Benoîte Rencurel

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Benoîte Rencurel in Notre-Dame-du-Laus

Benoîte Rencurel (born September 16, 1647 in Saint-Étienne-le-Laus in the Hautes-Alpes department , † December 28, 1718 ) was a French shepherdess and mystic . The pilgrimage site of Notre-Dame du Laus goes back to them.

Life

Childhood and youth

Benoîte (German: Benedikta) Rencurel came from a modest background. At the age of 12 she became a shepherdess on the farm of her godmother Catherine Allard, the niece of pastor Jean Fraisse. From 1660 to 1663 she was shepherdess to the rich farmer Jean Rolland in Remollon and alternately to the notary widow Espérite Allard. Early on she had a tendency to prayer, especially the rosary. Pastor Fraisse preached the mercy of Our Lady in an unjansenist manner.

The first visions in the Vallon des Fours

In May 1664, Benoîte is said to have had his first visions in the Vallon des Fours for four months. She saw a beautiful lady with a child by the hand who stopped to speak and laughed. The visions made Benoîte feel happy. Little was said. Among other things, the lady urged her to respect her employers. The goat conflict is striking, in which the lady asked her to hand over her goats, whereas she refused until the lady gave up “so as not to anger Benoîte”. The lady also taught her the Lauretanian litany , which she was to sing with the village community in the parish church.

Benoîte, who told of the apparitions, was taken back into her service by Catherine Allard so that Pastor Fraisse could better supervise her. The judge François Grimaud (1620–1703) took up the matter. At the last apparition in Vallon des Fours on August 29, 1664, to which a girls' procession led at the behest of the lady, Grimaud asked Benoîte to ask the lady, whom he did not see himself, for her name. The answer has come down to us in three versions. According to Grimaud, the lady said in the local dialect: "Dame Marie". According to Chaplain Jean Peytieu (1640–1689), who spoke in 1688, she said: “Je suis Marie, mère de Dieu”, and according to Vicar General Pierre Gaillard (1621–1715), whose history of the appearance was written after 1700: “Je suis Marie , mère de Jésus ”.

The Pindreau vision. The louse visions

For most of September, Benoîte was inconsolable at the absence of the apparitions. It was not until the end of September that there was another vision in the Pindreau district, in which she was told that she would have apparitions in the chapel of the hamlet of Laus, where lovely scents would accompany all apparitions. What is meant is the Notre-Dame de Bon Rencontre chapel (“Maria Annunciation”, the usually feminine word rencontre is used here archaically masculine), built in 1640 , which was no larger than 3 × 4 m. When Benoîte went to the chapel the following day and allegedly found the lady and her fragrances, she offered the lady her apron so that she could stand on it more comfortably. The lady asked for a church to be built in this place for the conversion of souls and prayer for sinners. She took off a beautiful dress that a nobleman had given Benoîte as a present to the lady. There was an almost daily encounter, the news of which spread increasingly in the region.

First official investigation

Since there were also a series of miraculous healings, the vicar general of the responsible diocese of Embrun , Antoine Lambert, organized an investigation on site from September 14 to 19, 1665 by a commission he had put together (Pastor Fraisse, Canon Pierre Gaillard from Gap, the Jesuit André Gérard and three other personalities), who had to answer questions from Benoîte for three days. Then the commission was convinced of the truth of their statements and also witnessed the spectacular healing of the paralyzed Catherine Vial.

Expansion of the place of grace

In view of the continuous apparitions of the lady (22 are recorded, also numerous apparitions of an angel, "le bon ange") and in view of the increasing flow of pilgrims, Pierre Gaillard was entrusted with the direction of the pilgrimage site. Together with Lambert, he began building a church around the small apparition chapel. During the apparitions, Benoîte was commissioned several times to urge different people to be more pious, but also to correct his own mistakes. When the Dominican provincial Etienne de Thord was present at the laying of the foundation stone of the church in 1666, Benoîte entered the Third Order of the Dominicans and wore a white hood from now on .

Interrogation and apparition in Embrun

In 1670 the new Vicar General of Embrun, Jean Javelly, called Benoîte to interrogate them (together with two Jesuits) himself. The trip lasted from May 25th to June 6th. After a week of interrogation, the panel was convinced that the apparitions were true. On June 5th, Corpus Christi feast, Benoîte experienced a festive mass in the cathedral of Embrun and had the appearance of Our Lady in the robe of a queen, crown on her head, all light and rays.

New examination by the new Bishop of Embrun

When the new Archbishop of Embrun, Charles Brûlart de Genlis (1628–1714), took office in 1671, he exposed Benoîte in Laus to an intensive questioning. At the Sorbonne he had already gained experience as an examinator for an extatician and was able to consider himself competent. He concluded that Benoîte overshadowed everything he had seen in terms of virtue and humility and asked Jean Peytieu to write a report.

