Strange Language and Practices of Disorder: The Prophetic Crisis in France following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685
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My article aims to analyze the eruption of entranced pronouncements in the public sphere at the end of the 17th century in France and how these prophetic utterances - mostly by lay young women - kept Calvinism alive in spite of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. With the edict of tolerance and its numerous articles revoked, the Calvinists found themselves barred of their social identity, freedom of conscience, and civic rights. During this watershed period, prophesying provided Huguenot women a unique discursive space where, in the wilderness, appropriating a language foreign to them, their tales of deliverance sustained the spirit of their coreligionists, and thereby engaged in a narrative of identity repair.