Isabeau Vincent

Entry by Yves Krumenacker, 2007.

Isabeau Vincent was a native Shepherdess from Saou, a village near Crest (in the Drôme region). Like her Protestant coreligionists, she was subjected to the trauma of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) along with forced renunciations and the inability to practice her religion. She was immersed in the teachings of the Bible; and on February 3rd, 1688, she started praying, singing the Psalms, preaching and prophesying, while not forgetting to sleep. People flocked to hear this illiterate girl who spoke in very poor French but explained with clarity the causes of the religious controversy. Her speeches of repentance strongly resonated with the Protestants, who started feeling hopeful again. She was arrested on June 8th, 1688, and was taken to the prison in Crest. During her incarceration, she continued to preach aloud. In July, she was transferred to the hospital in Grenoble, and then to a convent. What happened to her afterwards remains unknown.

The example of Isabeau Vincent was infectious. In 1688-1689, many young people and young girls from the Dauphiné and Vivarais regions began to prophesy. The movement was severely repressed and minimized, but resurfaced at the time of the war of the Camisards in 1702. In total, from 1688 to 1710, there were a hundred prophetesses in Vivarais, the Cévennes and Bas-Languedoc. This included Isabeau, who, despite her modest background, and lack of education, had been animated by an irrepressible need to express herself on spiritual matters. As such, she was one of the most exemplary representatives of this movement. A selection of her revelations was transcribed by an auditor and published in Amsterdam in 1688. In 1689, an English translation was published in London by the reformed theologian Pierre Jurieu, pastor of the Walloon of the Rotterdam Church, who had already made a mention of her speeches in his pastoral letters published a year earlier.

(Translated by Martine Sauret and Severine Genieys-Kirk)

Selected bibliography

- «Abrégé de l’histoire de la bergère de Saou, près de Crest, en Daufiné» [Amsterdam, sn, 1688], dans Henri Manen et Philippe Joutard, Une Foi enracinée, la Pervenche. La résistance exemplaire d’une paroisse protestante ardéchoise, Valence, Imprimeries réunies, 1972, p.64-78.
- Cosmos, Georgia, Huguenot Prophecy and Clandestine Worship in the Eighteenth Century: «The Sacred Theatre of the Cévennes», Ashgate, Aldershot and Burlington, 2005.
- Jurieu, Pierre, «Lettres III et IV de la 3e année: Réflexions sur le miracle arrivé dans la personne d’une bergère du Dauphiné [Isabeau Vincent]», dans Lettres pastorales adressées aux fidèles de France qui gémissent sous la captivité de Babylone, Rotterdam, Abraham Acher, 1688, t.3, p.20-24, 27-30.
- Jurieu, Pierre, The Reflections of the reverend and learned Monsieur Jurieu upon the strange and miraculous ex-stasies of Isabel Vincent, the shepherdess of Saou in Dauphiné, who ever since February last hath sung psalms, prayed, preached, and prophesied about the present times in her trances. As also upon the wonderful and portentous trumpetings and singing of psalms, that were heard by thousands in the air (in many parts of France) in the year 1686: taken out of the pastoral letters of the 1st and 15th of October last. To which is added a letter of a gentleman in Dauphiné, to a friend of his in Geneva, containing the discourses and prophesies of the shepherdess. All faithfully translated out of the french copies for publick information, Londres, R. Baldwin, 1689.
- Vidal, Daniel, Le Malheur et son prophète. Inspirés et sectaires en Languedoc calviniste, 1685-1725, Paris, Payot, 1983.

Web links

• Bibliography

Musée virtuel du protestantisme[1]

• Reception

Musée du Désert - Histoire des Huguenots et des Camisards en Cévennes[2]

Reception

- «Isabeau Vincent [...] traduit la résistance collective d’une foi et d’une culture dans une fidélité totale à la tradition réformée [...]. Les "inspirations"reprennent la plupart des éléments du Culte d’avant la Révocation [de l’Édit de Nantes], le chant des Psaumes, la lecture de l’Écriture sainte, le "Sermon [sur la Montagne]", la récitation des commandements de Dieu, de l’oraison dominicale, du symbole des apôtres et de la bénédiction finale [...]. Dans cette “prédication”, la controverse joue un rôle important [...]. Certes, pour un notable de Genève ou d’Amsterdam, [cette prédication] devait paraître bien grossière, avec ses répétitions et le petit nombre de ses thèmes, mais elle avait probablement plus d’efficacité que tel ou tel développement savant et bien organisé.» (Henri Manen et Philippe Joutard, Une Foi enracinée..., voir supra, Choix bibliographique, p.59-63)

- «La "belle Isabeau", aussi belle d’apparence physique qu’elle l’était par son âme...» (André Chamson, «Discours à l’assemblée du Désert, septembre 1979»)

- «Jeune fanatique du Dauphiné [...]. Elle joua l’inspirée, fit des prophéties qui lui donnèrent une sorte de célébrité, fut enfermée en 1686 [sic], et tomba depuis dans l’oubli.» (Pierre Larousse, Grand Dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, Nîmes, C. Lacour, 1990, t.2, p.582)