CAMISARDS
218
CAMOES
priest. He was then thirty-two years of age and be-
gan the study of Latin at the Jesuit College in Rome.
He afterwards established his order, the Fathers
of a Good Death (15S4), and bound the members
by vow to devote themselves to the plague-stricken;
their work was not restricted to the hospitals, but in-
cluded the care of the sick in their homes. Pope
Sixtus V confirmed the congregation in 158(5, and
ordained that there should be an election of a general
superior every three years. Camillus was naturally
the first, and was succeeded by an Englishman, named
Roger. Two years afterwards a house was estab-
lished in Naples, and there two of the community won
the glory <>t being the first martyrs of charity of the
congregation, by dying in the fleet which had been
quarantined off the harbour, and which they had
visited to nurse the sick. In 1591 Gregory XIV
erected the congregation into a religious order, with
all the privileges of the mendicants. It was again
confirmed as such by Clement VIII, in 1592. The
infirmity which had prevented his entrance among the
Capuchins continued to afflict Camillus for forty-six
years, and his other ailments contributed to make his
life one of uninterrupted suffering, but he would per-
mit no one to wait on him, and when scarcely able to
stand would crawl out of his bed to visit the sick.
He resigned the generalship of the order, in 1607, in
order to have more leisure for the sick and poor.
Meantime he had established many houses in various
cities of Italy. He is said to have had the gift of
miracles and prophecy. He died at the age of sixty-
four while pronouncing a moving appeal to his reli-
gious brethren. He was buried near the high altar of
the church of St. Mary Magdalen, at Rome, and, when
the miracles which were attributed to him were offi-
cially approved, his body was placed under the altar
itself. He was beatified in 1712, and in 1746 was
canonized by Benedict XIV.
Butler, Lives of the Saint* (Derbv. 1S4."i; Bullar. Roman., XVI, S3; Cicateli.o, Life of St. 'Camillus (Rome, 1749); Goschler, Diet, de thiol, cath. (Paris, 1S69), III.
T. J. Campbell.
Camisards (probably from camise, a black blouse
worn as a uniform), a sect of French fanatics who
terrorized Dauphine, Vivarais, and chiefly the Ceven-
nes in the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Their origin was due to various causes: the Albigen-
sian spirit which had not completely died out in that
region, and which caused Pope Clement XI to style
the Camisards "that execrable race of ancient
All licenses"; the apocalyptic preaching and litera-
ture of the French Calvinists, such as Jurieu's
"Accomplissement des prophecies", on which they
were nourished; and the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes (1685), along with the singular methods of
conversion employed by the agents of Louis XIV.
If the Camisards withstood the armies of Louis for
wellnigh two decades, the reason is to be found in the
desultory manner of warfare which the latter adopted,
in the failure of Louis' generals, de Broglie, Mon-
trevel, Villars, etc., properly to realize the danger
of the situation, and also, to a very great extent, in
the support given them by the Protestant house of
Nassau, then in control of Holland and England.
Tin- insurrection began in the Cevennes. Du Serre,
an old Calvinist of Dieulefit in Dauphine, became
suddenly " inspired", and his religious hysteria spread
rapidly. The murder of the Abbe de Chaila, inspector
of tin- missions in Cevennes, in 17(12. was tantamount
to a declarat ion of war. Armed bands led by Siguier,
Laporte, Castanet, liavenel. Cavalier, and others
I on a sort of guerilla warfare till about 1705,
when they either surrendered or were destroyed. In
1709 Cavalier, who had sought refuge in England,
tried, though without much success, to rekindle 1 the
revolt in Vivarais. There were a few more disturb-
ances as late as 1711, when a treaty of peace with
England deprived the Camisards of a powerful
support. On the 8th of March, 1715, by medals and
a proclamation, Louis XIV announced the entire
extinction of the sect.
Much has been written on the "'prophets" of the Camisard uprising. Flechier and Brueys believed in a school of prophets, wherein Du Serre ga\ e a systematic training, chiefly to young recruits. The prophetic inspiration, of which there were four degrees, avertissement, souffle, propheties, dons. \\:is communicated by breathing upon subjects who had gone through severe macerations, memorized long Biblical texts and formulae of imprecation, learned to perform the strangest contortions, and generally wrought themselves into a sort of trance. On the other hand, Court and Arnauld, themselves Calvin- ists, deny the very existence of such a school. They cast aside as obviously fraudulent a number of so-called spiritual manifestations. The rest they trace to an overheated imagination, pietism, excessive fasts, the reading of the Prophets and Jurieu's pastoral letters, and also to the peculiar temperament of those Southern mountaineers. If such is the case, there is no need of admitting with (lories, Mirville, and H. Blanc supernatural influences — diabolical, of course — to account for the Camisards' antics.
Though Calvinists, the Camisards should not be too closely identified with Calvinism. Many Calvin- ists condemned their cruelties and despised their visions. The Synod of Ntmes, 1715, enacted two statutes, evidently aimed at the Camisards: that women and unauthorized persons be debarred from preaching; and that Holy Scripture be adopted as the sole rule of faith and source of preaching. Four- teen years after that synod Court had organized in Languedoc a strong Calvinist community, in which no traces of the Camisard spirit could be discerned. It is true that those who had fled to England did try to propagate their "mystical phalanx" in London, and published in 1707, in the British capital, a mass of Camisard literature: "Le theatre sacrf des Ceven- nes"; "A cry from the desert"; etc.; but the Con- sistory of the French Church in the Savoy pronounced their ecstasies to be assumed habits. Voltaire (Siecle de Louis XIV, x.xxvi) relates that Elie Marion, one of the refugees, became unpopular, both on account of his writings (avertissements proph&iques) and false miracles, and was at last compelled to leave England. Catholics, too, organized under the name of White Camisards, or Cadets of the Cross, the better to check the black Camisards, but they soon fell into atrocities similar to those they sought to punish, and were disowned by Montrevel.
Flechier. Recti ful,le in Letires choisies (Lyons, 1715); Brueys, Hist, du fanalisme de notre temps (Montpellier, 1713); Cavalier. M,m ,./ the Worse! the ('■,;„,,,, (London, 17J6I; Court, Hist, des troubles d,.- C,,,,,n, lAlaK 1M(>i; Blanc, I), Vinspir. des Conusor, Is (Paris, L859); Dcbois, Sor tea prophites Cevenols v St i ;i^l .ui ^. lsoi ; Arnauld, Hist, des protest, ,nts de Dauphint (Paris, 1876); Legrelle, I. a revolts des Camisards (Braine-Ie-Comte, 1S97). See also Ro in Hist. yen. du Languedoc, XIII; Momn in La grands encyl., s. v.; Yernet in Diet, de thiol, cath., s. v.
J. F. SOLLIER.
Camoes (or Camoens), Luis Vaz de, b. in 1524 or 1525; d. 10 June, 1580. The most sublime figure in the history of Portuguese literature. Camoes owes his lasting fame to his epic poem "Os Lusiadas, " (The Lusiads); he is remarkable also for the degree of •irt attuned in his hir.-c lass noteworthy f. r his
dramas. A wretched' exile during a large part of
his lifetime, he has. like Dante, enjoyed an abun- dance of fame since his death; his followers have been legion, and his memory has begot many fabulous legends. Actual facts regarding bis career arc not easily obtained. There are but few documentary sources of information regarding him, and these are
