CAMUS, ARMAND GASTON (1740-1804), French revolutionist, was a successful advocate before the Revolution. In 1789 he was elected by the third estate of Paris to the states general, and attracted attention by his speeches against social inequalities. Elected to the National Convention by the department of Haute-Loire, he was named member of the committee of general safety, and then sent as one of the commissioners charged with the surveillance of General C.F. Dumouriez. Delivered with his colleagues to the Austrians on the 3rd of April 1793, he was exchanged for the daughter of Louis XVI. in November 1795. He played an inconspicuous rôle in the council of the Five Hundred. On the 14th of August 1789 the Constituent Assembly made Camus its archivist, and in that capacity he organized the national archives, classified the papers of the different assemblies of the Revolution and drew up analytical tables of the procès-verbaux. He was restored to the office in 1796 and became absorbed in literary work. He remained an austere republican, refusing to take part in the Napoleonic régime.
CAMUS, CHARLES ÉTIENNE LOUIS (1699-1768), French mathematician and mechanician, was born at Crécy-en-Brie, near Meaux, on the 25th of August 1699. He studied mathematics, civil and military architecture, and astronomy, and became associate of the Académie des Sciences, professor of geometry, secretary to the Academy of Architecture and fellow of the Royal Society of London. In 1736 he accompanied Pierre Louis Maupertuis and Alexis Claude Clairaut in the expedition to Lapland for the measurement of a degree of the meridian. He died on the 2nd of February 1768. He was the author of a Cours de mathématiques (Paris, 1766), and a number of essays on mathematical and mechanical subjects (see Poggendorff, Biog.-lit. Handworterbuch).
CAMUS, FRANÇOIS JOSEPH DES (1672-1732), French mechanician, was born near St Mihiel, on the 14th of September 1672. After studying for the church, he devoted himself to mechanical inventions, a number of which he described in his Traité des forces mouvantes pour la pratique des arts et métiers, Paris, 1722. He died in England in 1732.
CAMUS DE MÉZIÈRES, NICOLAS LE (1721-1789), French architect, was born at Paris on the 26th of March 1721, and died it the same city on the 27th of July 1789. He published several works on architectural and related subjects.
CANA, of Galilee, a village of Palestine remarkable as the home of Nathanael, and the scene of Christ’s “beginning of miracles” (John ii. I-II, iv. 46-54). Its site is unknown, but it is evident from the biblical narrative that it was in the neighbourhood of, and higher than, Capernaum. Opinion as to identification is fairly divided between Kefr Kenna and Kand-el-Jelil. The former, about 4 m. N.N.E. of Nazareth, contains a ruined church and a small Christian population; the latter is an uninhabited village about 9 m. N. of Nazareth, with no remains but a few cisterns.