Antoine Court

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Antoine Court
Monument to Antoine Court in Villeneuve-de-Berg
Monument to Antoine Court in Villeneuve-de-Berg
Born March 27, 1696 (Villeneuve-de-Berg)
Deceased June 13, 1760 (Lausanne)
Holiday June 13 ( Evangelical calendar of names )

Antoine Court (born March 27, 1696 in Villeneuve-de-Berg in Languedoc ; † June 13, 1760 in Lausanne ) was a French Reformed pastor and director of the Protestant academy in Lausanne, who was also known as the "re-erector of Protestantism in France" .

Life

Early years

Court's father Jean was a dealer. His mother's name was Marie Gébelin. Both were followers of the Reformed Church , which was then persecuted . Antoine Court was baptized Catholic because the law required it to do so and to camouflage the forbidden faith. He could not finish his studies, so that he had to do further training himself. At the age of 17, Court began to give speeches at the secret meetings of the Huguenots , as the Protestants of France were called, which were literally "in caves", often in the dark and without a pastor , for the glory of God, for instruction and Consultation was held.

In 1685, Louis XIV suspended the Edict of Nantes with the Edict of Fontainebleau . This led to persecution, expulsion and mass exodus of the Protestants, who mainly lived in the south of France. Their churches were destroyed, 466 villages were burned during the Camisard War from 1702 to 1710, and around 30,000 people were killed. Some stayed and continued to practice their evangelical faith in secret. From 1715 onwards this movement was known as the “Church of the Desert” or “Christians of the Desert”. Their followers were hunted, pursued and killed.

proposals

As a preacher, Antoine Court fought the influence of the prophetic movement that was widespread in the Cevennes. With great effort he tried to restore the Protestant church organization of the 17th century and Protestant orthodoxy. He went to great lengths to build up the Church which was so ruthlessly persecuted; to achieve this he made four suggestions:

  1. regular religious meetings for teaching and worshiping God
  2. Rejection of the fanaticism of those who declared themselves "inspired" and the resulting disorder among Protestants
  3. Re-establishment of church discipline through the establishment of church councils, conferences and synods
  4. the careful formation of a pastorate

He devoted his whole life to this demanding task. Secret meetings of half a dozen became open gatherings of up to 10,000 evangelical Christians. In 1715 he convened the first Synod of the Desert, as the Synod of the French Reformed Church was called, in Montèzes near Monoblet .

resistance

In 1718 Court became pastor. From 1720 to 1722 he stayed in Geneva. There he tried to take the worries of the leading Huguenot refugees that his initiatives were dangerous. He also tried to get human and financial resources for the Church of the Desert. He was able to achieve that a re-establishment of a makeshift evangelical pastoral care was approved. He won the support of Bénédict Pictet, Jean-Alphonse Turrettini and the pastor of Zurich. One of the main problems was the training of pastors for the French Protestant Church. With the help of Bern, Court tried to set up a seminar in Lausanne , Switzerland .

In 1724, the Protestants suffered further adversity through a decree which stated that there were no Protestants in France and also forbade the most secret exercise of the Reformed faith. In 1728 Court's friend Alexandre Roussel , a Protestant preacher, was executed.

In 1726, Jean Bétrine, the first student to attend the pastor's seminary for the French Protestant Church in Lausanne, which was officially opened in 1729. Antoine Court ran it together with Benjamin Du Plan. Teachers from the Lausanne Academy for Protestant clergy, which had been founded in 1537, such as Georges Polier de Bottens, Jean Salchli and Abraham Ruchat, gave courses in this seminar as private individuals.

A bounty was put on the court, whereupon he left France for good in 1729 and fled to Lausanne with his family in 1730. Here he continued to work for the Protestant Church in France. So he founded an advisory and supportive central committee and worked as a publicist. Court remained the senior director of the Lausanne seminary for the remaining 30 years of his life. This school trained all pastors of the French Reformed Church until the end of the 18th century. Antoine Court died in Lausanne on June 13, 1760.

His son

His only son, Antoine Court de Gébelin , who took his grandmother's name, was an esteemed man of letters and did an excellent job, first as his father's secretary and assistant and later as a scientist in Paris . He is remembered in connection with the famous case of Jean Calas through his work Les Toulousaines, ou lettres historiques et apologétiques en faveur de la religion réformée (Lausanne, 1763).

Works

Court intended to write a history of Protestantism and put on an extensive collection for it, but he could no longer realize his project before his death. In fact, he was able to publish the following works:

Commemoration

literature

  • Edmond Hugues: Histoire de la restauration du protestantisme en France au dix-huitième siècle. Antoine Court d'après des documents inédits . Paris, 1872
  • E. Hugues: Les Synodes du désert . Three volumes. Paris 1885–86, archive.org
  • Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire du protestantisme français . Paris 1893-1906
  • HM Baird: The Huguenots and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes . New York 1895; New edition Verlag BiblioBazaar, 2010, ISBN 1-117-89641-2
  • Georges Bridel: Antoine Court et ses sermons . Ernest Combe, Lausanne 1896
  • New International Encyclopedia . Dodd, Mead, New York 1905
  • Court, Antoine . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 7 : Constantine Pavlovich - Demidov . London 1910, p. 321 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
  • Samuel Mours: Antoine Court . Publications du Musée du Désert en Cévennes, 1948
  • Ph. Cardon: Antoine Court, 1695-1760. Une vie au service du Désert . Dissertation, Bibliothèque de la Société d'histoire du protestantisme français, Paris 1981
  • Entre Desert et Europe, le Pasteur Antoine Court (1695-1760) . Champion Verlag, 1998, ISBN 2-85203-668-1
  • Claude Cantini : Le séjour lausannois (1729–1760) d'Antoine Court . In: Revue de la Société des enfants et amis de Villeneuve-de-Berg , 2002, 62e année, NS, n ° 58, pp. 47-64
  • Laurence Vial-Bergon : Antoine Court. In: Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz . August 16, 2005 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karen Bullock: Lecture notes . Christian Heritage III.
  2. ↑ Eberhard Gresch: The Huguenots. History, Belief and Impact. 4th, revised edition. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2009, ISBN 978-3-374-02260-1 , pp. 76 to 77
  3. ^ Antoine Court (1695-1760) , Musée virtuel du protestantisme
  4. ^ Antoine Court . In: Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints
personal data
SURNAME Court, Antoine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French Reformed pastor, director of the Evangelical Academy in Lausanne and church leader
DATE OF BIRTH March 27, 1696
PLACE OF BIRTH Villeneuve-de-Berg
DATE OF DEATH June 13, 1760
Place of death Lausanne