8/12/2012

August 12: Diogennet

In 1792, a rural priest near Saint-Etienne in France predicted that the Messiah would soon arrive in the area. It took 50 years for a peasant named Jean-Baptists Digonnet to appear in the 1840s and claim he was that Messiah. Though he drew a following which would stubbornly persist up until the Second World War, the main result of Diogennet's ministry was that he was arrested three times and eventually died in hospice.

(Reference: "Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults, and Millennial Beliefs through the Ages", Eugen Weber, 1999)