Apparitions

On the Calvary of Avançon , the crucified Jesus is said to have appeared five times (last in 1679), who said to her: "Here you can see (in French: vous ) the extent of my love for sinners." She responded with self-mortification. In her shirt she spent winter nights in front of the cross, heard the wolves howl demonically and saw them throw flames. On Fridays from 1673 to 1677 and from 1679 to 1684 there were weekly wounds until the lady announced they would stop. But then she went barefoot three times a week to Avançon for the Calvary Cross for another 30 years.

When things slowly came to an end from 1685 with the spiritual supervisor of the place of grace, Jean Peytieu, Benoîte experienced epileptic seizures that were interpreted as the devil. She felt transferred to other places and was downright blackmailed by the devil.

Escape to Marseille

In 1692 Viktor Amadeus II brought war and devastation to the country. Benoîte fled to Marseille accompanied by Peytieu's successor, Jean Magnin, and the hermit François Aubin. There she was a kind of star with the later bishop of Apt, Joseph-Ignace de Foresta (1654–1736), the mystic theorist François Malaval (1627–1719) and in the Rémusat family, from which the mystic Anne-Madeleine Rémusat (1796 -1730) emerged. She visited the city's monasteries, gave ample consolation and advice, and stood out for her clear judgments. The stay lasted from the end of July to the end of September. Then she returned to Laus.

Louse in crisis

The vicar general Gabriel Viala, newly appointed in 1692, was hostile to Laus. He installed priests at the place of grace who discredited Benoîte. From 1699 she was forbidden to speak to pilgrims. The apparitions became rare. This “Night of Laus” lasted until 1712. But also during this time the Gallia Christiana reported : "Benoîte is venerated like a saint in the country. She reads the hearts and is consulted like an oracle."

The years from 1712 until death

In 1712 Archbishop Brûlart de Genlis called the congregation of the missionary priests Notre-Dame de Sainte-Garde (led by Laurent-Dominique Bertet, 1671-1739) to Laus. Thanks to them, Benoîte, now 65 years old, experienced harmony and recognition for another six years. The same applies to Pierre Gaillard, who had been marginalized and isolated until then, who died in 1715 (leaving behind an important manuscript in which the history of its appearance was recorded). In 1716, Benoîte became a member of the Third Order of the Paulans , which also included the missionary priests. She died in 1718. She is said to have had apparitions until shortly before her death.

Development of the place of grace

The missionary priests of Sainte-Garde looked after the place until 1791. Then they were expelled by the French Revolution against the resistance of the population. In 1805, Bishop Bienvenu de Miollis von Digne bought the church back with his own funds. The monastery was bought back in 1816 through a donation from the diocesan priests. From 1818 to 1842 care was in the hands of the Oblates of the Immaculate Virgin Mary , whose founder Eugen von Mazenod appointed his closest confidante, Paul Henry Tempier (1788–1870), as the first local superior. In 1842 the place passed to a community of diocesan priests.

Beatification process

Bishop Jean-Irénée Depéry (1796–1861) von Gap initiated the first efforts for a beatification. In 1855 the statue of the Virgin Mary was solemnly crowned with the blessing of the Pope and in the presence of numerous bishops, which resulted in a considerable increase in the pilgrimage. Depéry's successor, Victor-Félix Bernadou , reached the official diocesan opening of the beatification process in 1864, which was also opened in Rome in 1866 (with the Dominican Alexandre Vincent Jandel, 1810–1872, as postulator). In 1872 the Pope declared Benoîte a venerable servant of God . The Apparition Church was elevated to a minor basilica in 1894. But in 1913, due to a lack of direct evidence, the decision was rejected. There was no scientific and historical analysis of the case. This was by Roger de Labriolle (1907–1988) in the 1977 work Benoîte. La bergère de Notre-Dame du Laus (The Shepherdess of Notre-Dame du Laus) and made the subject of a scientific colloquium in 1978, on the basis of which John Paul II repealed the negative decision of 1913 in 1981 and a new procedure under postulator René Combal was initiated. In 2008 the apparitions of Laus were officially recognized as supernatural by the Bishop of Gap, Jean-Michel di Falco Leandri . The beatification process of Benoîte Rencurel is currently going on. Pope Benedict XVI Benoîte raised Rencurel to the venerable Servant of God on April 3, 2009 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Notre-Dame du Laus was recognized as a place of pilgrimage - ZENIT - German. Retrieved on May 29, 2019 (German).
  2. ↑ Church recognizes apparition of Mary. Retrieved May 29, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Vatican: New apparition of Mary recognized . In: Spiegel Online . May 5, 2008 ( spiegel.de [accessed May 29, 2019]).
  4. ↑ OUR LADY OF LAUS. Retrieved May 29, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Rencurel, Benoîte
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Venerable servant of God
DATE OF BIRTH September 16, 1647
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint-Etienne-le-Laus , Hautes-Alpes
DATE OF DEATH December 28, 1718