Capuchin Martyrs of France

"He who wishes to save his life will loose it.

Who soever looses his life for my sake will save it."

"Blessed are those who are persecuted for my sake and that of the Gospel. The Kingdom of heaven is theirs"

Blessed Protais De Seez

Blessed Sabestian De Nancy

Blessed Jean-Louis Loir DE Besacon

Bl Protase

BLESSED PROTAIS DE SEÉZ

1747-1794

Protais de Séez was on the same infamous ship, the “Deus-Associés,” as Blessed Juan-Louis de Besançon. Similarly, not a great deal is know about his background. Born on 3 April 1747 he was baptised the next day in the parish of Saint-Pierre in Seéz (Orne). He parents and relatives were well-off. His father, Simon Bourdon was a cartwright and his mother was called Maria Louise Le Fou. There is no particular information about his childhood, His Christian formation nurtured in him the vocation to the religious life. In his twenties, he entered the Capuchins at Bayeux where he made profession on 27 November 1768 and received the name Protais. He was ordained priest in 1775. According to the little data known from the archives he lived for a little while in the friary at Honfleur, near the sanctuary of Notre-Dame des Grâces which he directed. On 29 November 1783, he was in the friary at Caen and in 1789 he was secretary of the Provincial Minister of Normandy.

His final destination, as provincial secretary and guardian, was the convent at Sotteville near Rouen. The municipal police found him there with the fraternity when they came to conduct an inventory of the friary and demand the loyalty oath to the civil constitution of the clergy. With his confreres he refused and on two separate occasions he underlined his will to persevere in the religious life, particularly on 26 August 1791 during the final inventory of the friary. The following year the friars were expelled and thrown on to the street. Br. Protais wished to remain in Rouen. Refusing the option of taking flight, he found hospitality with a gentleman whom he compensated with a little of his pension and alms received for Masses celebrated.

His tenacity earned his arrest on 10 April 1793 and he had to undergo an inquiry by two zealous “citoyens”. The triviality and superficiality of the process shows, as usually happens, the flimsiness of such trials. Unfortunately, history is full of such trials. Fortunately, the transcript has been kept. Protais answered with great freedom, and the text is clear about his desire to faithfully follow his religious life. He is reserved where the trail deals with his involvement with others.

In the search of the house where he had taken refuge a number of manuscripts and printed books were found, grounds for an accusation against him, because these texts defended non-compliance. Like a good Norman, he did not offer any further explanations that could have compromised anyone else. Nor did he reveal the name of any person with whom he celebrated Mass in secret. His is an attitude that is uniquely religious in facing risk and danger. His focus was an honest, simple, clear faith and he did not adopt any political position. The effect, however, was immediate. He was locked in the old seminary of Rouen Saint-Vivien. The revolutionaries used it for temporary detention. There he waited for a final sentence. This arrived on 10 January 1794: “citizen” Juan Bourdon, or Br. Protais, is condemned to be deported to Guyana for having celebrated Mass illegally and for being in possession of suspect documents.

On 9 March he was transported to Rochefort. He arrived on 12 April. After he was searched he was deprived of whatever he still had: a gold watch in a small box – (this may have been a pyx) – as well as 1303 lire. On board the infamous “Deux-Associés” he shared the fate of the other prisoners. The desolate picture of sordid suffering, agony and death that made up day to daily life in that prison was the same as that described for Blessed Jean-Louis Loir. After four months Br. Protais died of a contagious disease during the night between the 23 and 24 August. A survivor has left us this testimony: “He was a religious of great merit, praiseworthy as much for his in his initiatives in favour of his deported confreres as for his physical and moral endurance – but above all for his firm faith, prudence, balance, consistency and other Christian and religious virtues.”

Translation based on the article in Costanzo Cargnoni, Sulle orme dei santi, Rome, 200, p.186-188

