Jean-Baptiste Volcler

Jean-Baptiste Volcler (born December 21, 1760 in Désertines ; died around 1830 in Abbeville ) was a French priest and prosecutor during the French Revolution .

Life

He was born the son of lawyer Louis Volcler. At the beginning of the French Revolution he was pastor in Lassay-les-Châteaux and remained so until 1791 the practice of religion was abolished. He then became mayor of Lassay-les-Châteaux, later a public prosecutor.

When the Terreur came up, Volcler became a prosecutor of the Commission militaire révolutionnaire du département de la Mayenne , an exceptional court in the Mayenne department , which was founded due to the uprising of the Vendée . In this capacity, he accused the fourteen martyrs of Laval , the majority of whom were aged or severely disabled priests , who were guillotined on the same day . Among them was his former teacher, François Migoret-Lamberdière . In response to his indictments, 328 death sentences were pronounced in 150 proceedings between January 5 and November 2, 1794. After the introduction of the Revolutionary Tribunal , he returned to Lassay in April 1794 and became mayor there. In November 1794 he was deposed, he retired to Abbeville and there married the 22-year-old Émilie Riquier, daughter of a municipal official in Abbeville.

Jean-Baptiste Volcler died around 1830 as a homeless person in an overnight house, his wife died in 1844.

literature

• Théodore Perrin: Les Martyrs du Maine. 1830.
• Isidore Boullier: Mémoires ecclésiastiques concernant la ville de Laval et ses environs. 2nd ed. 1848.
• La justice révolutionnaire Août 1792 - Prairial an III d'après des ... Volume 1, 1870, p. 186, online
• Emile Queruau-Lamerie: Bulletin de la Commission historique de la Mayenne. 1907.
• Christine Peyrard: Les Jacobins de l'Ouest. online (french)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Quatorze prêtres guillotinés à Laval le 21 janvier 1794. Laval53000, 7 December 2015, accessed on 4 May 2017 (French).