Pastoral Visit of Cardinal Le Camus

June 12, 1686 marked one of the key moments in the repression of Protestantism in Mizoën, during the pastoral visit of Cardinal Le Camus. That day, the bishop celebrated in the temple the “strong presence of the newly converted”, conversions that he himself described as circumstantial. The scene was spectacular: the priest Joseph Juge had to lead the cardinal to the door of the temple, since the parish church was too small to hold the crowd. Le Camus then announced the conversion of 330 Huguenots, almost the entire community, counted across 46 families in the village and its hamlets — Sainguigneret, Les Aymes, Les Clots, Le Pariset, Le Dauphin, Le Romanchon, and La Villette. Yet behind this solemn staging, the reality was more nuanced. The cardinal estimated that in Mizoën there were in truth no Catholics apart from the priest and his sacristan, and that these returns to Catholicism were merely a facade imposed by coercion. The bishop’s secretary sought above all to measure the situation: who had truly converted, who was preparing to leave, and what would become of the property of the absent. This pastoral visit therefore reveals the ambiguity of forced conversions: a public triumph for the Church, but in reality the sign of a society on the verge of exile and collapse.