Bl Sebestian De Nancy

SÉBASTIAN DE NANCY

1749-1794

Among the five hundred and forty seven victims of the “pontons de Rochefort,” and the sixty four priests beatified as martyrs to the French Revolution, we meet the Capuchin Br. Sébastian de Nancy. The drama of his life story is a little better documented. François François was born on 17 January 1749 in Nancy. His parents were Domenic and Marguerite Verneson. The following day he was baptised in the church of Saint-Nicolas. His father was a carpenter. François’ godparents belonged to high society and the nobility. This would indicate that his family was well-off and belonged to the bourgeoise. It was not difficult for the young François to meet the Capuchins. They had set up on the outskirts of Nancy in 1593 and later moved to a better friary in 1613 and which had been renovated through the generosity of Duke Léopold of Lorraine and king Stanislas in 1746. In fact, the parish of Saint-Nicolas, founded in 1731, made use of the Capuchin friary church until 1770. The friars used to gather in the choir behind and the altar and animated the secular Franciscan Order. The friary was an important location in the provincial capital and produced the wool needed by the Province to make habits and mantles for the friars in Lorraine. Their apostolic spirit and dynamic charity towards the poor, the plague victims and all those suffering made them very popular and in great demand. However when in 1768 at nineteen years of age the young François entered the friary of Saint-Michel, the novitiate since 1602, a certain crisis in vocations was already in evidence. In 1766 the king of France instituted the Commission of Regulars to correct abuses and reform monasteries and convents. It issued a royal edict in 1768 to fix the minimum age for solemn vows to twenty-one years. This had helped accelerate the crisis.

The novice master, Br. Michele de Saint-Dié clothed him in the Capuchin habit on 24 January 1768 and gave him the name ‘Brother Sébastian’ and one year later received his solemn vows. His profession was marked in the official register and was the first for 1769, as was the record of his baptism in the parish register in 1749 in the church of Saint-Nicolas. After novitiate Sébastian went to the Capuchin student house in Pont-à-Mousson, a friary founded in 1607 and renovated in 1764. At that time nine Capuchin priests, six clerics and one lay friar lived there. The city had been chosen for the house of studies since there was a Jesuit College. There he stayed while completing his studies and was ordained priest, though the actual date is not known.

On 5 June 1777, he was approved as confessor in the friary in Sarreguemines, where he also need to know the German language used in that border region. In 1778 the documents indicate that by then he was a confessor in the friary of Sarrebourg in the diocese of Metz. The fraternity was exemplary in its poverty and observance of the Rule. The documents are very eloquent regarding the years 1782 to 1784. These are the registers of the parish of Saint-Quirin where Sébastian frequently exercised pastoral ministry with baptisms, weddings and so forth, making up for the shortage of local clergy. On 26 August 1784, the provincial chapter appointed him to the friary in Commercy where he remained until 1787, or probably until 1789. But for a brief pause in the friary of Dieuze he continued in the busy apostolate helping the clergy.

From 1789 Br. Sébastian is in the friary of Epinal on the left bank of the western branch of the Moselle and was there when the French Revolution erupted with all its antireligious and anticlerical consequences. The Municipal Officers conducted an inventory search of the friary on 30 April 1790. A year later all the furniture and effects of the friary were sold, while Br. Sébastian, who had refused the loyalty oath to the Constitution, headed for the friary of Châtelsur-Moselle after the friars had been evicted. The Municipal Council had designated the Châtel as a common house for the Capuchins. They will also be expelled from here for not participating in a procession led by a Parish Priest who had sworn the oath to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. With the friars homeless on the streets, the people welcomed and helped them. Then on 9 November 1793 he was to the house of tertiaries in Nancy that was being used as a prison for non-conformist clergy. This was the response of the supervising Committee to whom he had presented himself, asking to conform to the law that stipulated prison for the non-conformists.

On 26 January 1794 the district administrator of Nancy came to assess the situation of all the detainees, the reasons for their arrest, their ages and possible infirmities. He noted that Br. Sébastian was a recalcitrant and had no infirmities and was ready, therefore, to join the list of rebel priests to be sent to Rochefort. Forty-eight priests and religious left on 1 April. After a difficult journey lasting four weeks, stripped of everything they had, they reached Rochefort on 28 April. A few days later, aboard the prison hulk, the “Deux-Associés”, already loaded with three hundred and seventy-three priest and religious prisoners, they were transported to the islands of Aix and Orlean where the ship was moored. A dispiriting prospect faced Br. Sébastian: those hundreds of pale prisoners, with long untrimmed beards and unwashed clothes, represented a prison of the dying. In fact, one old schooner served as a kind of hospital for the sick and infected, but it had no medicine and no doctors. Those aboard simply waited there for death to take its course. A skiff took and transported ten or twelve corpses each day to be buried in the sand on the shore.

“Our ship, engulfed in priests and religious,” wrote one survivor, “was like an altar of holocaust erected by Providence on the waves of the sea for the perfect consummation of sacrifice.” The bodies of the victims, stripped naked as in the Nazi concentration camps later, were transferred to the sandy shores. Some of the prisoners who still had a semblance of health had to bury them in the sand without being allowed to openly recite any prayer or raise to heaven any of the Church’s hymns.

