The martyrs of Angers and Avrillé

Summary:

Eighteenth-century France is often portrayed as having embraced the ideas of the philosophers of the Enlightenment and as being increasingly indifferent to religious matters. This was true of the populations of certain Parisian suburbs, the future armed wings of the Revolution, of certain intellectual elites belonging to the upper bourgeoisie or to a fringe of the nobility and the Court, even in the entourage of the royal family. These people, who had made a clean break with Catholic morality, no longer practised and mocked those who still did, were the opinionshapers of the day, as they were the only ones seen and heard. Their agitation and propaganda conceal the deep silent attachment of a majority of French people, from all backgrounds, all origins, all regions, to the Catholic faith. Although not everyone found the courage to oppose the persecution at the risk of their lives, thousands nevertheless preferred martyrdom to apostasy.

From the autumn of 1793, as the revolutionary authorities regained control of the western provinces, which had been insurgent the previous spring, commissions arrived in Angers with the task of suppressing all forms of resistance and imposing the policy of Terror and de-Christianisation everywhere. From the end of December, in addition to many Vendéen prisoners, thousands of people were crammed into the city's prisons , often former religious houses. Hygiene conditions were appalling, as was the overcrowding, which encouraged epidemics. Among them were rebellious priests, nuns and religious sisters, and above all many women who had kept Catholic worship going underground, hiding their parish priest and others. Despite appearances, the charges against them were very serious: opposing the nation's policy of regeneration and being guilty of fanaticism, in other words continuing to profess the Catholic faith. This "crime" was punishable by death, which was systematically applied to these major offenders.

In the context of the 1793 Vendée uprising, which partly explains the extreme brutality of the local revolutionary authorities, presided over by the Conventionaries on a mission, Hentz and Francastel, and the atrocities they covered up, the Church made a selection from among the victims buried in the Champ des Martyrs, discarding those with political connotations - royalist opinions or participation in the insurrection - to retain only 99. The chosen ones were 12 priests (Guillaume Repin, Pierre Tessier, Laurent Bâtard, Jean-Michel Langevin, François-Louis Chartier, Jacques Ledoyen, Joseph Moreau, François Peltier, André Fardeau, Jacques Laigno de Langellerie, René and Jean-Baptiste Lego, who had refused to take the oath to the civil constitution of the clergy, deemed schismatic by Rome, an oath which would have made them civil servants under the new regime), two Daughters of Charity of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul (Sisters Marie-Anne Vaillot and Odile Baumgarten), a Benedictine nun from Calvaire (Sister Rosalie Céleste de LaSorinière), 12 women and girls from the local nobility, 6 middle-class women, 63 women and 3 men from the popular classes, all accused of hiding priests, sometimes their own sons, or refusing to attend the masses of the sworn in priests).

Contrary to popular belief, the majority of those tortured belonged to the lower classes, not the nobility. Their responses during interrogation were remarkable. Antoine Fournier, a weaver from Cholet, was indignant about the desecration of the Eucharist and the destruction of crosses. Worse still, he had hidden his son, a priest. When asked: "Would you suffer death to defend your religion?" he laconically replied "yes"which was enough to warrant his death, with this justification: "Father of a refractory priest and worthy of being one".

Rosalie de La Sorinière, expelled from her convent, was guillotined in Angers on 27 January 1794 for having said that she "was sad about the Revolution" because of the misfortune and violence it caused. When she was offered the chance to save her own life by giving up her Benedictine habit, Sister Rosalie refused, and when, on the way to the scaffold the next day, despite the cold and rain, she stripped off her cloak to cover a poor woman who had just insulted her, everyone realised that she had died wearing her religious habit.

Rose Quenon, a 28-year-old servant, had the misfortune of being very pretty. One of the judges promised to spare her life in exchange for sexual favours. The young girl indignantly refused and was shot.

Several people, including some of the executioners, tried to save the Daughters of Charity, who were very popular because of the good they did. They were offered the chance to write a forgery in which they would claim to have taken the oath. They refused. On their way to martyrdom, they sang, like their companions, the hymn to Our Lady of Good Death: "I trust in your help, O Virgin." Sister Odile dropped her rosary and, when she bent down to pick it up, someone deliberately crushed her hand with all his weight, causing her such pain that she almost fainted. Supporting her, Sister Marie-Anne whispered to her: "A crown is destined for us! Let's not miss it today".

In accordance with the old adage of Tertullian - "The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians" - the death of the Angers martyrs, like that of the many victims killed throughout France during or after the Terror "in hatred of the faith" prevented the revolutionaries from carrying out their programme to eradicate Catholicism and, in the 19th century, brought about an unexpected renewal of faith and great works of charity. Less than a hundred years after the Revolution, three quarters of the missionaries who set out to evangelise the world were French.

After the isolated beatification in 1926 of a priest, Abbé Noël Pinot, who was guillotined in Angers on 2 February 1794 and went to the scaffold in his priestly vestments, singing the introit of the Mass ("Introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam " : "I shall go in to the altar of God: to God who giveth joy to my youth"), the diocese of Angers continued to investigate the cases until the beatification of the 99 martyrs by Pope John Paul II in 1984.

Beyond reasons to believe:

The uprising in the western provinces, which demanded the free re-establishment of Catholic worship and did not lay down their arms until they had obtained it, as well as the astonishing number of martyrs and the persistence of the clandestine worship, convinced Napoleon Bonaparte, after he took power in 1799, to negotiate a concordat with Rome, restoring the French Church to some extent to its rightful place.

The free sacrifice of the martyrs, who preferred death to denial, so powerfully counterbalanced the crimes and sacrileges committed at the same time that they not only saved Catholicism in France, but also, thanks to an exceptional flowering of missionary vocations in the following century, enabled the conversion of continents still closed to Christ.

Going further:

André Merlaud, Les martyrs d'Angers 1793-1794, Éditions SOS, 1984 (French edition)

More information:

• Ivan Gobry, Les martyrs de la Révolution française, Perrin, 1989
• Jean de Viguerie, Philippe Evanno, Dominique Lambert de La Douasnerie, Les martyrs d'Avrillé, catholicisme et Révolution, C.L.D., 1984
• Filles de la Charité de Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, Martyres de la Foi, sœur Marie-Anne Vaillot et sœur Odile Baumgarten, 1984.
• The Aleteia article: "The martyrs of Angers: dying for the freedom of the Church"
• Pope John Paul II's homily, 19 February 1984, at the ceremony for the beatification of the martyrs of Angers
• Speech by Pope John Paul II to pilgrims in Angers on the occasion of the beatification of Guillaume Repin and his companions, 20 February 1984