, Margueritte Matet, to whom an angel reportedly spoke and who interpreted the word of this messenger of God to the other believers.44 The angel, who appeared to her in the form of a young girl, counseled her that it was not correct to attend Catholic mass and to live in pretence, for those who went to mass would be lost for the rest of their lives. Margueritteʼs vision attracted many believers from the surrounding area. It did not take too long before the girl was captured by a regiment of dragoons from Castres. In her interrogation she confi rmed that she had converted to the Catholic faith but that she could not continue in it and remain at peace with herself. Young Margueritte confi rmed that she had been visited by many people from Viane and Lacaune, but she denied that there had been any intention to start some kind of uprising. In March 1689, there was a secret gathering directly outside the town of Viane. A witness before the judge, Barbara of Castres, testifi ed that there was no pastor or minister present at the meetings, but “un homme de la Crouzette, qui fi t quelques exhortations, quʼil y fi t la lecture et quʼon y chanta des psaumes, accordant quʼil a vu une fi lle habillée de blanc, qui disoit estre un ange, mais ne sachant pas qui elle estoit.”45 It turned out that people from neighbouring Vabre, Réalmont, Revel and Puylaurens met regularly to see this miracle.

dra pas et il leur dira: Allez maudits, servir vore maître […] Gardez-vous dʼallez à la messe car elle est abominable devant Dieu”. Esprit FLÉCHIER, Récit fi dèle de ce qui sʼest passé dans les assemblées des Fanatiques du Vivarais avec lʼhistoire de leurs Prophètes et prophètesses au commencement de lʼannée 1689 (à Monsieur le duc de Montausier), Paris 1715, p. 355.44 The state regional archive of Hérault (Archives Départementales de lʼHérault), provincial ad-ministration fund of the Languedoc district – C 165 “Verbal de l´interrogatoire de la profetesse de la Capelle du 16 juin 1688”. “Gardant un jour des vaches, elle voit un ange vêtu de blanc, sous la forme dʼune petite fi lle, qui, sortant de derrière un buisson, lui annonce quʼau mois de mai, ils entendraient leur Pasteur, lui enseigne une belle prière, la plus belle du monde, et ajoute: Ma sœur, je descends du ciel pour te défendre, au nom du Seigneur Jésus, de revenir à la messe.” It has not proved possible to fi nd the judgement.45 The state regional archive of Hérault (Archives Départementales de lʼHérault), provincial administration fund of the Languedoc district – C 169 Proces verbal de lʼassemblée de Viane, witnessed by the weaver Isaac Boulad.

15

The Camisards and Pierre Jurieuʼs Apocalyptic Message

French prophecy did not call for revenge and the fall of Louis XIV. As Philippe Joutard and other researchers have emphasised, the prophets and later the Camisards46 made accusations against the Catholic Church, that “debauched” Babylon.47 Even in the Camisard writings there are no allusions to removing the king. In their memoirs and correspondence with offi cials the rebels defended themselves, saying that they only took up arms against pitiless clerics such as abbé François de Langlade de Chayla (1647–1702),48 and later just to save their lives in the struggle with royal army. Despite the hope that the secret Protestants invested in William III of Orange-Nassau after the Glorious Revolution, no military or any other kind of help came either from the United Provinces or from England. Of course, one cannot overlook the two unsuccessful at-tempts of the Huguenots to secure armed foreign intervention by the Protestant powers. In September 1689, the minister François Vivent de Vallerauge dreamt up a conspiracy against the king when he planned along with other leaders of the Reformed Church the disembarkation of the forces of Meinhardt, 3rd Duke of Schomberg (1641–1719) in Cévennes.49 This eff ort, however, failed because of poor strategic coordination between the English and the Huguenots. After the violent death of Françoise Vivent in February 1692, Claude Brousson (1647–1698), a Reformed lawyer from Toulouse and the most prominent defender of the Huguenots, decided on a non-violent path for promulgating the Protestant cause. After the end of the Camisard rebellion, representatives of the Church of the Desert joined his opinion. At the fi rst national synod of the renewed church, which took place in mid-May 1726, it was decreed that all pastors and acolytes would henceforth exhort the believers at the conclusion of their secret sermons to swear permanent obedience and devotion to the French king. In any event, it is a critical fact that southern French prophecy was almost never directly linked to the intervention of foreign armies.50 This fact would also play a critical role in the arguments of the Hugue-nots in the second and fi nal thirds of the eighteenth century. In the case of the Bohe-

46 The rapidly growing number of analagous revelations and prophecies in the atmosphere of Christʼs approaching Second Coming led to the Camisard revolt under the leadership of Esprit Séguier, Gédéon Laporte and Abraham Mazel in spring 1702.47 “Ces révoltés ne mettent pas en cause le régime politique et encore moins social du pays. Les cou-pables sont les Messieurs de l’Eglise romaine”. P. JOUTARD, Les Camisards, p. 164.48 The Camisard revolt is traditionally considered to have started with the murder of the abbé de Chayla on 21 July 1702 in Pont-de-Montvert. In the diocese of Mende he was infamous as a cruel tormentor of the nouveaux convertis.49 The idea was partially supplied by the incursion of the armies of the League of Augsburg in 1692 into the country of the Dauphiné. Matthew GLOZIER, Schomberg, Miremont and Huguenot Invasion in France, in: David ONNEKINK (ed.), War and Religion After Westphalia, 1648–1713, Farn-ham 2009, pp. 121–153.50 A rare exception were the prophecies of the prophetess Claire, who predicted in November 1713 that a great gathering would soon take place and that the English would take part in it. The meeting was supposed to take place under a tree that would sprout, grow and bloom in one night. Antoine COURT, Mémoires 1696–1729, Édmond HUGUES (ed.), Toulouse 1885, pp. 54–56.

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mian and Moravian evangelical Protestants from the 1740s on, by contrast, in connec-tion with the incursions of the Prussian, Bavarian and French armies, echoes of hope in the arrival of a foreign liberator appeared in folk literature. As we shall describe below, some descendants of the Bohemian Protestants in the eighteenth century consciously maintained an openly anti-Habsburg message and symbolism.

Now, let us make clear the connection between the phenomenon of French prophecy and the works of the Calvinist theologian Pierre Jurieu (1637–1713).51 A year after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes was announced, Jurieu published in Rotterdam the fi rst part of his two volume work LʼAccomplissement des prophéties, which clearly drew on apocalyptic numerology. In the work he predicted that three and a half years after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes the French Calvinists would be freed from captivity and delivered from their suff ering.

For his three and a half year prophecy, Jurieu was inspired by the widely distributed apocalyptic exegesis drawn from the Book of Revelation. In the eleventh chapter of the Apocalypse, the Beast overcomes and kills the two witnesses, who three and a half days later rise from the dead. In Jurieuʼs interpretation the Beast is a personifi cation of the Catholic Church and the two witnesses represent a small proportion of the true believ-ers, in other words the persecuted Huguenots, who are now sacrifi ced and suff er in hardship so that the rule of Christ on Earth may happen. According to Jurieu, the con-temporaneous decline of the Papacy was the embodiment of the rule of the Antichrist. He came to the conclusion that the majority of his contemporary thinkers had only par-tially interpreted the Apocalypse and had overlooked the fact that many nations in their recent histories had moved away from Catholicism. Jurieu explicitly mentions England, the German protestant states, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Dutch Prov-inces, and part of France. The end of the rule of the Antichrist would therefore come much sooner than other exegetes of the eleventh chapter of the Apocalypse asserted. Jurieuʼs optimistic tone was intended to rouse the Calvinist believers in France and to provide them through “visible signs” of the decline of the Catholic Church certain hope for the impending return of the Saviour. Even though Jurieuʼs prophecy was not fulfi lled in 1689, the impact of his writings, transmitted orally amongst simple believers, was truly enormous and the Camisard prophets were using his interpretation of Apocalypse in a large extent.

In the end, the Camisard prophets did not avoid armed confl ict with secular power. The terror that was unleashed amongst the enemy sides lasted for three whole years and 20,000 well-armed men of the royal army were necessary to fi nally pacify Cévennes and Vivarais. The uprising had two main consequences for the period that followed. Despite the temporary paralysis of underground life caused by the direct persecution of the

51 Jurieu left the Calvinist academy in Sedan in 1683 and emigrated. He taught in Rotterdam where he also published most of his writings aimed against the intolerance of Louis XIVʼs reli-gious policies. See Henriette GOLDWYN, Censure, clandestinité et epistolarité: Les Lettres pastorales de Pierre Jurieu, in: John D. LYON – Cara WELCH (eds.), Le Savoir du XVIIe siècle, Actes Du 34e Congrès Annuel de la North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature, Char-lottesville 2002, pp. 285–294.

