XI. Rev. John Graverol.
This family is famous for two noted Protestant members, one a lawyer, the other a pasteur, both being sons of Pierre Graverol, of Nismes, and his wife, Catherine Reynaud. The lawyer, Francois Graverol, was born in 1636. Besides being a well-qualified advocate, he was a poet and antiquary of good reputation. He was a strong Protestant, but strove in vain to escape from France. He was seized, condemned, and banished to Carcassonne for six months. Being allowed to return to his native town, he shut himself up in his study, and spent the remainder of his life in bookish retirement. He died at Nismes in 1694.
The pasteur, Jean Graverol, was born on the 28th July 1647. He studied theology at Geneva. He began his ministerial career at Pradel, in Vivarais, in 1671 , but the next year was translated to Lyons. He married, on the 27th September 1676, Catherine Philibert, daughter of Alexandre Philibert and Anne Fermont. At the period of the Revocation he and his wife took refuge at Amsterdam, but soon removed to London, and became English subjects.
The Rev. John Graverol (as we must now call him) was pastor of the London French Churches of Swallow Street and le Quarré. He was a voluminous author, writing with a characteristic vehemence arising from strong conscientious convictions, and heaven-born affection for good men, and especially for God’s slaughtered saints. His first publication, “De religionum conciliatoribus,” appeared under the anagrammatic pseudonym of Joannes Rolegravius, and denounced those who professedly desired to amalgamate discordant creeds.
Passing over many solid works, we note his sermon preached at Amsterdam in 1686, on Psalm lxxix. 2, “The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth.” Of this sermon he said himself, “I was so powerfully touched by the shameful manner in which the faithful, glorifying God before dying, were treated in France, that I could not help preaching with emotion and with fire on the second verse of psalm 79. The Papists made a great noise about it. Their remonstrances, equally violent and unjust, obliged me to publish it without changing a syllable. The preface, which accompanied it, made them repent of their clamour.”
The Protestants of France had been promised, in the king’s Edict of 1685, toleration both of their private worship and of their inward convictions. Instead of this, the priests and magistrates had insisted on their recantation of their faith, and on their profession of Romanism. There was good reason to believe that it was represented to the king that their compliance was a spontaneous deed, and that the non-complying were only a very few. They were styled in public documents new converts or new catholics, — while their brethren at a distance called them apostates and Protestants Tombés. Graverol used the milder designation of Nicodémites, as we gather from the title of another of his works first printed at Amsterdam in 1687 (reprinted 1700):— “Instructions pour les Nicodémites, ou après avoir convaincu ceux qui sont tombés de la grandeur de leur crime, on fait voir qu’ aucune violence ne peut dispenser les hommes de l’obligation de professer la verité.”
He printed a “Dialogue on a Union of Protestants in Great Britain,” as to which also we can quote his own remark: “Persons of moderation testified their favourable opinion of this dialogue; but such persons are not in the majority.” In a treatise entitled “Moses Vindicatus,” he proved that the Mosaic account of the creation is strictly a history, and not an allegory; (Amst. 1694). Mr. Graverol was one of the prominent ministers of the French churches of London in their communications with British statesmen. In His later years he had to defend the propriety and utility of catechisms and confessions of faith, his opponents being one or two recent converts from Popery whose temptation was to deify mere liberty and to suspect the presence of enslaving intentions in the minds of all composers of creeds or articles of faith. His last Pamphlet was entitled, “A Defence of the Reformed Religion, of its Synods and Pastors, &c.” The co-adjutor of Laval, in the preparation of the voluminous History of the Reformed Church of France, was another Pastor John Graverol, the son (we presume), of this aged refugee. Our John Graverol died in London in 1718, aged seventy-one.
He had published, in 1703, a historical and topographical manual on the town of Nismes, for the sake of the refugees from his native place. Written probably from memory, this “Histoire de la ville de Nimes,” is pronounced by Haag to be a failure; but the prefatory epistle to “Messieurs les Refugiés de Nimes qui sont établis dans Londres,” is certainly valuable, as we may judge from its conclusion:—
