Marie Durand

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Marie Durand

Marie Durand (* 15. July 1711 in Le Bouchet-de-Pranles , southern France ; † in July 1776 ibid) was a Huguenot , as year 19, newly wed young woman in Constance Tower of Aigues-Mortes , along with other Hugenottinnen was imprisoned. The crime she was charged with was that she adhered to the reformed faith, which the French king and the Catholic Church tried to stifle with the toughest measures.

Life

At a young age, Marie Durand suffered from the persecution of the Reformed in France after the repeal of the Edict of Nantes (1685) by Louis XIV. Her mother, Claudine Durand, was arrested at a secret Reformed gathering organized by her father; she died in prison in 1719. Marie's father, Etienne Durand, was arrested during a house search in 1729. After 14 years in prison, he was pardoned and returned to Bouschet-de-Pranles in 1743. There he died in 1749 at the age of 92. Marie Durand's older brother, Pierre Durand, (* 1700), was a rousing preacher of the "Church in the Desert". After betraying him, he was caught and executed in 1732.

Marie Durand found out about her brother's fate in Aigues-Mortes women's prison. She and her husband Mathieu Serres had already been arrested in 1730. Serres was pardoned in 1750 on condition that he should leave France. Durand remained a prisoner in the Tour de Constance ("Tower of Fortitude"), indomitable in their beliefs. At the beginning of her detention, she refused to betray her brother Pierre. If this turned up, she was promised, she would be released. Durand then wrote to her brother that under no circumstances should he give up his post because of her.

Under the inhumane conditions in the prison tower, Marie Durand was the “pastor” of her fellow prisoners. She encouraged the women, emaciated to the bone, to cling to the Reformed faith and not to go to the St. Ludwig's Chapel to swear off it. In letters from captivity to Protestant communities at home and abroad, some of which have survived to this day, she drew attention to the fate of the persecuted: In a letter to Justine Pechaire dated May 21, 1740, she wrote: “Allow me to inform you that I am not surprised at how terribly God makes the believers in our afflicted region feel the rod, for they do not follow the orders of the divine Master. He admonishes the prisoners to be looked after and they do nothing of the sort. Love is the basic principle of our belief and they don't adhere to it. In short, it seems that we are living in the end times, for this divine virtue has grown very cold. The true Christians [meaning the Reformed] will not be condemned because they have given up the purity of the gospel, because they constantly profess it. But they will because they did not visit Christ in the prisons - in the form of their church members. "

After 38 years in prison, Marie Durand was released from prison at the age of 56 and returned to her hometown on April 14, 1768. After her release, she was “physically broken, but mentally as strong as ever,” as one biographer put it. She lived another eight years at liberty before passing away at the age of 65.

The “Marie Durand School” in Bad Karlshafen and the “Lycee agricole Marie Durand” in Rodilhan are named after her. Gertrud von le Fort set her a literary monument in her story The Tower of Resistance from 1957.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jörg Meuth: Marie Durand. In: Matthias Krieg, Gabrielle Zangger-Derron (Ed.): The Reformed. Search images of an identity. 2002, pp. 174-176.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Durand, Marie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French Huguenot who was trapped in the "Tour de Constance" of Aigues-Mortes for 38 years
DATE OF BIRTH July 15, 1711
PLACE OF BIRTH Le Bouchet-de-Pranles , South of France
DATE OF DEATH July 1776
Place of death Le Bouchet-de-Pranles , South of France