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rebels, the Reformed religious practice in France not only survived but even emerged strengthened by the awareness of its collective appearance. Secondly, as a result of the sharp criticism of the uprising by the theologians, consistories and church elders in Switzerland and elsewhere in exile, vital steps were taken towards a doctrinal “rectifi ca-tion” among believers. The fi ght of pastors against the apocalyptic and eschatological vi-sions of the prophets was set as an essential condition for the orderly functioning of the Reformed Church in the kingdom. The conscious distancing of ministers and pastors from these prophetic episodes marked the beginning of the institutionalised renewal of the illegal Reformed Church in France.52 This was primarily instigated by the Cévennes preacher, a later ordained pastor in Geneva, Antoine Court (1696–1760).53

Epilogue to the exile prophecies after the end of the Thirty Years War

After the end of the Thirty Years War, the apocalyptic visions and messages in the mi-lieu of the Bohemian exiles gradually disappeared, although without being completely lost. For example, in 1667 in Žilina a work was published by the Silesian evangelical Jiřík Johannides Frýdecký (1598–1674?) called Dvojí spis učiněný [A Double Tract which has been made].54 The fi rst part of the work is made up of a remarkable prose-poetic composition called Clangor Tubae Diviniae resonans [The Divine Trumpet is Sound-ing], which announced to believers the coming of the divine kingdom. In the authorʼs view, everything is hastening towards its inevitable end: “the day of last judgement shall soon dawn and be upon us”. Frýdecký, like Jurieu, drew attention to the twelve signs of the end of the world which, apart from the moral depravity of humanity, included war, famine, plague, earthquakes, signs in the heavens, and so forth. Frýdeckýʼs vision of the impending arrival of the end of the world was also based largely on biblical prophecies modifi ed to fi t the current state of the world and the church. Similar eschatological impulses, which entered Bohemia from abroad in the 1660s and 1670s, were intended to fi ght against the increasing lukewarm piety among evangelicals. Unfortunately there are few studies and probably little relevant source material that would enable us to

52 Historiography distinguishes between the fi rst phase, the so-called heroic desert church (désert héroïque), established between 1685–1715, and the second period of existence of the illegal, but still fully functioning renewed Calvinist church given the name second désert between 1760–1787.53 The richest source for studying Court are the so-called Papiers Court, deposited in the Bibliothèque universitaire et cantonale de Genève, with a copy in Paris (Société dʼhistoire du protestantisme français). See Hubert BOST – Claude LAURIOL (eds.), Entre Désert et Europe, le pasteur Antoine Court (1695-1760), Paris 1998.54 Dwogj Spis včiněný: 1. Zwuk Trauby Božj zwučjcý, dwanácte Předchůdců, deň Páně poslednj Saud-ný Předcházegjcých, oznamuge, a rychlé skonánj Swěta ohlassuge: 2. Spis gest, O Prawé Poslaupnosti, Včenj Ewangelitského/ Sepsaný a wydany, od Kněze Giřjka Johannydesa Frydeckého, Starssjho, Starožitné z Sstemberka w Zilině: v Jana Dadana, 1667. Jan Malura drew attention to this hitherto little know work: Jan MALURA – Pavel KOSEK (eds.), Čistý plamen lásky. Výběr z písní pobělohor-ských exulantů ze Slezska [The Pure Flame of Love: A Selection of Songs from the Post-White Mountain Exiles of Silesia], Olomouc 2004, pp. 35–37.

18

investigate the actual impact of Frýdeckýʼs tract on emigrants and particularly on evan-gelicals in Bohemia. The relative availability and above all the great popularity of the Žilina texts do however suggest that this work was well received both in exile and among non-Catholics.

This is a suitable place to remind ourselves of the diff erence between the environment of the secret non-Catholics in Bohemia and those in emigrant communities. Exile life in the second half of the seventeenth century unfortunately still remains an inadequately researched topic in historiography. In general, it can be assumed that the descendants of the fi rst wave of emigration, and primarily those of the upper classes, the urban population and the lower nobility (later the rural population too) gradually began to be assimilated into their new environment.55 The original confessional disagreements evidently continued, but taken altogether the exile minority had to go along with the religious practice of the majority church in their respective countries if they wanted to continue to enjoy the protection of the monarch and make use of the religious offi ces of the local priests. We can conclude therefore that eschatological movements, and especially any ecstatic manifestations that might accompany them, were gradually on the decline in the exile communities. This temporary “assimilation” changed again in the fi rst third of the eighteenth century, when the fl ight of ordinary subjects caused by the Counter-Reformation campaign in the period of the Emperor Charles VI and by the growing infl uence of Pietism resulted in the establishment of independent exile colonies at the estates of the Upper Lusatian nobility.56 In the Bohemian lands themselves escha-tological visions may have been preserved just in oral form, but no clear reference to this has come down to historians. The successful progress of re-Catholicisation, together with the confessional heterogeneity of the non-Catholic minority explains to a great extent why Godʼs messengers fell silent.

Eschatological visions and prediction in the Bohemian and French environments in the eighteenth century

Nevertheless, the religiosity of the secret non-Catholics in the eighteenth century, both in Bohemia and in exile, was eschatologically orientated. Studies concerning the reading practices of the Bohemian evangelicals show their great fondness for passages from Revelation. The text of the Apocalypse was well known to and much read by the

55 This was particularly the case for Lutheran centres such as Pirna, Dresden, Meissen, Freiberg, Leipzig, Zittau, Nuremberg or Regensburg. See Alexander SCHUNKA, Gäste, die bleiben. Zuwande-rer in Kursachsen und der Oberlausitz im 17. und frühen 18. Jahrhundert, Münster 2006 (= Plurali-sierung und Autorität, Vol. 7). The assimilation of the Brethren into the towns of Upper Hungary (Púchov, Skalice, Trenčín) was considerably easier.56 Primarily the colonies of Gersdorf, Gros Hennesdorf, Gerlachsheim, Herrnhut and others. See Marie-Élizabeth DUCREUX, Lʼémigration des protestants de Bohême et de Moravie au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècles, Cahiers du CEFRES. N° 31, Contributions à une histoire culturelle germa-no-tchèque en Europe centrale. Un espace à reconstruire, 2011, pp. 53–78.

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evangelicals. In August 1732, only a few days before the outbreak of the Opočno Up-rising, the emigré Jiří Urban (also Urbánek) took part in a night-time gathering at the home of the Slavětín miller Václav Čejka. There was some singing at the meeting and Urban read “for many people” the sixth chapter of the Apocalypse.57 Rudolf Leeb also sees the reason for the eschatological mentality of Austrian Protestants in the persecu-tion and suppression to which the secret Lutherans were exposed. In their religious consciousness the idea of the future coming of the Saviour and his rule in a new chosen land took up an important position.58

Bohemian evangelicals were further inspired by Old Testament fi gures from the books of the prophets, and within the framework of their religious ideas the fi gures of Godʼs messengers and angels also appeared. The non-Catholic wife of Georg Hickel of Kunín on the Moravian-Silesian border recalled an episode from 1727 before her departure into emigration: “Konečně se zeptala jednoho ze svých čeledínů, blaženého bratra Berwiga, který chodíval do shromáždění, co tam dělají. On jí vyprávěl o muži, který tam mluví, že vypadá jako anděl, že tam zpívají, modlí se a čtou bibli a že by ona měla jednou takové shromáždění nechat konat ve svém domě” [She fi nally asked one of her farm workers, the blessed brother Berwig, who went regularly to the gathering, what they do there. He told her about a man who spoke there, how he looked like an angel; that they sing there, pray together and read the Bible, and that she should allow one of these gatherings to take place in her home].59 The fi gure of the angel as Godʼs messenger in its original Hebrew meaning contained within itself both a mystical and a ceremonial character. Angels were traditionally perceived as a medium between God and man and an interpreter of good news. Jesus, in the Bible, especially in his parables, often spoke of angels in relation to their role at the end of the world when the good angels were to become the instrument of Godʼs judgement. The dreamlike vision of the angel, or the sight of the secret preacher who, with his dress and mysterious appearance might remind one of the angel, elevated the gathering to an extraordinary celebratory event.

