Mathias Le Groing de La Romagère

Tomb of Mathias Le Groing de La Romagère

Mathias Le Groing de La Romagère (born December 5, 1756 in Saint-Sauvier , Département Allier , † February 19, 1841 in Saint-Brieuc ) was a French bishop .

Life

Mathias Le Groing de La Romagère came from an old Berry family . He was born in 1756 as the eighth child of Count Charles Le Groing de La Romagère (1725–1796) and his wife Claire Mulatier de La Trollière in the manor house of La Romagère in Saint-Sauvier im Berry in central France and was a younger brother of Blessed Pierre- Joseph Le Groing de la Romagère (1752-1794).

He studied at the College of the Oratorians in Vendôme , then at the St. Sulpice Seminary and at the Sorbonne , where he became prior in 1780. In 1783, Bishop Anne-Antoine-Jules de Clermont-Tonnerre of Châlons appointed him theologal (a canon with the special duties of a theology professor) with the title of vicar general . As such, he de facto headed the diocese from the beginning of the French Revolution . Because he did not want to take the oath on the civil constitution of the clergy , he was arrested during the Reign of Terror in 1793 at the Château de la Mazières in the Cher department and initially interned in the prison of Saint-François in Bourges , where he began to write his memoirs. On March 6, 1794 he was transferred to the prison ship Les Deux Associés in front of the Île-d'Aix near Rochefort . While his brother, who was also deported there (like many hundreds of other convicts) died of the conditions of detention, Mathias Le Groing survived and was able to report on the events after his release on March 31, 1795.

After the end of the revolution he became vicar general in Bourges and Clermont-Ferrand. Appointed Bishop of Saint-Brieuc in 1817 , he was preconized on August 23, 1819. On October 19, 1819, Bishop Clermont-Tonnerre donated him episcopal ordination in the Church of the Carmelites in Paris ( St-Joseph-des-Carmes ?) ; Co - consecrators were Louis-Siffrein-Joseph de Salamon and Alexis Saussol , Bishop of Sées . On November 15, 1819 he took possession of his diocese.

During his tenure, he established several charities in the diocese, such as the one of the Brothers of Mercy of St. John of God run orphanage in Léhon , the Abbé Samson Garnier led deaf house in Lamballe and a minor seminary in Plouguernével and a retirement home for priests in Saint-Aubin . During the cholera epidemic of 1832, he took particular care of the people of Paimpol and Bréhat .

He died in Saint-Brieuc in 1841 and was buried in the transept of the cathedral.

Memories of the "pontoons"

Bishop de La Romagère left his handwritten memoirs, which also covered the revolutionary years 1789 to 1794 with the time of his imprisonment in St-François prison in Bourges and on the prison ship ("Ponton"), entitled Les Deux Associés . The original is lost. There is only one copy made by students of the seminary of Saint-Brieuc in five volumes, a total of approx. 1,690 pages. Part of it was published in 1927 by Auguste Lemasson . This report is one of the few surviving eyewitness accounts of the unimaginable conditions of detention on the pontoons, which resulted in the deaths of several hundred convicts, mainly priests . 64 of them were beatified in 1995 by Pope John Paul II ( Martyrs of Rochefort ).

Works

• Les actes des prêtres insermentés du diocèse de Saint-Brieuc mis à mort de 1794 à 1800, suivis de la relation de la captivité de Mgr. De La Romagère sur les pontons de Rochefort. Prud'homme, Saint-Brieuc 1927, 397 p. ( Digitized version )

literature

• L'Épiscopat français: Depuis le Concordat jusqu'à la Séparation (1802-1905). Librairie de Saints-Pères, Paris 1907.
• Jean-Marie Mayeur, Yves-Marie Hilaires: Dictionnaire du monde religieux dans la France contemporaine. Paris 1985–1990.

Web links

• Entry on Mathias Le Groing de La Romagère on catholic-hierarchy.org ; accessed on October 6, 2017.