Brousson, Claude

, a French Protestant and martyr, was born at Nismes, in 1647, He was an advocate, and distinguished by his 'pleadings at Castres and Toulouse; and it was at his house that the deputies of the Protestant churches assembled in 1683: where they took a resolution to continue to assemble, although their churches were demolished. The execution of this project occasioned violent conflicts, seditions, executions, and massacres, which ended at length in an amnesty on the part of Lewis XIV. Brousson retired then to Nismes; but, fearing to be apprehended with the principal authors of this project, who do not seem to have been comprised within the amnesty, he became a refugee at Geneva first, and thence at Lausanne. He shifted afterwards from town to town, and kingdom to kingdom, to solicit the compassion of Protestant princes towards his suffering brethren in France. Returning to his own country, he travelled through several provinces, exercised some time the ministry in the Cevennes, appeared at Orange, and passed to Berne, in order to escape his pursuers. He was at length taken at Oleron, in 1698, and removed to Montpellier; where, being convicted of having formerly held secret correspondence with the enemies of the state, and of having preached in defiance of the edicts, he was broke upon the wheel the same year. He was a man of great eloquence as well as zeal, greatly esteemed among strangers, and regarded as a martyr by those of his own persuasion. The | states of Holland added six hundred florins, as a pension for his widow, to four hundred which had been allowed to her husband. His writings being principally those which, arose out of the circumstances in which the reformed church were then placed, we shall refer to Moreri for the exact titles and dates, and give only the subjects, namely: 1. “The state of the reformed in France.” 2. “Letters to the French clergy in favour of the reformed religion.” 3. “Letters from the Protestants in France to all other Protestants,” printed and circulated at the expence of the elector of Brandenburg. 4. “Letters to the Roman Catholics.” 5. “A summary relation of the wonders, wrought by God in the Cevennes and Lower Languedoc, for the consolation of his church.” 6. A volume of Sermons. 7. “Remarks on Amelotte’s translation of the New Testament;” and some religious tracts, which he published for circulation in France.¹