The bibliography of the lawyer Claude Brousson was recently enriched by the discovery of an anonymous brochure entitled Lettre aux Reformés de France contre le scandale des Revoltes and dated 10 April 1685, which had been erroneously catalogued in the printed collections of the BnF. It forms part of a series of tracts which Brousson, who had been proscribed in France and took refuge in Lausanne, addressed to Reformed believers in France between 1685 and 1689, and has also made it possible to identify another letter with the same theme, this one dated somewhere between April and September 1686.

The Lettre from 10 April 1685, which has been edited here, is the earliest of the series. On the eve of the downfall of the Reformed churches in the kingdom of France, Brousson attempts to reassure his “dearest brothers” shaken by the defections of “rebellious”—that is, apostate—pastors, fiercely denouncing these “false shepherds” who have passed over to the “Roman communion” with its idolatry and persecutions. Brousson endorses, perhaps for the first time, the role of a “remote” pastor—that is, a prophet pastor, the interpreter of apocalyptic times, who shows himself to be a “bellicose dove.”