Jean-Baptiste Desnoyers

Jean-Baptiste Desnoyers (born March 31, 1768 in Paris , † February 25, 1849 in Soissons ) was a French Roman Catholic clergyman, Trappist , Carmelite , monastery founder and monastery superior.

life and work

Trappist in France and Switzerland

Louis Alexandre Noyer (later: Desnoyers) began studying theology in Paris in 1787. At Easter 1789 he entered the Cistercian monastery La Trappe , took the religious name Jean-Baptiste and became a novice under the novice master Augustin de Lestrange . When all orders were dissolved by the French Revolution on February 13, 1790 , he went back to Paris on advice from Lestrange to study and was ordained a deacon on December 18, 1790. He resumed contact with Lestrange and, accompanied by Eugène de Laprade , traveled to Switzerland to join the convent formed by Lestrange in the La Valsainte monastery . After a second novitiate year (under novice master Arsène Durand, † 1804) he made the vows as the first profession in August 1792 and was ordained a priest on September 22, 1792 in Freiburg im Üechtland . Lestrange commissioned him (together with Colomban Moroge) with the drafting of the monastic rule, which he had tightened considerably, and appointed him the economist's partner.

Founding of Westmalle and Lulworth Monasteries

At the end of August 1793, Lestrange (together with Laprade and Jean-Marie de Bruyne) sent him on a journey to lead the expedition to found a monastery in Canada. In Brussels, the group met the future abbots Étienne Malmy and Antoine Saulnier de Beauregard . Since the crossing to England was blocked in Amsterdam, Desnoyers accepted an offer from the Bishop of Ghent and founded the Trappist Abbey Westmalle , to which Lestrange sent eight monks, so that the monastery officially commenced service on June 6, 1794 and Arsène Durand as superior chose. When the entire convent was driven out by the advancing revolutionary army at the end of June and part of it left for Westphalia, where he was finally to settle in the Darfeld-Rosenthal monastery , Desnoyers and four confreres separated from the group and arrived in London via Rotterdam in July. He stayed in England and accepted the invitation of Thomas Weld 's father to found the Lulworth Monastery , which was to play a not inconsiderable role in the survival of the order.

Foundation of the Stapehill Monastery

From 1798, however, there were frictions between the Weld father and Desnoyers. Desnoyers also came to terms less and less with Lestrange's extremely tightened rule. Therefore, in March 1801, he wrote a letter to the Pope with the request that the Lulworth convent be withdrawn from Lestrange's jurisdiction and subordinate to the local bishop, but immediately revoked this step in another letter. Nevertheless, Lestrange deposed him on May 27, 1802 and appointed Bernard Benoist as superior in his place. Desnoyers turned to another task that had already begun, namely building, founding and looking after the Stapehill Trappist convent , which the sisters took possession of in October 1802 under the leadership of mother Augustin de Chabannes .

Creation of the Grosbois and Crisis Monastery

At the end of May 1804 Desnoyers was called back to La Valsainte by Abbot Lestrange. To the great chagrin of the nuns who adored him, he submitted and arrived in Paris in August. There he was stopped by illness and found himself in completely different waters. An old friend from the seminary, Xavier Miquel, who had been running a double Trappist monastery in today's Soisy-sur-Seine since 1801, asked him to take over the leadership. Desnoyers agreed and founded the Grosbois (Yerres) monastery , which (under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Versailles ) followed the original Rancé reform (rather than the harsh Lestrange reform). He himself achieved several audiences with the Pope who was in Paris and the dispensation from the Lestrange rule (for health reasons). Desnoyers was very much appreciated in Grosbois and also successful: in 1806 his community consisted of 15 monks and 42 nuns. But then there was considerable debt, so that the bishop deposed him in 1808 and installed Lestrange as superior.

Carmelite and secular priest in Lille

In the same year 1808 Desnoyers founded a Carmelite convent with the help of the wealthy nun Marie-Angélique Elisabeth Guéau de Réverseaux (1771–1846) in Savy-Berlette ( Pas-de-Calais ) , which in 1811 had 16 novices. When in 1811 the Grosbois monastery fell victim to Napoleon's decision to dissolve all the Cistercian monasteries , Desnoyers moved the Carmelite monastery to Grosbois, but in 1815 (apparently because of a deal with the Bishop of Versailles ) to Arras , where it was in the diocese of his friend Hugues Cardinal de La Tour d'Auvergne Lauragais lay. But here, too, a rift soon arose, and Desnoyers was appointed by the Bishop of Cambrai , Louis de Belmas, to be chaplain of the parish of Saint-Etienne in Lille , where he immediately received the utmost recognition and was in the highest circles. In May 1817 the Carmelite convent moved its seat from Arras to Lille in order to benefit from its spiritual guidance again. But now there was a rift between Desnoyers and his mother Réverseaux (who temporarily deserted and left him with the convent) until Desnoyers resigned from his office in Lille at the end of October 1819 (about the authorities' requirement to educate poor pupils by the monastery).

30 years of namelessness

It is known that he made an application to the Bishop of Friborg (Switzerland) for employment, which was refused. From 1822 to 1827 he was educator in Versailles in the house of Constantin-Marie-Louis-Léon de Bouthillier-Chavigny (1774-1829), the great-great-nephew of the order reformer Rancé. Nothing is known about the following seven years. From 1834 to 1844 he was pastor (under Jules François de Simony, Bishop of Soissons and former classmate) in Séry-lès-Mézières ( Aisne department ). From 1844 he lived as an honorary canon in Soissons , from 1847 in the same house as the now retired bishop. Both died almost simultaneously in 1849, on February 24 the former bishop, 24 hours later the Abbé, former monk of two orders and founder of five monasteries, a man of impressive stature, but unfortunately without the gift of tolerance.

literature

Central

• Roland Jousselin: La double vocation de Jean-Baptiste Desnoyers (1768-1849) . Bégrolles-en-Mauges, Abbaye de Bellefontaine, 2001 (main source for this article).
• Anne-Dolorès Marcélis: Femmes cloîtrées des temps contemporains. Vies et histoires de carmélites et de clarisses en Namurois, 1837-2000 . Leuven, Presses universitaires, 2013.

Further literature

• Casimir Gaillardin (1810–1880): Les Trappistes, ou, L'Ordre de citeaux au XIXe siècle. Histoire de la Trappe depuis sa fondation jusqu'a nos jours, 1140-1844. Tome Premier . Paris, Comptoir des Imprimeurs Réunis, 1844.
• Marie de la Trinité Kervingant: Des moniales face à la Révolution française. Aux origines des Cisterciennes-Trappistines . Beauchesne, Paris 1989.
• Augustin-Hervé Laffay (* 1965): Dom Augustin de Lestrange et l'avenir du monachisme: 1754–1827 . Cerf, Paris 1998; Diss. Lyon 3, 1994 (passim).

Web links

• Literature by and about Jean-Baptiste Desnoyers in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)
• Article Desnoyers in the Biographia Cisterciensis