Sainte Marie-Madeleine Fontaine
et ses compagnes, filles de la Charité, martyres
à Cambrai (✝ 1794)
Marie-Madeleine
Fontaine et trois autres sœurs de Charité, guillotinées pour la foi, durant la
Révolution française, à Cambrai.
"Marie-Madeleine Fontaine, Marie-Françoise Lanel, Thérèse Fantou et Jeanne
Gérard, filles de la Charité, se dévouaient à Arras au soin des pauvres et des
malades. Arrêtées sous la Terreur en 1794, elles refusèrent de prêter le
serment de liberté-égalité exigé par la Convention. Conduites à Cambrai, elles
y furent guillotinées le 26 juin 1794.
Elles ont été béatifiées par Benoît XV en 1920."
À Cambrai, en 1794, les bienheureuses Madeleine Fontaine,
Françoise Lanel, Thérèse Fantou et Jeanne Gérard, vierges et martyres. Filles
de la Charité, elles furent condamnées à mort en haine de l’Église, dans la
même persécution, et conduites à l’échafaud, la tête couronnée du Rosaire, par
dérision.
Martyrologe
romain
Bienheureuse Marie-Madeleine
Fontaine et ses compagnes, martyres
Marie-Madeleine Fontaine, née à Etrépagny
dans l’Eure le 22 avril 1723, entra chez les Filles de la Charité en 1748. Lors
du déclenchement de la révolution française elle était supérieure d’une petite
communauté de sœurs soignantes à Arras qui tenait un petit hospice et une école.
En 1793 Joseph Lebon, un
prêtre républicain devenu apostat, plaça à la tête de leur école un laïc et
confisqua les biens de la communauté. Les sœurs eurent toutefois la permission
de soigner discrètement les malades, mais en vêtements civils. La situation
devenait de plus en plus risquée pour elles.
Trois religieuses décidèrent tout de même de rester avec leur supérieure et refusèrent de prêter le serment de liberté et d’égalité qui par principe reniait leurs vœux religieux. Elles furent alors arrêtées le 14 février 1794 pour activités contre-révolutionnaires, et transférées à la prison de Cambrai. Joseph Lebon, nommé magistrat à Cambrai, condamna à mort Marie-Madeleine ainsi que Marie-Françoise Lanel (née à Eu le 24 août 1745), Thérèse-Madeleine Fantou (née à Miniac-en-Morvan le 29 juillet 1747), et Jeanne Gérard (née à Cumières le 23 octobre 1752).
Devant la guillotine, le 26
juin 1794, les sœurs, couronnées du rosaire par dérision, n’hésitèrent pas à
entonner un Ave Maris Stella, et la Mère Marie-Madeleine, dernière à être
guillotinée s’écria devant la foule rassemblée : « Écoutez bien
Chrétiens ! Nous serons les dernières victimes car la persécution prend fin.
Les guillotines seront détruites et à la place on élèvera des autels à la
gloire du Seigneur Jésus ! »
Un peu plus tard Robespierre fut guillotiné ainsi que Joseph Lebon. C’était la fin de la Terreur.
Blessed Mary Magdalen Fontaine and Companions (AC)
Born in Etrépagny (Eure), France, in 1723; died at Cambrai; beatified in 1920.
Blessed Mary Magdalen entered the novitiate of the sisters of Charity of Saint
Vincent de Paul in 1748, and from 1767 was the superior of the house of that
institute at Arras. She was guillotined at Cambrai during the French Revolution
together with three religious of her community (Benedictines).
Blessed
Marie-Madeleine Fontaine
Profile
Joined the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul in 1748. Ran a girl‘s school for 19 years. Superior of the convent at Arras, France in 1767. Arrested with three of her sisters in 1794 by French Revolutionaries. When the sisters refused to take the Oath of the Constitution,
they were accused of counter-revolutionary activity, given a show-trial at Cambrai, France, and sentenced to death. Martyr.
Born
- guillotined on 26 June 1794 at Cambrai, Nord, France
- 6 July 1919 by Pope Benedict XV (decree of martyrdom)
Martyred
Daughters of Charity of Arras
Marie Madeleine
Fontaine, Marie Françoise Lanel,Thérèse Madeleine Fantou and Jeanne
Gerard are often referred to as the martyred Daughters of Charity of Arras,
as they were stationed in Arras at the time of their arrest, though they were
tried and executed in Cambrai. Arras is about one hundred miles almost directly
north of Paris, and Cambrai is about twenty miles south east of Arras.
The Daughters of Charity
came to Arras in 1656, four years before the death of Vincent. They were asked
for because of the devastation of the town caused by war. Eighty years later,
in 1736, they were still there and because their work had expanded they needed
a larger house. The Vincentians were in charge of the seminary in the town at
that time. Forty-three years later, in 1779, they needed a still larger house
and the bishop purchased a site in the center of the town and a completely new
house was constructed and opened in 1782.
