Vincent de Paul Merle

Vincent de Paul Merle (born October 29, 1768 in Chalamont , † January 1, 1853 in Tracadie (today: Monastery), east of Antigonish , Antigonish County , Nova Scotia , Canada ) was a French Trappist and monastery founder who worked in Canada.

life and work

Jacques Merle attended high school in Lyon and entered the La Valsainte Charterhouse in Switzerland, founded by Augustin de Lestrange in 1791 . However, since his health was not up to the strict requirements, he returned to France after six months to study theology and was secretly ordained a priest in 1798. In 1804 he entered La Valsainte a second time, made his solemn profession in 1805 , took the religious name Vincent de Paul (after Vincent de Paul ) and was appointed by Lestrange as prior of the ephemeral hospice monastery of Montgenèvre , which he took with him from 1806 to 1811 Endorsed by the Napoleonic government. After Napoleon dissolved the order in 1811, Merle von Lestrange was sent to Pennsylvania to found a monastery , but was just as unsuccessful as Lestrange himself, who stayed there from December 1813 to November 1814.

When the last Trappists left the New World from Halifax (Nova Scotia) at Lestrange's behest in May 1815 , Merle stayed behind and, with the support of the Bishop of Quebec, Joseph-Octave Plessis (1763-1825), prepared for the proselytizing of the Indian people of the Mi'kmaq . In 1819 he founded the Petit Clairvaux monastery in Tracadie . Despite numerous difficulties, he ignored Lestrange's instruction in 1822 to join the Trappists in Kentucky (later Gethsemani Monastery ). Instead, he came to France from October 1823 to June 1825 and looked for four comrades-in-arms for Petit Clairvaux , including the priest François-Xavier Kaiser. During a recent trip to Europe from 1836 to 1838, the Pope placed the monastery with 12 monks and the associated women's monastery with 9 nuns under the supervision of local bishop William Fraser (1779-1851), who called Merle back to Canada. Once there, in 1840 he handed over the management of the Trappist monastery to Kaiser and retired to the Trappist monastery. His ongoing efforts to stabilize Petit Clairvaux were not successful until 1858, when monks from the Abbey of Saint Sixtus in Belgium came to Canada to successfully reinforce them.

Merle was highly respected in New Scotland, but the attempt, begun in 1903, to initiate a beatification process failed in 1905. The settlement of Merland in Tracadie is named after him. Thomas Merton called him "one of the most tenacious Trappists that has ever lived."

Works

• Relation de ce qui est arrive à deux religieux de la Trappe, pendant leur séjour auprés des sauvages , Paris, Chez Rusand, libraire, rue de l'Abbaye Saint-Germain, No. 2., 1824. ("Mémoire de ce qui est arrivé au P. Vincent de Paul, Religieux de la Trappe, et ses observations lorsqu'il étoit en Amérique, où il a passé environ dix ans avec l'agrément de son supérieur" , Pp. 5–84. "Lettre ou journal du RP Marie Joseph, écrit pour son supérieur le RP abbé de la Trappe, dom Augustin de l'Estrange, en 1825, etc., concernant ses voyages, et la mission qu'il a faite dans la Louisiane et dans le pays des Illinois, depuis l'année 1805 ", pp. 85-168).
  • (Partial translation, English) Memoir of Father Vincent de Paul, religious of La Trappe. Charlottetown, PEI, 1886; Project Gutenberg, 2004.

literature

• Thomas Merton: The Waters of Siloe. New York 1949 (pp. 83–100: The Trappists in Nova Scotia. Petit Clairvaux, citation p. 87)
• Éphrem Boudreau: Le Petit Clairvaux. Cent ans de vie cistercienne à Tracadie en Nouvelle-Écosse, 1818–1919. Moncton, Editions d'Acadie, 1980.

Web links

• Paulette M. Chiasson: Merle, Jacques. In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography.
• http://www.spencerabbey.org/our-history/the-foundation-of-petit-clairvaux-1825-1857/ (founding report by Petit Clairvaux, with picture by Merle)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ https://archive.org/stream/watersofsiloe009709mbp#page/n447/mode/2up