Rochefort martyrs

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The Rochefort martyrs were 64 of the 829 Roman Catholic clergymen deported in the course of persecutions of opposition clergymen after the French Revolution. They were held in prison ships off Rochefort in inhumane conditions, and at least 505 of them died. The Rochefort martyrs were beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1995.

Contents

History

Commemorative cross on the Ile Madame W0447-IleMadame CroixGalets 59808.JPG
Commemorative cross on the Île Madame

As part of the increasingly-radicalised anti-Christian policy of the French Revolution, Decree No. 906 was issued on October 21, 1793, concerning the deportation of clergy to West Africa. All priests who had refused or revoked the oath to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (the so-called réfractaires) or who had been denounced for not supporting the revolution were to be deported. Priests who had not yet emigrated or were unable or unwilling to hide were arrested and transported in groups to Nantes, Bordeaux, or Rochefort on horse-drawn carts between March and July 1794 under military or police guard, along with other exiles. Of the total of 2412 deported clergy, 829 arrived at Rochefort and were interned on prison ships, mainly the Deux-Associés and the Washington; they were former slave ships. [1] The first prisoners were taken on April 11, 1794, on the Deux-Associés, which was actually intended to transport 40 slaves and at times housed up to 400 captive priests. The Washington was added in mid-June.

A departure for Africa was never seriously considered, especially since the ships could not have survived the journey, and leaving French ports would not have been possible anyway because of the British naval blockade.

The priests were kept on the overcrowded ships in agonizing confinement under the strictest guard, with insufficient food and sanitary conditions. There was a strict ban on praying and speaking Latin. In August, after conditions on board had become intolerable, the sick were ordered to disembark on Citoyenne Island (now Île Madame, part of Port-des-Barques), where a makeshift tent hospital was prepared. Of 83 prisoners brought to the island from August 18 to 20, 1794, 36 died within hours of their arrival. At the end of October, due to the harsh weather conditions, the field hospital was closed after many tents were blown away by the wind, and all prisoners had to spend the winter back on the ships.

Due to changes in the political situation in France, treatment by the guards was somewhat milder from late fall 1794, and the priests were allowed to leave the ships in January 1795; the survivors were forced to march in two groups to Saintes, where they were released. In all, at least 505 of the 829 priests died of typhus or debilitation, mainly between June and September 1794. About half were buried on the island of Aix near Fouras, 254 on Citoyenne/Madame, where today a recumbent cross formed of pebbles commemorates the martyrs. [2]

Reception

In 1796 and 1803, survivors published a total of three reports. In 1806, survivor Pierre-Grégoire Labiche de Reignefort had a "very detailed account of the things suffered for the sake of religion by the priests detained on board the ships Les Deux Associés and Le Washington in 1794 and 1795 for refusal to take an oath in the harbor of the island of Aix and its surroundings," [3] which contains an appeal written by his group of prisoners and illustrates the spirit and hope for the future of this part of the victims. According to this testimony, the survivors promised to bear their suffering in surrender to the will of God with serenity of mind, to maintain discretion about what they had experienced and not to answer any questions, in particular to maintain silence about any weaknesses and faults of fellow prisoners, and after their release to harbor no regrets about material losses and no resentment and to renounce future political activity.

In the interest of national reconciliation, Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte suppressed any public discussion of the subject, so that the fate of the priests was forgotten over the decades. Only in the immediate vicinity of the affected villages did the memory of the events remain common knowledge. In 1863, the new parish priest of Saint-Nazaire-sur-Charente near Rochefort, Isidore Manseau, learned of the events and drew attention to them in 1886 with a two-volume publication. The Martyrology of the French Revolution, published in 1821 during the royalist restoration under Louis XVIII by the former Dominican Aimé Guillon de Montléon, [4] compared the victims of religious persecution in revolutionary France to the early Christian martyrs. It contained a detailed chapter on the fate of the Rochefort ship's occupants.

Veneration

In 1910, the tradition of an annual pilgrimage to Port-des-Barques in August began; it continues to this day. At the same time, Bishop Jean-Auguste-François-Eutrope Eyssautier of La Rochelle launched the preliminary information for a beatification process, for which Pierre Lemonnier (1848-1924) compiled the material published in 1916 and 1917 (including 590 short biographies). In view of the high demands made in Rome for beatification, the process had to be reopened after Lemonnier's death by his successor Léandre Poivert. He benefited from the fact that the historian Jacques Hérissay (1882-1969) had meanwhile published Les pontons de Rochefort(1792-1795), the book awarded a prize from the Académie Française in 1925. [5] The beatification process which took place from 1932 to 1936 could concentrate on 102 historically well-documented names.

Nonetheless, proof of martyrdom according to valid canonical requirements was not easy to prove. It was not until 1989 that the theologian and historian Yves Blomme (* 1948) took another look at the case and in 1992 presented a new Positio super Martyrio, which limited the trial to those 64 priests whose identity and venerability could be sufficiently determined and secured. The process led to the beatification of Jean-Baptiste Souzy, 1734-1794, and his 63 companions as martyrs by Pope John Paul II on October 1, 1995. [6]

The beati in alphabetical order

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References

  1. ↑ Ballard, Richard (2010). The Unseen Terror: The French Revolution in the Provinces. Bloomsbury. ISBN   9781848853256.
  2. ↑ Rabenstein, K.I. "Martyrs of Rochefort Ships". encyclopedia.com. Archived from the original on 17 Aug 2021.
  3. ↑ Relation très-détaillée de ce qu'ont souffert pour la religion les prêtres... détenus en 1794 et 1795 pour refus de serment à bord des vaisseaux "Les Deux Associés" et "Le Washington", dans la rade de l'île d'Aix ou aux environs
  4. ↑ Aimé Guillon, Les martyrs de la foi pendant la Révolution française.
  5. ↑ Jacques Hérissay, Les Pontons de Rochefort 1792-1795. Les prêtres pendant la Terreur (2nd edition Paris: Perrin, 1925).
  6. 1 2 3 4 "Blessed Martyrs of the Rochefort", Brothers of the Christian Schools
  7. ↑ "Blessed John Louis Loir and Companions", Capuchin Franciscans, Province of St. Mary

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