“God allowed this daily scene of agony,” wrote another survivor, ”to increase the value of our sufferings, giving us a more perfect likeness to His divine Son in His Passion. There was no consolation in our afflictions, nothing to strengthen us in our trials, except the thought of Jesus who reigns in heaven, and from His heavenly throne is attentive to our struggle. Before us and on our behalf He had been flogged, beaten, spat upon, crowned with thorns, dressed like a madman, given gall and vinegar to drink, nailed to a cross, insulted and cursed by His enemies. This spiritual thought about our Redeemer produced in our hearts an ineffable sweetness. We felt happy to have been chosen among so many to travel this sorrowful way and follow our divine Master. We suffered not only with peace, but with relish and we died with joy. We thought that Jesus Christ had wanted, in the different ages of time, each dogma of the faith to be preserved and even consolidated in his Church by the blood of a more or less great number of martyrs, according to the importance of the truth being attacked. And we thought it a great honour for us to be persecuted and sacrificed in order to strengthen that spiritual authority, which is independent of the world, and which is divinely attributed to the Apostolic See and to all the episcopate in general.”

This valuable testimony has also left us a striking portrait of Br. Sébastian, plucked like a special flower of virtue in that fragrant bouquet of martyrs. These are the words of the witness: “The Lord had shown the holiness of another of his servants, Father Sébastian, a Capuchin from Nancy, who had arrived to die on this same schooner. This holy religious was held in singular veneration among us for his striking piety, virtue and touching devotion. He prayed incessantly, especially during his final illness. One morning he was seen kneeling, with his arms outstretched in the cross. His eyes were raised to heaven, and his mouth open. Nothing was made of this because we were used to seeing him pray in this way during his sickness. Half an hour passed and we were amazed to see him persevere in that pose, which is so uncomfortable and difficult to maintain, because the sea had become rough and the ship pitched and rolled a lot. He was probably in ecstasy. Then we approached to look closer. Touching him and his hands we realised that some hours earlier he had already consigned his soul God while in that position. We never managed to explain how his body would have kept that praying position given the continuous rolling movement of the small vessel. The sailors were called immediately. At that sight even they did not manage to suppress their cry of amazement and their tears. At that moment faith awoke in their hearts. His bare his arms revealed to all the image of the cross tattooed with a hot stone, and some of them decided to return to the religion they had abandoned.” It was 10 August 1794.

The memory of Blessed Sébastian leaves a powerful image of man who not only prays, but who is, above all, transformed by prayer in life and in death – a prayer that has become man, incarnated, like Francis of Assisi.

Translation based on an article by Costanzo Cargnoni, Sulle orme dei santi, 2000. p.189-194.

BLESSED JEAN-LOUIS LOIR DE BESANÇON

1720-1794

Among the more than eight hundred priests and religious amassed on the infamous “pontons de Rochefort” moored near the island of Aix in 1794 there we some Capuchin friars. They would have been deported to Guyana but the English ships that cruised the French coast prevented such voyages. Many died for their faith in the pitiful conditions within these floating, death camp prototypes. On 1 October 1995 John Paul II recognised that this sacrifice was the grace of martyrdom for Jean-Baptiste Souzy, vicar general of La Rochelle and his sixty four companions, among whom were the Capuchins Jean-Louis de Besançon, Protase de Seéz and Sébastian de Nancy, whose story we now wish to tell briefly.

Jean-Baptiste (this was his baptismal name) was born on 11 March 1720 at Besançon (Doubs) to Jean-Louis Loir and Élisabeth Juliot and baptised the same day. He was the sixth of their eight children. His father, a Parisian, was director and treasurer of the Zecca of Bourgogne at Besançon and in 1730 was elected director of the same at Lyon where he went to live with all his family. There his son Jean-Baptiste began school, although almost nothing is known of his childhood. However it is known that at twenty years of age, in May 1740, he became a Capuchin in the friary of the city and received the Capuchin habit and the name Jean-Louis. He made profession on 9 May 1741. The Capuchins had two friaries in Lyon. One was under the title of Saint Francis and called the “grand couvent”, founded in 1575 in the quarter of Saint-Paul. The other was built in 1622 and dedicated to Saint Andrew and called the “Petit Forez”. The future martyr spent most of his religious life in one or other of these two friaries. At least twice he held the office of superior, once in the friary of Saint Andrew from 1761 to 1764, and a second time in the “grande couvent” of Saint Francis until 1767. Beyond this information the archives are silent.