Non-Catholics and emigrants were not capable of defi ning their faith precisely. Their common enemy remained the Catholic Church, which was frequently seen as the em-bodiment of the Antichrist. The original nuances between the descendants of both Lu-theranism and the Brotherhood had long since disappeared. They could not fi nd the answers to the diffi cult questions of dogma and the problems of confessional identity amongst the clergy so they turned to the Gospel.

Bohemian evangelicals in exile were divided into the so-called oplatníci (wafer eaters, Oblatenmann), who adopted the rules of the Lutheran church, and those “accepting the breaking of bread” (k lámání chleba přistupující), who enjoyed the Calvinist sacrament of breaking bread. They were aware of the antiquity of their Brethren confession and

57 Ivo KOŘÁN, Opočenská rebelie roku 1732 [The Opočno Rebellion of 1732], Acta Musei Regi-naehradecensis, Series B. Scientiae Sociales 12, 1970, pp. 104, 128.58 Rudolf LEEB, Die Zeit des Geheimprotestantismus, Carinthia I , 2000, 190, pp. 249–262.59 Edita ŠTĚŘÍKOVÁ, Jak potůček v jezeře, Moravané v obnovené Jednotě bratrské v 18. století [Like a Brook in a Lake: Moravians in the Renewed Unity of Brethren in the 18th Century], Praha 2009, p. 57.

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thanks to oral tradition, handed on from generation to generation, they sensed that their belief took up a special place in the teachings of the other Reformed churches.60 When reading biblical texts, believers in Bohemia, without regard to the educated clergy, al-lowed themselves a very free and unusual interpretation of the Gospels, and one which often brought forward the millenarian elements.

The ministers of the exile groups and the leading representatives of exile book pro-duction were fully aware of the danger that the “uncontrolled” reading of Scripture by non-Catholics at home and in emigration could bring with it. For this reason, practi-cally all the editions of the Czech language exile Bibles and sections of the Bible were provided with introductions that advised the readers how to use Scripture correctly.61 These introductions were also found in the majority of pre-White Mountain Bibles. Their presence in the exile editions, however, took on a crucial signifi cance. While in the Catholic editions the introductory passages were frequently missing, the forewords of the Halle and Zittau Bibles were supposed to prevent non-orthodox explications; they were a guide to how to read the Bible correctly and interpret it. For example, many Lutheran editions did not contain the Old Testament Apocrypha in new editions of the Bibles in order to prevent popular eschatological interpretations.62 In the eighteenth century these scholarly explanations also served to propagate the confessional milieu from which they came, most often to propagate Saxon Pietism.

Even these eff orts, however, could only defl ect part of the unorthodox interpretations and practices of the believers. Apart from the infl uence of various streams of Protes-tantism the Bohemian non-Catholics were also exposed to the ever-present infl uence of baroque piety, which represented for it on the one hand many negative elements and, at the same time, off ered a multitude of attractive aspects.63 It is probable that the inward forms of Baroque piety, i.e. primarily fervent prayer and the reading of religiously in-structive literature were at a level that was, in a sense, “beyond” the confessional. So it is possible, albeit with care, to interpret the testimony of the blacksmith Jan Kropáček from Podmokly by Čáslav, who emigrated to Zittau in 1763. In Kropáček’s Lebenslauf

60 As M.-E Ducreux emphasised, there are many aspects that suggest that the preservation of evangelical principles was defi nitely not just an issue of intellectuals, but more a question of tra-dition or ancestral belief. See M.-E. DUCREUX, Čtení a vztah ke knihám u podezřelých z kacířství v Čechách 18. století [Reading and the Relationship to Books among the Suspected of Heresy in the 18th-century Bohemia], Acta Universitatis Carolinae: Historia Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis 32, 1992, Nos. 1–2, pp. 51–57.61 More on this in Z. R. NEŠPOR, Bible českých exulantů a tajných nekatolíků v 18. století [The Bibles of Bohemian Exiles and Secret Non-Catholics in the 18th Century], Religio XIII, 2005, 2, pp. 231–258.62 Slovak Lutheran printers at the beginning of the 18th century, for example, deliberately pu-blished in Czech only some parts of the Bible, in particular the Gospel and epistles, not the Apocalypse. Ibid, pp. 240, 256.63 Zdeněk KALISTA, Česká barokní pouť. K religiozitě českého lidu v době barokní [The Bohemian Baroque Pilgrimage: On the Religiosity of the Bohemian People in the Baroque Period], Žďár nad Sázavou 2001; Jan ROYT – Vladimír HRUBÝ – Karel OTČENÁŠEK, Lidová zbožnost ve východních Čechách a v Kladsku [Popular Piety in Eastern Bohemia and Kladsko], Náchod 1997.

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we can read how his parents concealed their evangelical faith and how out of fear they sent their children to Catholic school. At home, however, they read evangelical books and the notorious heretic, the farmer Bečan, was a frequent guest in the smithy. Young Jan, very confused by all these spiritual stimuli in his surroundings, asked his parents one day whether they should not all join the Jesuit confraternity in nearby Jeníkov in order to be saved.64 We do not know whether they actually took this step. At eighteen, however, Kropáček began to meet non-Catholics in his surroundings and to listen to them, because “ačkoli jsem byl v modlení neúnavný a v mé zbožnosti vytrvalý, nic mi nepo-mohlo” [although I prayed tirelessly and persisted in my piety, nothing helped me].65

Was it possible to limit the growing religious heterogeneity and lack of doctrinal clarity that was caused by the absence of clergy, and that intensifi ed the infl uence of the attractive baroque Catholic piety even further? However, the spiritual world of Bo-hemian evangelicals received a new impulse in the form of Saxon Pietism, augmented by the founding of a renewed Unity of Brethren in June 1722 in Herrnhut in Lusatia. Pietism brought to Bohemia and Moravia a wave of reform, deeply infl uenced by a modifi ed form of millenarianism.66 The Pietists asserted the principle of experienced faith, meaning that they believed in listening to one’s internal voice. They emphasized quiet worship, internal refl ection, and on the other hand they declared open respect to female piety. An important point for the believer was his emphasis on self-questioning, which led to a form of a certain moral asceticism that drew traditionally on Old Testa-ment symbols and images.

Ideas enriched by eschatological notions emerged in their thinking both in the con-text of a new spiritual impulse and when believers were exposed to persecution or the torments of war. The hope of non-Catholics could turn again to the vision of the com-ing of a foreign liberating army and mix it with ideas of the imminent Day of Judge-ment. After the signing of the Treaty of Altranstädt on 1 September 1707, evangelicals briefl y considered the prospect of political intervention by the Swedish king. Charles XII emerged in connection with his successes in the so-called Northern War as a guar-antor of the Peace of Westphalia for the Silesian principality. Additional peace churches (Friedenskirchen) were built in Silesia on the basis of the Treaty, the most important was the Těšín (Teschen) church. Of course, there was no intervention or intercession on behalf of the Bohemian and Moravian non-Catholics. It does seem, however, that the following generation of believers, and especially the folk exegetes of the Gospel, never quite gave up on the idea of the coming of an army from a Protestant ally.

On 29 January 1726, Charles VI issued a fi erce patent against non-Catholics, setting strict punishments from forced labour to galley service and ultimately the death penalty. It was precisely in relation to this increasing re-Catholicisation that we can give a prob-

64 Edita ŠTĚŘÍKOVÁ, Běh života českých emigrantů v Berlíně v 18. století [The Lives of Bohemia Emigrants in Berlin in the 18th Century], Praha 1999, p. 38165 Ibid.66 This chiliasmus subtilis drew primarily from the work of Jakob Böhme, Johann Heinrich Al-sted and Philipp Jacob Spener. For more see e.g. Johannes WALLMANN, Philipp Jakob Spener und die Anfänge des Pietismus, Tübingen 1970.

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able interpretation of the following case. On 9 June 1727, Jan Horníček of Křižanov was questioned on suspicion that on the 28 May, from nine in the morning until midday, he had taken part in a secret Lutheran meeting right inside the Křižanov town hall. During Horníček’s interrogation he confessed that he had been led to the meeting by a drifter, Jan Rochus of Martinic by Velké Meziříčí, who sold religious books. Evidently he stated that the Swedish would soon arrive in Moravia and “u koho takové knihy se najdú, tomu dobře bude” [whoever is found with books like this will be safe]”.67 Distant memories of the Swedish army pillaging Moravia had probably circulated orally in the form of diverse folk songs. These mixed together elements from natural disasters, plague, divine intervention and miracles with events handed down from the past. Belief that the life would be saved of anyone who owned and read the “correct” books illustrates the idea of faith saving people from evil forces from another world. The pseudo-prophecy of the Meziříčí drifter might be considered to be a vaguely conceived eschatological message or, rather, warning. Just as in the Revelation the servants of God were to be saved – those on whose forehead the angel put his seal (Rev. 7:3), so the Saviour was to save a handful of the chosen when the Swedish army invaded Moravia.

