ABSTRACT
The depositions of the Theatre sacre provide vivid and precise accounts of forbidden assemblies and the prophesyings which became manifest in the Cevennes from about the beginning of 1701. This chapter examines the various local contexts in which these events took place and offers insights into Reformed religious experience within the expanding sphere of prophesying in the region. Ten days after the edict of Nantes was revoked, several persons were heard singing psalms on a small farm near Anduze and, in an adjoining parish on the following Sunday, more than one hundred persons attended the first clandestine assembly in the region. Illegal gatherings for worship persisted throughout the Cevennes from this period. The practice of religion in Reformed communities, as it had evolved at assemblies in the desert in the void left by the pastors, continued despite the relentless repression of the predicants and the arrest and execution of Claude Brousson in November 1698.
