Although Lionel Laborie's Enlightening Enthusiasm is almost exclusively about the French Prophets, an early eighteenth-century millenarian group in England, their name does not appear in the title. This is not an oversight, but rather a statement from Laborie that his aim is not to write an exhaustive account of the French Prophets. Instead, marshalling an impressive range of sources, Laborie sets out to examine the phenomenon of enthusiasm in early eighteenth-century England, using the French Prophets as his example par excellence. It is among the many strengths of this book that Laborie is able deftly to interweave the story of the French Prophets into his larger analysis of enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm is a term that first appears in England in the late sixteenth century to refer to Protestants who claimed to be possessed by the Holy Spirit and who, as a result, asserted a power to prophesy, perform miracles, and speak in tongues. Enthusiasm was most evident in times of political or religious upheaval, such as the mid-seventeenth-century civil wars and interregnum. However, it was not, argues Laborie, until the age of enlightenment following the Glorious Revolution that enthusiasm emerged as a major concern of public debate and comes to be used as a term of abuse to describe not only those who claimed spiritual possession but more generally those who were the very antithesis of rational and enlightened. It was the ultimate eighteenth-century insult. And when contemporaries wanted to condemn, satirize, and even medicalize enthusiasm, they often chose the French Prophets as their examples.

To explain how the French Prophets came to be seen as the epitome of enthusiasm Laborie traces, in his first three chapters, the history of the French Prophets from their origins as group of illiterate Huguenot peasant children claiming to be possessed by the Holy Spirit in the mountains of southern France to an ecumenical prophetic and millenarian movement in London dominated by well-educated English gentlemen. In a thorough analysis of the socioeconomic status of the English followers who had gathered around the three original French Prophets—Durand Fage, Jean Cavalier and Elie Marion—Laborie is able to demonstrate conclusively that while a small number were poor, the vast majority were from the middling sort, and a few were quite rich and supported the French Prophets financially. Many were also well educated and had affiliations with respectable religious and scientific associations such as the Society for the Reformation of Manners, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the Royal Society. They were not just another tiny group of radical dissenters, but rather they had transformed in London into a socially transgressive ecumenical religious movement that spanned all ages, genders, classes, and denominations. While Laborie is quick to acknowledge that the number of adherents over the forty-year period of their existence was only about 665, including sympathizers and the curious, and at best their assemblies attracted only about a hundred people at a time, he argues that their influence came not from their size: the wealth and education of many of their members allowed them to carry out a massive publicity campaign that gave them far more attention than their numbers warranted.

Laborie focuses on their public profile, and the reaction to it, in chapters four and five. At first the Prophets preached and prophesied in private houses, but it was not long before some of their disciples began to transcribe their prophecies, translate them into English and publish them. With the lapse of the Licencing Act in 1695 the London print market exploded and the French Prophets were able to publish at least fifty-eight books or pamphlets, many distributed free of charge, between 1707 and 1714. Soon they were renting meeting houses and hosting larger public assemblies where some of the Prophets would act out apocalyptic scenarios or attempt to perform miracles. In addition, they hired street advertisers and preached in the open air.

Such publicity stunts certainly drew people to their gatherings, but it also invited much popular criticism. Those fifty-eight publications were countered by ninety-two responses in the form of pamphlets, sermons, public letters, and one play that attacked the French Prophets both intellectually and personally. They were accused of being a social plague. There were even outbreaks of violence against them. However, it was not just their public antics and published works that set off such anger, for Laborie argues that they were also the victims of a turbulent time in English history. The first decade of the eighteenth century was a period of extreme weather events, a collapse of trade around 1706, an attempted Jacobite invasion, and a long war with France that brought on a wave of anti-French sentiment in England. All of these factors contributed to the hostile reaction towards the enthusiasm of the French Prophets that challenged the very limits of toleration in early eighteenth-century England. Yet Laborie's careful analysis of the trial and punishment of Marion and two of his scribes for seditious libel in 1707 also reveals that, for all the popular rage directed at the Prophets, the government by this time no longer viewed enthusiasm as a threat to secular authority.

In chapter six Laborie notes that after 1700 English physicians began to weigh in on the medical nature of enthusiasm. He argues that because of their ecstatic trances and convulsions, it was easy for physicians and other critics to use medical terminology to explain the peculiar behavior of the French Prophets. It is at this point, however, that the tight interweaving of the story of the French Prophets and enthusiasm begins to unravel. Laborie's contention that the French Prophets stood at the centre of the medicalization of enthusiasm is not really evident in his lengthy discussion of contemporary theories on diseases of the body and mind. Nevertheless, this is a small point, and it does not diminish the value of this excellent study of how both the French Prophets and enthusiasm were understood in early eighteenth-century England.