Towards the end of 1746 the missionary Father Jan František Dobřínovský, discov-ered a large number of people suspected of heresy in Městec Králové and the surround-ing area. Their interrogations revealed not only the concealing of non-Catholic books but also the participation in meetings between neighbours with Biblical exegesis. The missionary was particularly infuriated by the blasphemous remarks about Catholic priests.68 The detailed investigations dragged out for several months. On 4 February 1747 twenty-fi ve-year-old Václav Řeháček was questioned since he had been denounced as hiding two heretical books in his bed and that he had met with the emissary Jan Houžvička (proseripti emisari) from Poděbrady. The most serious point of the charge, however, was the fact that Řeháček had previously taken part in meetings and had made strange prophetic pronouncements about priests: “Co jste před dvěma léty mluvil u Jana Jandivůrka o knězích? Pravil jsem, že knězi ujíždějí a že jsem slyšel, že by málo který kněz měl zůstat v Čechách.” [What did you say two years ago at the home of Jan Jandivůrek about the priesthood? I said that the priests were leaving quickly and that I had heard that few priests were to remain in Bohemia].”69 From the missionary’s next questions we learn that Řeháček was himself the author of a strange prognostic vision: “Diť jste vy měl říci: že ani jeden kněz se více nespatří po roce v Čechách. Vy jste pravil, že vám to Písmo povídá.” [But it was you who was to say that not a single priest would be seen in Bohemia after a year. You said that the Gospel told you so]. Investigation further revealed that if Řeháček’s visions did not come true within a year, he gave his neighbours the right to dis-credit him and call him a liar. Another witness, Jan Jandivůrek, pointed Václav Melich-

67 Gustav Adolf SKALSKÝ, Z dějin české emigrace [From the History of the Bohemian Emigra-tion], Chotěboř 1911, p. 50.68 Státní Okresní Archiv Hradec Králové (SOkA) f. Biskupská Konzistoř, k. 44 – výslech Václava Lomendy z 7. 9. 1746 [Archive of Hradec Králové, the fund of Bishop’s Consistory, Box 44 – in-terrogation of Václav Lomenda of 7 September 1746], fol. 77.69 Ibid. – výslech Václava Řeháčka z 4. 2. 1747 (Interrogation of Václav Řeháček of 4 February 1747), f°90.

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ar, who had already been under arrest in Kutná Hora, as the author of the blasphemous words. When Jandivůrek had talked with Melichar one time about the Brandenburg war, Melichar had apparently said that the Swedish army would arrive within one year and before the year was out there would not be any more priests left in Bohemia because the Gospel had said so.70 The important thing is that Melichar also confi rmed that Řeháček “pravil, že prej nám to Písmo povídá” [said that Scripture told us so]. Melichar apparently nicknamed Řeháček “Mollerda”, “podle tý knížky Martina Mollera, že věří Mollerdu” [af-ter that book by Martin Moller, that he believed Mollerda]. The pre-White Mountain Saxon priest, poet and mystic Martin Moller, who died in Görlitz in Lusatia in 1606, was the author of a series of titles of devotional literature. Moller is sometimes considered to be a forerunner of Johann Arndt. Moller’s book Manuale de Praeparatione ad mortem was so popular that it was republished in Czech in 1727 in Halle.

The response to the Silesian wars appears abundantly in Bohemain and Moravian folk song and prose. These compositions, highly varied in content and genre, contain remembrances of and allusions to individual battles, the occupation of towns and the Prussian requisition of cattle and grain that went along with those things. These are often historical anecdotes told from a local point of view.71 The inhabitants of Bohemia, whether Catholics or non-Catholics, had to endure during these wars hardships linked with having the imperial or Prussian armies billeted in their homes. The evangelicals’ only advantage was that the Prussian soldiers were accompanied by distributors of reli-gious, primarily Pietist-orientated books. There is no doubt that the well-founded fears at that time of the takeover and ransacking of monasteries and parishes forced Catholic priests to leave their ecclesiastical properties temporarily.72 But Řeháček embellished this fact with an apparent quotation from the Gospels about the exodus of bad priests from Bohemia. He also imagined the Swedish army in addition to the real threat from the Brandenburg forces.

At the same time, the statements of all three men did not demonstrate a real mille-narian message because they did not disseminate an eschatological portent of the fi nal judgement in the true sense of the word. The suspected heretics also did not experience any specifi c physical conditions analogous to those shown by the seventeenth century vi-sionaries. There is no evidence that these men had any followers who would follow them in their wonder-working. On the other hand, similar statements about the imminent end of priests in Bohemia were not a unique phenomenon amongst secret non-Catholics during the century. They certainly refl ected the day to day suff ering of the populace

70 Ibid. – výslech Václava Řeháčka z 4. 2. 1747, f°85.71 Jiří FIALA, Dobové české a slovenské refl exe slezských válek [The Czech and Slovak Period Re-sponse to the Silesian Wars], Olomouc 2001.72 Ondřej Lukavský, a teacher in Skuhrov nad Bělou, left a folk chronicle for the years 1739–1773. He described, amongst other things, how on 4 July 1758 the Austrian army reached Litomyšl and how it was followed by the Brandenburg army ransacking the countryside. The author also em-phasised that on this occasion the clergy fl ed, wishing to conceal their true identity under these circumstances. “It came to the prophecy of a blind young man [originally from the 14th century] that the lord would exchange with his subject, and the priest would exchange with a beggar their fi ne clothes for wretched and torn cloth.” Ibid, p. 17.

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against the background of military tumults, but probably also the persistent religious imagination of the believers. In any case it is interesting how far the unclear but still living recollection of the army of the north could go, and at the same time how much authority the Bible had, although of course this did not in any way rule out its misuse.

The hopes invested in Sweden continued in Bohemia until later too. In the second half of the century a new prophetic vision appeared amongst non-Catholics with a motif of the herald of Judgement Day; these were the so-called Marokán songs. One of them from the end of the eighteenth century introduced the Swedish king as one of the lib-erators of the believers in Bohemia and Moravia. In individual preserved manuscripts the character of King Marokán, Marukán or Marokus, arriving from the East, played diff ering roles. Nevertheless, he was always associated with the proclamation of the approaching Last Judgement. In some types of these songs King Marokán challenged European rulers to make religious reforms.73 The ethnologist Petr Janeček has shown that these eschatological songs always have a concluding, moralising character, which adjures individual improvement. At the same time there is also strong criticism of the Catholic Church that draws on Old Testament symbolism. Just as in the revelations of the Languedoc visionaries inspired by the writings of Pierre Jurieu, the Catholic Church is described in the Hundred Verse Song about King Marokán74 as a Babylon that must be overthrown in order for the world to purify itself of sin and decay.

A common trait to the preserved Marokán songs is their syncretism. Careful com-parison has shown the way they transformed, including the way they incorporate events of the time. It must also be stressed that folk songs on the theme of the Last Judgement and the last days of mankind that drew thematically on the Book of Revelation are found both in Protestant and Catholic song collections. In other words, they circulated regardless of the confessional allegiance of the believers.75

Of course, the Bohemian non-Catholics did not only seek support from the Swed-ish king, who from a Central European perspective was now ever further away. In the second half of the eighteenth century non-Catholics looked to the king of Prussia with a fresh hope. The newly crowned Friedrich II did not just cast doubt on Maria The-resa’s hereditary rights to Silesia, which he invaded in December 1740, but he also of-fered asylum to the Protestants and the Bohemian non-Catholics there in order so that

73 Petr JANEČEK, Eschatologická a profétická motivika ve folkloru českých zemí v 2. polovině 18. sto-letí a na počátku 19. století. Písně o králi Marokánovi [Eschatological and Prophetic Motifs in the Folklore of Bohemia and Moravia in the Second Half of the 18th and Beginning of the 19th

Centuries: Songs of King Marokán], Český lid 93, 2006, 2, p. 154.74 Josef TOTŮŠEK, Marokánská píseň z pohoří českomoravského [The Marokán Song in the Czech-Moravian Hills], Časopis historický 2, 1882, pp. 68–70. Josef DOBIÁŠ, Stoveršová píseň z rukopisu Matěje Zemana, výměnkáře v Źivanicích [The Hundred Verse Song from the Ma-nuscript of Matěj Zeman, a retired farmer in Živanice], Časopis historický 2, 1882, pp. 71–75.75 In Janeček’s view the song Rozjímání o Posledním soudu [A Meditation on the Last Judge-ment], written down in 1727 by Antonín Koniáš, was probably one of the fi rst sources of this thematic line in Catholic song-books. Amongst non-Catholic recipients Elsner’s song-book, pub-lished in Berlin in 1753, probably had a similar impact. See JANEČEK, Eschatologická a profétická motivika, p. 157.

