RISVEGLIO (Protestant [English: revival]). — This name designates in Protestantism collective religious movements often followed by extraordinary psychic phenomena that bring about numerous conversions. At first, it produced mass conversions under the influence of Methodism and, later, through imitation or even the direct influence of Methodism itself, also among other Protestant denominations (Lutherans, Calvinists, Baptists, etc.).
I. MANIFESTATIONS
The first manifestation, on 1 January 1739, is narrated by John Wesley: “Messrs Hall, Kinchin, Whitefield, Hutchins, my brother Charles, and I were present at our ‘love-feast’ at Fetter-Lane, together with about seventy others of our company. Toward three o’clock in the morning, while we were persevering in intense prayer, the power of God descended mightily upon us, so that many began to cry out, unable any longer to contain their joy, while others fell with their faces to the ground. When we had somewhat recovered from the fear and astonishment that had seized us in the presence of His Majesty, we began to sing with one voice: We praise you, O God, and acknowledge that you are the Lord” (Journal, cited in the bibliography, II, pp. 121–25).The words “love-feast” in the text indicate the origin of the Methodist revival. Wesley had derived the idea of such celebrations from the Moravian Brethren; immediately perceiving the danger of such manifestations, he did not want his followers to be regarded as “enthusiasts” or “illuminati,” whom the Anglican Church treated severely. Moreover, there was a risk that they would be forbidden to preach, and this concern is apparent in his Journal (II, p. 130).
The Methodists have always attributed great importance to the revival as a “testimony” to true “regeneration.” When Methodism spread in North America, the Baptists too adopted its procedures and obtained the same results. There the revival assumed a new form, that of the camp meeting. The adherents gathered in a field to listen to sermons; the breath of the spirit manifested itself through sacred dances: “Many visitors,” says one witness, “fall ill and die in the camp itself. Amid the anguish of the struggle against sin and the fear of death, all the passions seem to be unleashed” (v. Dixon, L’Anatome nouvelle, part 2, chap. 14). In these camps or in the churches, the revival attained the violence of a genuine spiritual storm. At times it spread through the entire population of a district, and numerous cases of insanity and suicide occurred (cf. C. Jannet, Les Etats-Unis contemporains, Paris 1876, pp. 354–58).
The Methodists, however, had predecessors in their revival: the “prophets” of the Camisards of the Cévennes, with analogous manifestations, and the Moravian Brethren, who had set the example for Wesley himself. Similar practices had also occurred among the Quakers; the Baptists imitated them, especially in America. In Lutheranism Pietism (v.); cases of “revival” in the Reformed (Calvinist) Church are also recorded, both in Switzerland and in France, although with manifestations far more modest than in the United States, where the camp meetings represented the paroxysm of the “revival” type.
In Geneva, where the Calvinist confession had fallen, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, into a kind of faded Arianism, a revival took place under the influence of Robert Haldane (1764–1842), who in 1816, in Geneva, exerted a profound influence upon a certain number of young Calvinists. These, not without considerable disagreements among themselves, brought about various revival movements, first in Switzerland and then in France. Among these young men were E. Empaytaz (1790–1833), in whom one can sometimes discern the influence—predating that of Haldane—of the famous Madame de Krudener, confidante of Tsar Alexander I; Enrico Pyt (1796–1835), founder of a dissident Calvinist church; Francesco Samuele Gaussen (1790–1863); Francesco Augusto Gonthier (1773–1834), whom Protestants readily compared to Fénelon; Cesare Malan (1787–1864), the favorite disciple of Roberto Haldane, with individualist tendencies; and Enrico Merle d’Aubigné (1794–1872), a friend of Gaussen, a prolific and impassioned writer, and a popular historian of the “Reformation,” though lacking in objectivity. In France, during the same period, one may mention Bost, Naff, Cook, and Roussel, and above all Monod (1802–56), a renowned pastor in Naples, where he personally experienced the revival, and later in Lyon, where he was excommunicated by the Consistory and founded an evangelical church (1833). He subsequently became professor at the Protestant Faculty of Montauban, and finally leader of the orthodox Calvinists of Paris against the liberal minority.
II. THEOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE
It was above all within Methodism that an attempt was made to attribute genuine theological importance to the phenomenon of the r. It seems, however, that something of Methodist doctrine is found, in attenuated forms, among other Protestant denominations. Those who attended the “conventicles of piety” regarded themselves as Christians different from others. Wesley’s diary shows that he introduced among the Methodists the distinction between the baptized and the regenerate. For Wesley, the great event of Christian life is the r. He calls it, using Johannine terminology (Io. 3:8), “the new birth” (New birth). In all the other Christian churches, “the new birth” was attributed to Baptism; Wesley’s originality lay in introducing another element in addition to the justification conferred in Baptism (Works, V, p. 212). Ordinarily, moreover, when Baptism is conferred in infancy, the r. occurs only in adulthood or, at most, in adolescence. It confers upon the “regenerated” soul a new sense, the sense of the divine; it gives it the capacity to feel God. Before this great change takes place, although man exists through God’s action, he does not thereby experience God; he does not feel his presence, does not possess an intimate awareness of his presence, and does not experience this divine breath of life (cf. Works, V, p. 223 ff.).Wesley regarded the phenomena of the r. as certain proof, a “testimony,” of regeneration. It is precisely here that Methodist mysticism differs profoundly from Catholic mysticism, because Wesley attributes enormous importance to these “physical” manifestations and, whenever they occurred, hastened to invite all his hearers to pray for those who had been “touched by Grace.” Asking himself, “Can this sudden, instantaneous change easily be distinguished from an illusion or an act of the imagination?” he replied: “Certainly, with the same ease with which light is distinguished from darkness; such a change brings with it a peace that surpasses all understanding; an ineffable joy, full of glory; the love of God and of all humanity fills the heart” (Works, V, p. 68).