An abbot who knew him then has left this important testimony: “Endowed with all the virtues that could render him suitable, he never sought to receive any office, saying that he did not enter the Order to command but to obey, not to dominate but to submit. He humbly dedicated himself to the salvation of souls and exercised the ministry of the confessional very fruitfully. He seemed tireless. The friars never organised any mission for which he did not offer his zeal. He preferred the simple people and the poor, but even important people of standing who were pious felt attracted by the noble urbanity and affability of his imposing and gracious appearance. It would be difficult to count the number of conversions that he worked, or the number of souls of all social classes whom he brought back to God.”

In 1791 the revolutionaries obliged priests and religious to swear allegiance to the civil constitution of the clergy. Br. Jean-Louis was seventy-four years old and in Saint Francis friary when the Constituent Assemblée ordered an inventory of the persons and assets of every religious house. He declared that he wished to remain within the Order. However around October he left Lyon and withdrew to Bourbonnais, to a castle where Nicole-Élizabeth lived with her son Gilbert de Grassin. Two Dominican nieces also took refuge there. Suspicious rumours and a tip-off by some malevolent character led to an investigation ordered by the Directoire on 3 February 1793. Even if this bore no result all the inhabitants of the castle were transported to Moulins where sixty six “insermentés” – rebellious or refractory priests had be shut away either in prison or in the old monastery of Saint Clare.

In the list of ecclesiastics who had not sworn the oath we find Br. Jean-Luis, classified as “ci-devant capuchin” (a former Capuchin). His age would have spared him further sufferings had it not been for the terrible, atheistic accord at the end of 1793 that tacitly allowed the elimination of these elderly clerics who, in fact, were transported in three different consignments to Rochefort even though many were ill. Br. Jean-Louis left Moulins on 2 April 1794 in the third consignment with twenty six canons, curates, Trappists, Capuchins, other Franciscans and Brothers of the Christian Schools. Along the way, in carts escorted by gendarmes and the National Guard, the people took pity on them and helped them. They reached Rochefort towards the end of April. Searched for all their possessions, they were packed into two hulks moored on the sea coast.

Br. Jean-Louis was transferred to the ship “Deus-Associés”. The captain and his crew were prison inmates. Onboard more than four hundred persons were literally crammed together in pitiful conditions, a forerunner of the concentration camps. One foul mess tin was used for the meal of ten persons who had to be content with spoiled meat, cod or broad beans. They ate squeezed together and standing up. They had no plates, glasses, cups or utensils, just a wooden spoon. This was torture by hunger. In addition to this there were other dreadful torments in the area of hygiene and sanitation, without let up. Then there were the insults and jibes of the jailer sailors. The hardships were much worse at night. A whistle signalled time for sleep. That human throng with many elderly and sick was compelled to crowd together below decks in the hold like sardines in a can. Night time was hell, one more refined cruelty, a preview of the gas chambers. To purify the air, tar was set alight in barrels. This produced fireballs and suffocation, acrid fumes that caused tremendous perspiration and relentless coughing. Weaker persons succumbed. In that state they were crudely dragged out in to the open air of the ship’s deck where they all had to squeeze together. The tremendous contrast made their teeth chatter as they shivered from the cold.

The greatest pain however was in not being able to have a breviary or any other spiritual book. Nor could they pray together. Nevertheless one hid a breviary, another a gospel book, or holy oils – or even the Blessed Sacrament. And in that cess-pit, those martyrs administered sacraments that strengthened them to face death with joy.

These were the sufferings of Br. Jean-Louis. Despite these his lively and spirited character fostered courage among his companions. One of the survivors testified that the Capuchin “although venerable in age, had become the joy of all. In fact he was still like a young man of thirty years, trying in this way to lighten our sufferings, while hiding his own that were wearing him down terribly. He died serenely as he had always lived. In fact on the morning of 19 May 1794 when they prisoners awoke below decks they found that this excellent religious had died kneeling down in his place. And no one would have thought that he suffered any sickness. After he had gotten up, he knelt down to pray and in this way he breathed his last. Seeing him in this humble posture, next to his hammock pole, it seemed that he really was praying. However, he had died in that attitude of supplication as the Holy Scriptures present the patriarchs of the Old Testament in their moment of death.”

He was the first of twenty two Capuchins to die at Rochefort.

Translation based on an article by Costanzo Cargnoni in Sulle orme dei santi, 2000, p.179-185.