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they would support the colonisation of both principalities. He was willing to give new land to hard-working emigrants and temporarily to waive tax payments.76 In the spring of 1741, the Prussian king launched an assault on Bohemia. Wherever the Prussian army had been present in the spring and summer the euphoria reached its maximum. Many believed, albeit temporarily, that they might hope for the return of the evangelical preachers, or even for the restitution of their old churches. The idea of the arrival and assistance of King Bedřich (Friedrich) in all probability merged with a vague recollec-tion of Friedrich, Elector Palatine. Current political reality stirred up the beginnings of the idea of “Good King Friedrich”. It was probably at this moment that gave birth to the new eschatological visions that spread through oral tradition during the 1740s. Some folk evangelical predictions began to see Friedrich Wilhelm, and in particular his son Friedrich the Great, as liberators capable of returning religious tolerance to Bohemia. This narrative was intensifi ed by ideas of the King-Host from Jesus’s parables.77

Right at the end of the pre-Toleration period, in the context of the prelude to the War of Bavarian Succession, a prophetic vision stirred amongst non-Catholics that proph-esied the coming of King Friedrich to Bohemia and Moravia who would invade with his army and return to the evangelicals their Bohemian faith. The expectation was high especially in the region of Wallachia at the end of 1777. The closer the enemy army from Silesia got, the greater was the joy.78 Local evangelicals began to journey to Těšín in considerable number for evangelical services. By spring 1777, an open movement of lo-cal non-Catholics had come to the surface and they began to proclaim their evangelical faith and to organise regular, practically public gatherings.79 Many believers, moreover, were reassured by the local preachers during the services in the Těšín church that they would soon see the free practice of their religion. The rumour that there would soon be freedom of religion for the evangelicals, spread simultaneously by three missionaries in the region, further supported the situation of mixed hope and uncertainty and led to a number of visions in Wallachia region.

At the end of May 1778, two daughters of Mayor Štěpán Adámek, known as Kamas, from Malá Lhota near Valašské Meziříčí, saw in the cliff s a strange radiance in the sky, in the middle of which the “Herald of God” on a white horse. He prophesied to them of

76 Edita ŠTĚŘÍKOVÁ, Pozvání do Slezska: vznik prvních českých emigrantských kolonií v 18. století v pruském Slezsku [An Invitation to Silesia: The Establishment of the First Bohemian Emigrant Colonies in Prussian Silesia in the 18th Century], Praha 2001, pp. 5f.77 Karel ANDERLE, Z roboty ducha ke svobodě. Tři obrazy z dějin prvního českého tolerančního sboru evangelického Krouny a evangelického živlu na bývalém panství Rychmburském [From the Toil of the Soul to Freedom. Three Pictures from the History of the First Bohemian post-1781 Evangeli-cal Congregation in Krouna and of the Evangelical Element in the Former Rychmburg Estate], Pardubice 1931, p. 16.78 František BEDNÁŘ, Zápas moravských evangelíků o náboženskou svobodu v letech 1777–1781 [The Struggle of the Moravian Evangelicals for Religious Freedom from 1777-1781], Praha 1931, p. 115.79 From June 1777 to March 1780, over 70 prayer meetings were recorded in the protocols of the delegated mixed court in Brno, which was set up as a special religious-court commission in which the Provost Jan Leopold Hay served. Ibid, pp. 10–11.

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the war and suff ering that were to come, and he said that the Catholic religion is good but that the evangelical religion must not be repudiated.80 He also spoke of the prayer from Arndt’s book on the Resurrection of Jesus, which was supposed to be the best way to temper God’s anger.81 The same vision appeared to some children looking after cows in “Lhotka”. The news of this revelation spread quickly and crowds of people came to the village from the surrounding area; on Sundays prayers and services took place where the vision had been seen. These strange revelations culminated on Friday 10 July 1778. Twenty-year old Rózina Palušková of Růžďka, who was feeding her cows and reciting the Lord’s Prayer, saw in the doorway of the barn three little boys with halos, the middle one of whom sat on a white horse. The boy on the horse apparently held a metal rod and quietly asked the girl “Proč vy se nepolepšujete?” [Why are you not reforming your-selves?] Rózina was to spread these words to all around her, which she did. That night many people gathered at her house and until midnight she spoke several times with this herald of the Lord before them. She always heard from him only the reprimand that the believers must repent. Naturally, the whole business was soon put a stop to. At the instigation of the then Provost of Mikulov, Jan Leopold Hay, Rózina, together with the daughters of Mayor Adámek, were arrested and sent by the authorities to Uherské Hradiště for questioning. The revelations around Malá Lhota stopped with their arrest.

Just as in Městec Králové, the matter of the revelations near Valašské Meziříčí was linked with wartime events. The renewal of eschatological visions in the eighteenth century appeared in parallel in the Bohemian exile communities in Silesia. Here, the milennarian visions could easily thrive given the isolation of the new emigrant centres and insuffi cient vigilance on the part of the local church administration. Bohemian emigrants found themselves not only in a position of great poverty but also of spiritual torment. The elders of the Silesian church were reluctant to provide them with a Czech speaking minister willing to serve them communion under both kinds according to the Brethren’s way of breaking bread. In the second half of 1744 there arose amongst the exiles in the district of Chechlau82 a group which believed in the imminent end of the world and the return of Christ on Earth. One of these men, later sentenced as a sectar-ian, was Václav Křeček, originally from Lípa in the Smiřický estates. In Münstenberg, the minister for the Bohemian colony was the Polish Calvinist priest of Czech origin Václav Blanický (1720–1774), who had only been in service since 19 June 1744. His succession to the role was notable both by the lack of trust of the local brethren, used to Jan Liberda’s (1700–1742) preaching, and also by the repercussions of the sectarian activities of the Chechlau settlers. Blanický later wrote of Křeček’s delirium in a very authentic way in his work Geschichte in Schlesien etablieren Hussiten.83 Křeček evidently

80 Ibid., p. 119.81 The most important prayer book by Johann Arndt, Vier Bücher vom wahren Christentum, was, by the initiative of Heinrych Milde, translated again into Czech and published in 1723 in Halle.82 Chechlau, now Świerklaniec in Poland.83 This manuscript, completed in 1763 in Königsberg was never published and today is preserved in the estate of Blanický’s Swiss friend Simmler of Zürich (Zürich Zentralbibliothek Manuscript S.294). An edition was recently made available: Ditmar KÜHNE (ed.), Wenzeslaus Blanitzky, Ge-schichte in Schlesien etablieren Hussiten, Kulmbach 2001.

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in his ecstatic condition lay in his room on the fl oor sweating with his eyes glazed over. Afterwards he spoke with angels and then immediately with demons. He walked back and forth around the room, jumped and danced as though he had taken leave of his senses. Finally, in Blanický’s presence, he predicted that the Final Judgement would come within six weeks and that the Czechs from Tarnowiec would be taken up into heaven where the whole of mankind would be judged.84

In reality, Křeček was a follower of Štěpán Hajcman (Heitzmann), who gathered about thirty people around himself on his farm in Chechlau.85 Hajcman announced that the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ and God the Father were speaking through him. Many emigrants fell under his infl uence, mostly his direct relatives, however many others re-nounced him from the very beginning. The group took part in various fasts and inten-sive prayers which sometimes lasted whole night and were accompanied by ever more frequent ecstasies that were called “the exaltation of the Spirit” and “holy simplicity”, or “a conversation with God and his angels”.86 Hajcman’s campaign was very intensive and suggestive. He condemned everyone who did not stick with him. He called himself God’s prophet, whom everyone must obey. He raised his two closest fellow workers to be called the Son and the Holy Spirit. They sat together at the table in their gatherings and called this the “angelic supper”. In the middle of October 1744 the sectarians in-formed their Silesian landlord, Count Carl Erdman Henkel von Donnersmack87 that the Day of Judgement was coming and that they would be taken up to Paradise very soon. So they herded all their cattle onto the Count’s estate and handed over a collection of 200 tolars with the stipulation that they requested the Count to build a church for future colonists in Chechlau which they themselves did not have. They also announced that they needed nothing else and that they would prepare themselves with prayers and songs for the fi nal moments. However, Count Henkel took fi rm steps against the cult and especially its leader, and the majority of the sectarians were imprisoned in Breslau. This, however, did not change the fact that Hajcman’s sectarianism damaged the reputa-tion of the Bohemian emigrants and aggravated the unwillingness of the local church authorities to support them.

