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Histoires providentielles
n°235

Brittany, France

1606 - 1683

Julien Maunoir miraculously learns Breton

When he arrived in Quimper in 1626, Julien Maunoir had no intention of staying there, believing that his vocation was to join the Jesuit missions in Canada and devote himself to the evangelisation of the Indian tribes, at the risk of martyrdom. But the young man never made it there. A series of providential signs proved to him that God wanted him in Brittany to teach the de-Christianised populations. The problem was that Maunoir didn't speak a word of Breton, the only language understood in the countryside of Trégor, Léon, Cornouaille and Vannetais. Discouraged and with little talent for learning, the religious put a condition to Heaven: if his place was in Brittany, he had to master the various local dialects in order to preach without difficulty. His wish was granted: he began to speak fluently a language that, just a few days earlier, he didn't know the rudiments of.

Father Maunoir miraculously obtains the gift of the Breton language, painting by Yan' Dargent, Cathédrale Saint-Corentin de Quimper / © CC BY-SA 3.0 Michael Kranewitter via Wikimedia.
Father Maunoir miraculously obtains the gift of the Breton language, painting by Yan' Dargent, Cathédrale Saint-Corentin de Quimper / © CC BY-SA 3.0 Michael Kranewitter via Wikimedia.

Reasons to believe:

  • Julien Maunoir was not motivated by the apostolate in Brittany, because he dreamed of going to Canada. He had no zeal for learning a language for which there were no textbooks or teachers. Forced to learn on his own, he struggled to learn Breton.
  • There were objective difficulties in learning Breton. In addition, the number of dialects made it impossible for a preacher to make himself understood from one diocese to another. All this seemed to guarantee failure. In fact, Maunoir's superiors asked him to devote more time to his work as a school supervisor and his studies for the priesthood, which left him little time to learn Breton. Indeed, Maunoir soon realised that his efforts were pointless. If he persisted, it was because the signs from heaven were multiplying.
  • Shortly after his arrival in Quimper, where no-one knew him or his presence, he received the unexpected visit of a high-ranking member of the Company of Jesus, Father Michel Le Nobletz, who had been devoting himself for decades to a new evangelisation of Lower Brittany. Alone, in poor health, ageing, with no successor, the Jesuit begged heaven to send him someone so that he would not abandon his people when he died. One night, it was revealed to him that the desperately awaited assistant was at the college in Quimper, the last one to arrive there. Maunoir was surprised, but took the story seriously.
  • However, as he was neither credulous nor naïve, and as the proposed project did not appeal to him at first sight, he decided to seek heavenly confirmation and went on pilgrimage to the chapel of Ti Mam Doué, "the House of the Mother of God", near Quimper, where he was convinced that his place was in Brittany, and nowhere else, and that he would be "confessor and missionary" there.

  • Obeying the divine call, but noting the difficulties he had encountered in learning Breton, he set one condition: if his apostolate was to evangelise Lower Brittany, he would have to be allowed to speak the language! In less than five weeks, Maunoir mastered enough Breton to preach and catechise, a prodigy that should not be taken for granted.
  • He was away from the region for five years, studying and teaching at the colleges in Tours and Bourges, before moving on to Nevers and Rouen. A very serious illness called his ambitions into question, but he recovered miraculously.
  • Julien Maunoir remained convinced that he would return to Brittany; in fact, he had a dream in which he saw himself carrying on his back a Cornish peasant, recognisable by his red bonnet, whom he was leading to heaven. Despite the obstacles, Julien Maunoir eventually returned to Quimper, and his apostolate brought thousands of souls back to the Catholic faith.

Summary:

Julien Maunoir was born into a peasant family in Saint-Georges-de-Reintembault, near Rennes, in Upper Brittany. His mother tongue was French and, when he arrived in Quimper in 1626, he didn't know a word of Breton, which made it unlikely that he would succeed Father Le Nobletz.

Despite his own doubts and the reluctance of those around him, the young man accepted God's will and tried to learn Breton. The astonishing ease with which, after a hopeless start, he managed to communicate in all the dialects of Lower Brittany was proof that Heaven had listened to him by fulfilling the condition set for his apostolate. Although he did not give an explanation for this miraculous apprenticeship, his disciples have always claimed that an angel appeared to Julien one evening while he was praying and touched his lips - a scene depicted by the painter Yann Dargent in Quimper Cathedral - instantly giving him a perfect command of the Breton language. Ordained a priest in 1631, Maunoir took up preaching, to which he devoted himself entirely and generously from 1640 onwards.

The beginnings of his apostolate, near Douarnenez, were painful, but he offered his pains and fatigue, the insults and threats he was subjected to, for the salvation of souls. His efforts were soon rewarded with success, so much so that his confreres nicknamed him the "heavenly missionary".

He attributed the success of his missions to God, to Our Lady, to Saint Corentin, the first bishop of Quimper, to the souls in purgatory, generous towards those who prayed for them, and to the sufferings of two stigmatised women persecuted by men and the devil: Marie-Amicie Picard and Catherine Daniélou, whom he took under his protection, defending them against those who claimed they were liars or possessed.

Faced with this immense task, Maunoir looked for companions. He created the seminary of Plouguernevel, from which hundreds of missionaries would emerge.

The terrible Bonnets Rouge revolt of 1675 was mercilessly crushed by Louis XIV. Maunoir, who watched in despair as the insurgents committed atrocities, and then suffered reprisals from the soldiers, tried to negotiate an amnesty for the rebels who surrendered, but this was never granted. Posterity reproached him with betraying his compatriots, whom he unwittingly handed over unarmed to the royal troops.

Nevertheless, he continued his work, writing a collection of hymns in Breton, several works on the Passion and the mysteries of the faith, biographies of Father Le Nobletz, Catherine Daniélou and Marie-Amicie Picard, and scrupulously keeping his Journal des missions in Latin.

At the end of December 1682, while preaching near Plévin, he fell ill with pleurisy and died on 28 January 1683. In four decades, he had made Brittany a Catholic land for more than three centuries. He was beatified in 1951.

Anne Bernet is a Church History specialist, postulator of a cause for beatification, and journalist for a number of Catholic media, She is the author of over forty books, most of them devoted to sanctity.


Going further:

The Journal des missions, written in Latin between 1631 and 1650 by Julien Maunoir, has been translated into French and published: Julien Maunoir (translated from Latin by Anne-Sophie and Jérôme Cras, prefaced and edited by Éric Lebec), Miracles et sabbats. Journal du père Maunoir, missions en Bretagne, 1631-1650, Paris, Les Éditions de Paris, Max Chaleil GF, 22 October 1997.


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