Urbain Guillet

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Urbain Guillet OCR (born February 13, 1764 in Nantes , † April 2, 1817 in Cholet ) was a French Trappist monk , prior and founder of a monastery in North America.

Life

Guillet grew up in France, far from his parents, who owned a plantation on San Domingo ( Hispaniola ). After studying medicine for a year, he entered the La Trappe monastery in 1786 (a first attempt failed in 1785) and made his solemn profession in 1789 (under novice master Augustin de Lestrange ) , a few months before the monastery was dissolved by the French Revolution . Guillet accompanied Lestrange into exile in the La Valsainte Charterhouse in Switzerland, where he was guest master, infirmar and subprior. Sent from Lestrange to Hungary to found a monastery, he was on the road from October 1794 to October 1795, but only got as far as Upper Austria and had to turn back. Lestrange placed the newly founded Third Order (an educational institute) under him in La Valsainte, where he was successful as an educator, then in 1796 the two new monasteries (monks and nuns) in Sembrancher .

In 1798 he went to Orsha with Lestrange . For a time he was also superior in the Derman monastery in Podolia . When Lestrange's traveling monastery withdrew from Orscha to Darfeld in Westphalia, Guillet became head of the educational institute in the Darfeld branch of St. Liborius in Driburg in 1800 under Prior Bernard de Girmont . In 1801 he was in Welda Castle near Warburg, which was left to the Trappists . Then he returned to La Valsainte.

In December 1802, Lestrange sent him, although he did not speak English, to found a monastery in North America. He traveled via Frankfurt am Main and Amsterdam to Baltimore , where he established relationships with Bishop John Carroll and tried unsuccessfully to establish a foundation in Pigeon Hill , near York (Pennsylvania) , then via Pittsburgh , Cincinnati to Louisville , to (in collaboration with Etienne Badin ( 1768-1853), the first consecrated Roman Catholic priest in North America, and with Charles Nerinckx ) in Casey Creek (now Clementsville , Casey County ) near Bardstown (Kentucky) to try to found a monastery and school. After their failure (by fire) he traveled with Marie-Joseph Dunand and others by raft down the Ohio , then up the Mississippi to Florissant ( Missouri ) near Saint Louis and founded (after failure in Florissant) in 1809 in Monks Mound , Cahokia (Illinois) ) the Notre Dame de Bon Secours monastery , which was decimated by an epidemic in 1812 and had to be abandoned. In 1814 Guillet was forced to return to France by Lestrange, who had traveled to North America in 1813, and (after an attempt to repopulate Bois-Grolland Monastery, which was thwarted by the rule of the Hundred Days ) was appointed head of the Bellefontaine Monastery, which had been repopulated in 1816 . He died after a brief administration.

Thirty years later, not far from Casey Creek, Trappists from Melleray Monastery founded the first successful Cistercian monastery on what is now the United States ( Trappist Gethsemani Abbey , Kentucky 1848).

The Trappist Hermeland Bretonnière dedicated an extensive biography to Guillet (1899).

Works

  • Les correspondances de Dom Urbain Guillet, 24 juillet 1806-14 mars 1812 et de Frère Marie-Bernard (Louis-Antoine) Langlois, 30 août 1806 - 4 février 1809, avec Mgr Plessis, évêque de Québec. Archives de l'Archevêché de Québec: cotes: AAQ, 7 CM, Etats-Unis. vol. 3, entre 100 et 128, Guillet, Urbain (1764-1817) , Communauté des Moines de l'Abbaye de Notre-Dame de Tamié, 2003.

literature

  • Patrick Braun: Urbain Guillet. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  • Vie du RP dom Urbain Guillet, fondateur de la Trappe de Bellefontaine. Par un religieux de ce monastère , La Chapelle-Montligeon, 1899 (author not named: Hermeland Bretonnière).
  • Marie-Joseph Dunand, Relation de ce qui est arrivé à deux religieux de la Trappe, pendant leur séjour auprès des Sauvages , Paris, 1824.
  • Serge Grandais, Entre les mains de Dieu. L'odyssée trappiste de dom Urbain Guillet (1798-1803) on the routes de La Valsainte à Amsterdam . Bégrolles-en-Mauges (Maine-et-Loire), Abbaye de Bellefontaine, 2016 (Collection Cahiers cisterciens).
  • Augustin-Hervé Laffay (* 1965), Dom Augustin de Lestrange et l'avenir du monachisme: 1754–1827 , Paris, Cerf, 1998; Diss. Lyon 3, 1994.
  • Thomas Merton , The Waters of Siloe , New York 1949 (pp. 50–82)
  • The Trappists of Monks Mound , Illinois Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 8 No. 2 (Oct. 1925), pp. 106-136 ( online )

Manual information

  • Bernard Peugniez: Le guide routier de l'Europe cistercienne. Wit des lieux. Patrimoine. Hôtellerie. Strasbourg, Editions du Signe, 2012, p. 274 (Bellefontaine), p. 556 (Driburg), p. 569 (Rosenthal-Darfeld).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://archive.org/stream/viedurpdomurbain00lach#page/n3/mode/2up
  2. ↑ https://archive.org/stream/watersofsiloe009709mbp#page/n447/mode/2up
personal data
SURNAME Guillet, Urbain
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French Trappist monk, prior and founder of a monastery in North America
DATE OF BIRTH February 13, 1764
PLACE OF BIRTH Nantes
DATE OF DEATH April 2, 1817
Place of death Cholet