The emergence of the sect in the Chechlau colony has no equivalent amongst the Languedoc Huguenots who emigrated during the eighteenth century to the Calvinist centres of the Swiss cantons. The reason is clear: in Switzerland, Reformed emigrants were under the control and care of the local orthodox Calvinist clergy. Their new home meant for them a safe place of spiritual asylum. The French emigrants viewed the Swiss consistories that had accepted them into their congregations in a rather positive light. Hajcman’s cult, in contrast, was the consequence of inadequate spiritual care for the

84 E. ŠTĚŘÍKOVÁ, Pozvání do Slezska, p. 86.85 Blanický noted down once again Křeček’s ecstasy in which he predicted the impending arrival of the Day of Judgement and invoked the book of the prophet Amos. In this book, Amos con-demned the surrounding nations, one after another, for their crimes, and even in the end Israel itself, which would also not escape God’s judgment over the whole of Canaan. Ibid., p. 57.86 Ibid., pp. 86f.87 The Henkels were Lutherans leaning to Pietism, resident in Oderberg (today St. Bohmín) on the border between Prussia and Silesia.

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believers. At the same time it arose as a result of the fear of the ever present soldiery in the context of the Wars for the Austrian Succession. Apart from the Judaist cult that appeared repeatedly in the region Novobydžovsko in the years 1740–1747, 1748–1751 and 1771–1775,88 in the pre-Toleration period there were practically no other serious sectarian cults of an eschatological character in Bohemian lands. The radical Protestant sects really began to arise when the believers began to be aware of their group identity in confrontation with the tolerated confessions after 1781 into whose structures they were unable to fi t themselves.

From prophecy to sect… From sect to church?

Let us now return to the initial idea from the historian Hubert Bost’s study. Bost described the development of the Huguenots in the eighteenth century as a successful transition from a sect to a church.89 In order for the French Huguenots to legitimise their existence in the kingdom they fi rst had to repudiate their sectarian, Camisard past. The Dutch and Swiss churches in particular had a very negative view of prophecy. Lead-ing theologians and pastors such as Pierre Bayle, Élie Saurin, Élie Merlat or the lawyer Henri Basnage de Beauval viewed prophecy as an unwanted deviation from traditional dogma and even as a moral stain on Huguenot religion. As Bost makes clear, after the conclusion of the Camisard rebellion it was the clear aim of domestic illegal preachers to get rid once and for all before the court and before the foreign church hierarchy of the accusation of sectarianism and rebellion. The eff orts of the pastor Antoine Court and his fellow workers were eventually successful. After 1715, Cévennes prophecies were strictly condemned by the reviving Reformed synods. Between 1720 and 1723, however, Court had to intervene decisively once again, together with other pastors, against the cult of multipliants.

The founder of this sect with milennarian elements was the Huguenot Anne Ver-chant, born Robert of Montpellier.90 She founded this group based on the expectation

88 Sometime around 1740 around 80 families appeared in Novobydžovsko that converted to the Jewish faith. This was based on the conviction that the Catholic faith would die out and that the Jewish would take over. The Judaists rejected the New Testament and believed that the coming of the Messiah was still ahead. They treated Saturdays as holy and refused to eat pork. As Ivo Kořán has shown in his study, the proselytism of the Novobydžovsko rabbis undoubtedly played a major role in the rise of this sect. Ivo KOŘÁN, Novobydžovská židovská sekta od tereziánských po-prav k josefínským deportacím [The Novobydžovsko Jewish Sect from the Theresian Executions to the Josephine Deportations], in: VÁCLAV PETRBOK – RADEK LUNGA – JAN TYDLITÁT (eds.), Vý-chodočeská duchovní a slovesná kultura v 18. století [East Bohemian Spiritual and Written Culture in the 18th Century], Boskovice 1999, pp. 372–382.89 Hubert BOST, De la secte à lʼEglise, pp. 53–68.90 Hubert BOST, Remarques historiographiques sur les “Multipliants” de Montpellier, in: Joël FOUIL-LERON – Henri MICHEL (eds.), Mélanges à la mémoire de Michel Péronnet, Vol. 2, La Réforme, Montpellier 2003, pp. 237–251; Daniel VIDAL, Le malheur et son prophète: inspirés et sectaires en Languedoc calviniste (1685–1725), Paris 1983.

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of the Second Coming of Jesus on Earth. At the end of 1722 the members of the sect gave their community the name Nouvelle création du monde, du second avenèment de Jésus-Christ par son Son-Esprit. A further off shoot of the sect arose in the town of Lunel. It all began with Anne’s curative journey to Cévénnes at some point towards the end of 1719. On one of her walks in the area around the village of Saint-André-de-Vallborgne she had a following vision. The sky in front of her suddenly opened and out of it stepped a man in white and stood behind a pulpit covered in a white cloth. On his left side an angel stood who blew on God’s trumpet, and on his right side rested a second angel who held a laurel wreath in his hand.91 After this revelation Anna returned to Montpel-lier, where she decided to give over her life entirely to God. In her home in the rue des Multipliants she gathered around herself a small group of men and women who decided they would live in seclusion and create a completely closed religious society.

The fi rst fl oor of Anna Robert-Verchand’s house was converted into a strange kind of sanctuary. It was made up of a large rectangular hall that was a substitute for a cathedral nave, with the ceiling covered by a white cloth. Benches and a pulpit stood in the hall and the room was completed with some strange furniture with Old Testament symbols including an image of Moses holding the Ten Commandments. In the middle of the next hall an enormous laurel tree was situated that reached the roof; several white lamps hung from it. Apart from two wooden trumpets, the cupboards along the wall contained some special head-covers for members of the sect and many documents written in an incomprehensible language. In March 1720 the leader of the newly formed church was named: Jacob Bonicel, the son of converted parents, who had previously been a student in the Catholic seminary of Mende. The group members called him “the royal sacrifi -cer” (royal sacrifi cateur). In 1722 Bonicel married Anne Robert. There were also other marriages within the sect, which soon generated much public uproar and rumours of polygamy, which allegedly was common in the sect. According to preserved specifi c birth certifi cates the historian Daniel Vidal has estimated the number of sect’s members as 327 people. Everyone who wanted to join the group had to take part in an initiation ceremony and be baptised again. The majority of sectarians came from Montpellier or Lunel. Members were recruited overhwelmingly from well-off trading Protestant fami-lies, which was signifi cantly diff erent from the Camisard movement. Members of the group also created their own language which was an imitation of church Latin and He-brew, and they composed their own religious songs in this language.

The three-year secret activity of this eschatological sect and its unusual way of life did not escape the attention of the local authorities. On Saturday 6 March 1723 an armed attack against the sect took place. The imprisoned sectarians were tried quickly and strictly. Four of the fi fteen spiritual leaders in captivity, including Bonicel, were sen-tenced to death and on 22 April 1723 they were publicly hung in Montpellier. The other male captives were sentenced to the galleys, while the women, including Anna Robert, were sentenced to life imprisonment in Tour de Constance.

91 Daniel VIDAL, La secte contre le prophétisme: les Multipliants de Montpellier (1719–1723), Annales. Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 37, 1982, No. 4, p. 801.

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An important fact is that in January 1722 three Calvinist pastors joined the group, including the problematic Jean Vesson from the Cros district who, as a result of his schismatic opinions, had repeatedly been removed from his offi ce (February 1718 and December 1720) by the Lower Languedoc synod and forbidden to practice.92 This min-ister was, until 1715, an active participant in the secret Cévénnes prophetic gatherings. He became a great adept of “internal enlightenment” and very obstinately resisted a return to the original Calvinist dogma that Antoine Court had disseminated. Therefore, the intendant’s decisive strike against the sect was in fact confi rmed by the members of the Reformed Languedoc synod themselves. Even though the multipliants strove to achieve a certain form of perfection and repentence, its adherents were eventually sen-tenced not just by the Languedoc authorities, but also by the Protestant ecclesistical hierarchy itself.

This local and very specifi c episode threw a poor light on the whole community of Reformed congregations in Languedoc. For this reason Antoine Court, working togeth-er mostly with Pierre Corteize and Pierre Durand, made great eff orts to propagate and strengthen the original Calvinist dogma amongst pastors and the believers. Their eff orts were aided both by ordained graduates of the Lausanne seminary mentioned above, and by regular meetings of representatives of the Reformed Languedoc synod and the print-ing of older and new spiritual educational literature. Their eff orts bore their fi rst fruit at the end of the 1730s and beginning of the 1740s. In 1744 the fi rst renewed national synod of the French illegal Reformed Church took place, and after this date the original Calvinist orthodoxy was enforced in the majority of renewed congregations.

However, eschatological expectations did not entirely disappear from the Protestant milieu and it lasted throughout the eighteenth century, albeit now in the form of folk elegies sung during secret meetings93 or even in the sermons of respected pastors. For example pastor Paul Rabaut (1718–1794) more than once indulged himself in apocalyp-tic numerology, predicting the impending renewal of the shepherd’s fl ock.94 Neverthe-less, the Multipliants sect and other schismatics inside the Desert Church95 resulted in the fi nal decline of eschatological ideas and sectarianism. The situation in Bohemia, as is well-known, was quite diff erent.

92 Edmond HUGUES, Les synodes du Désert, actes et règlement des synodes nationaux et provin-ciaux, Vol. 1, Paris 1885, pp. 12–14, 19–21.93 P. JOUTARD, Les Camisards, pp. 242–250.94 “Nous avons donc lieu d’espérer que Dieu rétablira nos troupeaux […] Il lui [à Antéchrist] a été donné 1260 ans pour faire la guerre aux saints et pour les vaincre. Or sans vouloir entreprendre de fi xer le commencement précis de cette époque, il est certain que la fi n des 1260 ans ne peut être fort éloignée”. From a sermon by Paul Rabaut, quoted in P. JOUTARD, Les Camisards, p. 246.95 There were regular attempts by pastors to move away from the orthodox position of the Desert Church in 1733, 1743, 1747, 1749 etc. For example, there was an important schism that broke out amongst representative of the Desert Church and the Lower Languedoc minister Jacques Boyer in September 1731 that lasted until 1744. E. HUGUES, Les synodes du Désert, pp. 112f.

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Conclusion

Let us now summarise how great was the impact of non-orthodox religious prac-tice and the diverse prophetic movements and sects on the formation of the image of the Protestant minority in society. The surviving secret religious practices of illegal Protestant communities both in Bohemia and in France were not fi rmly and lastingly anchored in a doctrinal and institutional framework. In both cases, the eschatological movements and sects described above further contributed to the weakening of offi cial dogma. It is true that in the short term they often meant a “revival” of declining religios-ity and, similarly to the strong infl uence of Pietism, they led to the reactivation of the underground movement. On the other hand, they were also a deviation from the original orthodox practices of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This was seen as very negative primarily by the representatives of the church in exile.

In their initial phases of development the Bohemian and French cases were not sub-stantially diff erent. The fundamental diff erence appeared in the mid-1720s when the renewing Languedoc congregations of the Église du désert began an active and continual struggle for the renewal of original dogmatic practice. By contrast, neither non-Catho-lics in Bohemia, nor in exile manage to gain support and fi nancial help from the exile ecclesiastical institutions to found some establishment for education of future acolytes and priests for missions to Bohemia.96 Non-Catholics in Bohemia and Moravia were not suffi ciently organised and their multi-confessional character was a clear obstacle in forming a unifi ed strategy. In the Bohemian environment there also was no individual who, in a similar way to Antoine Court, would fi ght systematically against the relaxa-tion of Protestant doctrine. Naturally there were some eff orts to strengthen doctrine, for example by the Silesian, Pietist-orientated preacher Jan Liberda (1700–1742), or the important initiatives by German and Czech printers (Heinrich Milde, 1676–1739 in Halle, and Václav Kleych, 1678–1737 in Zittau) and editors of religious books, who published the Bible and catechisms with the orthodox introductions.

For Bohemian non-Catholics, the uncertain confessional identity that held sway among them during the seventeenth century intensifi ed their sympathy for eschatologi-cal ideas. The believers preserved for a generation the distant legacy of their Hussite or Brethren roots. At the same time, they drew their doctrinal ideas from books. Apart from the pre-White-Mountain texts they used the more accessible post-White Mountain exile books more and more frequently. In the overwhelming majority of cases, though, they did not distinguish between the Lutheran, Brethren and Calvinist editions. The Pi-etist infl uences that permeated Bohemia and Moravia at the end of the fi rst third of the eighteenth century accumulated on top of the already signifi cantly unclear confessional identity of the evangelicals. In the second third of the eighteenth century, the religious practice of evangelicals in their domestic circle defi nitively transferred themselves to the lay commentators on the Scriptures. Rather than representing a specifi c confes-

96 One exception was the attempt by the Hungarian preacher of Slovak origin, Georg Petermann, who between 1735 and 1737 ran a seminary in Berlin in which he taught gifted Bohemian boys with the prospect of subsequent theological study. See E. ŠTĚŘÍKOVÁ, Běh života, p. 232-235.

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sion, these emissaries were spokesmen for individual communities of believers in Berlin, Ochranov and Münsterberg, to mention just the most important of them. This enabled them to have a kind of extra-confessional position of tolerance towards other creeds, but at the same time it led to a theological exclusivity and to a later sectarian self-def-inition.97 Apart from books and the infrequent sermons of the ministers, Bohemian non-Catholics did not have any fi rm doctrinal foundations. The Saxon, Lusatian and Silesian clergymen from Bohemian exile congregations had great diffi culty obtaining the institutional support on the part of their ecclesiastical authorities. Therefore they could hardly try to renew the illegal but functioning consistorial network in Bohemia.

The elders of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches in Dresden, Breslau, Berlin and Halle looked critically on the exiles who claimed to be the descendants of the Hussites and Czech Brethren and who demanded of their priests in exile that they administer communion under both kinds and breaking of bread. They were also alarmed by the unusually rapid growth of applicants for life in Herrnhut. Evangelicals at home and in exile greatly enjoyed listening to exegesis of Scripture and to a wide variety of sermons. They were grateful for the erudite explanations of a preacher but they still longed for their own instruction and contemplation. The obstinate insistence on their own inter-pretation of the Bible and their generally critical attitudes towards the pastors given to them in the exile centres led to numerous misunderstandings, and quite often serious confl icts.98

In the words of Hubert Bost, the transition from a “sect” to a church was not suc-cessful for the Bohemian evangelicals. From the outset Bohemian non-Catholics found themselves in a disadvantaged, multi-confessional situation, which instead of becom-ing more simple was actually enriched by even more infl uences over the course of the century. The culmination of this complex situation led to a great multiplication of sects in the fi nal twenty-fi ve years of the eighteenth century, regardless of whether they were Marokáns, Lambs, Israelites, Abrahamites, Deists, Adamites, Arians, Children of Pure Living, or other enthusiasts. These believers were not willing to pledge themselves to either of the two tolerated evangelical churches. Lay, unordained teachers disseminated unorthodox teachings amongst believers that wiped away the diff erences between the individual confessions as far as, for example, the sacraments, the concept of the Trinity and oral confession were concerned. Zdeněk Nešpor emphasised the absolute depend-ence of non-Catholicism of the Toleration era in local lay religious authorities.99 Even after the arrival of “Toleration” priests of both permitted confessions, these popular

97 Zdeněk R. NEŠPOR, Víra bez církve? Východočeské toleranční sektářství v 18. a 19. století [Belief without the Church? East Bohemian Sectarianism of the Toleration Era in the 18th and 19th Cen-turies], Ústí nad Labem 2004, p. 17.98 The Bohemian exiles in the lands of the Baronness of Gersdorf founded a Bohemian colony in Hennersdorf in Lusatia in 1725. However, they very soon got into confl ict with the local Lu-theran priest regarding administering the Lord’s supper. In March 1732 there was a new rupture between the emigrants and the Hennersdorf authorities concerning confession, after which some of the spokesmen for the emigrants were ordered out of Hennersdorf and headed to Herrnhut. E. ŠTĚŘÍKOVÁ, Pozvání do Slezska, p. 509.99 Z. R. NEŠPOR, Víra bez církve, p. 50.

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chroniclers remained fundamentally in competition with the clergy, which caused a huge variety of complications on both a local and national level that are now being researched by many historians.100

The situation in the French kingdom was diff erent. Thanks to the hardening of dog-matic orthodoxy and the return to the original consistorial-synodal organisation, the Calvinist renewed congregations in France and the representatives of the Swiss and Dutch churches became closer in the mid-eighteenth century. This fact contributed posi-tively to the cleansing of the image of secret Huguenots abroad. After 1760 domestic and international eff orts joined in a unifi ed campaign striving together for a renewal of religious tolerance in the kingdom.101 The rise of Enlightenment thought and espe-cially the intervention of the philosophers, led by Voltaire, supported the rhetorical arguments of the Reformed pastors. Under the infl uence of the new emancipation civil discourse the wealthy Reformed citizens were not afraid to make themselves known publicly within French society, and they began to join more actively with the renewal of the Église du désert. The enterpreneurs and merchants among the Huguenots joined the campaigning clergy to take care of their image in society. This attitude of the wealthy social strata among the Reformed was caused primarily by their will of admitting their illegal marriages and the related questions of their rights of inheritance. Marriages car-ried out by Calvinist pastors, which were not confi rmed before a Catholic priest and en-tered into the Catholic marriage records, were not recognised by the state. This caused many complications regarding the question of rights of purchase and inheritance. The Reformed, of course, quickly found a solution to this tricky problem. There were a rela-tively large number of secret Calvinists amongst notaries and town councillors. As the fear of persecution died away, so the number of illegally registered legal contracts grew. Practically speaking, these allowed the Reformed their civil rights and enabled them to get around the Catholic authorities. This functioning of a double judiciary, however,

100 A whole section of Ondřej Macek’s volume is dedicated to clashes in the Toleration era. See Ondřej MACEK (ed.), Po vzoru Berojských. Život i víra českých a moravských evangelíků v předtole-ranční a toleranční době [Following Example of Believers from Berea: Life and Faith of Bohemian and Moravian Evangelicals in Pre-Tolaration and Toleration Period], Praha 2009, pp. 362–519; Eva KOWALSKÁ, Heretici, bludári a prozelyti: formovanie a vnímanie konfesijnej identity českých pro-testantov po roku 1781 [Heretics, Dissenters and Proselytes: The Formation and Perception of Confessional Identity of Bohemian Protestants After 1781], in: Karel KUBIŠ (ed.), Obraz druhého v historické perspektivě II. Identity a stereotypy při formování moderní společnosti [The Image of the Other in a Historical Perspective II. Identities and Stereotypes in the Formation of Modern Society], Praha 2003, pp. 135–146.101 Because of the limits of this study we have to leave out a comprehensive list of the brochures and tracts that were published by representatives of the Reformed Church in the second half of the 18th century in defence of and arguing for religious tolerance. Amongst the most well-known are the following works: Antoine Court, Le Patriote français et impartial (1752) or Lettre dʼun patriote pour la tolérance civile (1756), Voltaire, Le Traité sur la tolérance (1763), Paul Rabaut, La Calomnie confondue ou Mémoire dans lequel on réfute une nouvelle accusation intentée aux protestans de la province du Languedoc, à l‘occasion de l‘aff aire du Sr. Calas, détenu dans les prisons de Toulouse (1762), La Beaumelle, L‘Asiatique tolérant (1748), and Court de Gébelin, Les Toulou-saines (1763).

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alarmed the court considerably.102 The ever more emphatically stated requirement to recognise invalid weddings and baptisms on the part of the provincial court-parliaments became the most convincing pragmatic argument of the Reformed, which in turn pow-erfully aff ected many of the king’s advisors in the court.

Even in the second half of the eighteenth century, Bohemian and Moravian evan-gelicals stuck too closely to their religious exclusivity, and this to a considerable extent helped to create their negative image. They were not willing to adapt themselves to the conditions which were provided for them in exile, nor to come to terms with one of the two permitted confessions in the Austrian lands after 1781. Pre-Toleration evangelicals, therefore, bear a considerable responsibility for their very limited legalisation. On the other hand, their enduring popular religiosity including visions with an unclear eschato-logical imagination had a certain infl uence on the modern invention of the Hussite and Brethren traditions. Zdeněk V. David has recently off ered stimulating questions for re-search on the long-term eff ects of Utraquism on the development of post-White Moun-tain Protestantism. As one of the many possible explanations of the weak resistance of Protestants towards re-Catholicisation, and the “remarkably passive acceptance of the Counter-Reformation,” the author suggests the possibility of a loss of collective histori-cal memory.103 This work, on the other hand, has shown how strong may have been in the Bohemian Protestant milieu in the eighteenth century the topos of a ruler from the Protestant powers, sent by God, who comes at the moment of Judgement Day to ensure victory over cursed Babylon and the redemption of the chosen people. It is clear that there is still a great deal to research on the heterodox past of Bohemian non-Catholics.

SUMMARY

Bohemian Non Catholics and Languedoc nouveaux convertis: Prophetic and Sectarian Movements in a Comparative Perspective

The culminating confessional rivalries in the early 17th century provided fertile ground in much of Europe, especially Central Europe, for visions of the imminent End of the World and Christ’s Second Coming. This paper off ers a new perspective for the well-known topic and compares the eschatological visions in the 17th and 18th centuries of the Bohemian non-Catholics and emigrants on the one hand and the secret Huguenots on the other. While the belligerent apocalyptic visions in the Bohemian environment to the end of the 18th century saw a turning point and an oppor-tunity to overthrow the Antichrist in the imminent coming of an allied Protestant ruler destined by God, the French Protestant prophecies appealed almost exclusively to the glory of Christ and

102 The physiocrat and later minister Turgot, and the lawyer Malesherbes in their work Premier mémoire sur le mariage des Protestans (1785) appealed to the Royal Counsel to recognise wed-dings for Protestants, at least on a civil basis, and to permit the domestic worship.103 Zdeněk V. DAVID, Finding a Middle Way, The Utraquistsʼ Liberal Challenge to Rome and Luther, Baltimore 2003, pp. 349–377.

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his rule on Earth. Despite signifi cant diff erences in the religious practice and historical contexts of the two cases, we observe not only very similar physical manifestations in the prophets’ behav-iour but also, thanks to these ideas, a renewal of the declining piety of the believers and the re-activation of the underground religious movement. In both environments the apocalyptic visions have been heavily criticized by legal ecclesiastical authorities in exile. Disciplinary interventions against these heterodox ideas had however a completely diff erent result, playing a signifi cant role in the process of legalization of Protestant worship at the end of the period in question.

RESUMÉ

Čeští nekatolíci a languedočtí nouveaux convertis: porocká a sektářská hnutí v komparativní perspective

Vrcholící soupeření konfesí na počátku 17. století poskytlo na mnoha místech Evropy a ze-jména ve středoevropském prostoru živnou půdu vizím o blížícím se konci světa a nástupu ti-sícileté Kristovy vlády. Příspěvek vnáší novou perspektivu do dobře známé látky a předkládá srovnání eschatologických vizí v prostředí českých nekatolíků a exulantů a tajných francouzských hugenotů v průběhu 17. a 18. století. Zatímco bojechtivé apokalyptické vize v českém prostředí spatřovaly až do konce 18. století moment zvratu a příležitost k svržení Antikrista v příchodu Bo-hem předurčeného panovníka, francouzská protestantská proroctví apelovala téměř výlučně na Kristovu slávu a vládu na zemi. Přes značné odlišnosti náboženské praxe a historických kontextů obou případů, odhaluje studium fenoménu apokalyptických vizí v obou případech nejen velmi podobné fyzické projevy proroků, ale též fenomén oživení upadající zbožnosti věřících díky šíře-ní vizí a reaktivizaci podzemního hnutí. V poslední řadě byly v obou prostředích apokalyptické představy silně kritizovány legálními církevními autoritami v exilu. Disciplinační zásahy proti he-terodoxním vizím měly však v obou případech zcela rozdílný výsledek, což mělo nezanedbatelný vliv na zlegalizování protestantského kultu v závěru studovaného období.

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