At the outbreak of the
Revolution in 1789 they had a dispensary and a free school for girls, and they
made house visits to the poor. They received plenty of financial help from the
townspeople. There were seven sisters in the house in 1789. Marie-Madeleine
Fontaine was superior. Three of the other sisters were Marie-Françoise Lanel,
Thérèse-Madeleine Fantou and Jeanne Gérard. There had been three other sisters
in the community, but they had left by the time the revolutionary trouble
reached its climax.
One of the principal men
in power in Paris during the period of the Terror was Maximilien Robespierre.
He was a native of Arras, so the revolutionary figures of that town were
zealous for putting all his ideas into force in the town. As a result, Arras
suffered more than any other country town in France during the revolutionary
period.
This meant that the local
leaders tried their utmost to get the clergy and religious of the town to take
the various oaths, which were prescribed by the laws passed in Paris. In actual
fact only one parish priest and one curate in the town took the oaths. Some
others stayed and conducted an underground ministry, but many fled abroad.
During the Revolution a large number of French clergy sought refuge in England,
including many Vincentians. The bishop went into exile in Belgium, to the town
of Tournai, which is only about forty miles from Arras. From there he tried to
keep abreast of events in his diocese. The three vicars general stayed on. One
of them was a Vincentian, and he was probably acting as director of the
Daughters. The Daughters’ policy was to try to continue their work as normally
as they could, and to avoid for as long as possible any direct confrontation
with the revolutionary elements in the town administration. They had the full
support of the ordinary townspeople.
The big change for the
Daughters came in November 1793 when a man named Joseph Lebon arrived in Arras
to organize things on the basis of total conformity to the instructions coming
from Paris, in the spirit of Robespierre. In fact his brutality went far beyond
what the laws actually permitted. He was a native of Arras, born there in 1765,
so he was twenty-eight years old on his arrival. He was a former Oratorian, a
member of the National Convention, and was appointed mayor of Arras and
administrator of the department of the Pas de Calais.
Lebon took up his new
post in Arras on 1 November 1793, and on the 14th he sent two officials to the
Daughters’ house to ascertain whether the sisters had taken the prescribed
oaths and conformed themselves to all other legal requirements. The sisters
said that they had not taken the oaths, had no intention of taking them and
therefore there was no point in giving them extra time to reconsider. When the
two officials heard this they decided that they would have to inspect all the
rooms of the house and make an inventory of the contents, so as to report back
to the authorities on this. In their report they said that they were
accompanied on this visit of the house by Citizeness Madeleine Fontaine, the
directress. They avoided terms like sister, or superioress. They found that
there were pictures in the house which were of Catholic religious significance,
as well as others which reflected aspects of the former class of nobility. They
ordered the bursar of the house to remove all these, but they selected some
which they thought were of artistic value to be retained for the town museum.
On 23 November there was
a new decree expelling from hospitals all religious women who had not taken the
oaths. This applied to the dispensary run by the Daughters, and a new lay staff
was brought in. At the same time they did not go as far as expelling the
sisters. The reason for this was that they believed that the sisters had secret
remedies and prescriptions for various illnesses, and they hoped that they
would discover these secrets and then expel the sisters. The name was also
changed, from the House of Charity to the House of Humanity.
Lebon travelled all
through the area under his command, and in a report dated 26 November 1793 he
wrote: “No twenty-four hour period passes in which I do not bring before the
revolutionary criminal court in Arras two or three head of game for the
guillotine”. The criminal court did not go along with Lebon’s thirst for
executions and very often imposed prison sentences instead of the death
penalty. Lebon put up with this until February 1794, when he changed all the
court personnel and replaced them with persons who would do exactly what he
wanted. One of these replacements wrote the following month that the guillotine
“is never idle; dukes, marquises, counts and barons, men and women, fall like
hailstones”. A second court had to be established to deal with all the new
work.
In spite of all this
increased revolutionary atmosphere in Arras the Daughters were left generally
in peace. They continued to attend to the poor and sick in the dispensary and
in their own homes, and the flow of alms to them never slackened. They also
engaged in the dangerous enterprise of helping people to escape into Belgium,
the border being only about forty miles away. They gave financial help to such
people and helped also to provide disguises.
Marie-Madeleine kept
detailed financial accounts, and her accounts for all 1793 and the first six
weeks of 1794 are still extant. She had to avoid using terms like “sister”, and
the sisters are now referred to as “the young ladies” who take up collections
in the town. In November 1793 they are called “young citizenesses”. The mother
general had advised this as a safeguard. Also, in 1794 Marie-Madeleine started
writing the new names of the months and using the dates of the new calendar of
the revolutionary period. In her accounts she lists very many anonymous
donations, probably thinking it prudent not to put down the names of donors.
The accounts show that even at that difficult time the people of the town
continued to support the work of the sisters. Finally, the accounts also show
that Marie-Madeleine did all that she could to ensure that all sums legally due
to the house were paid up. Some years earlier she had written to the Arras
municipality claiming the continuing right of the house to receive donations of
wine and other gifts, which it used to receive in the pre-revolutionary period.
In that letter, in 1791, she was still able to refer to the Sisters of Charity,
describe herself as superioress and promise to pray for the municipal
officials.
I mentioned earlier that
at the start of the revolutionary period there were seven sisters in the house
in Arras. At some stage one of these returned to her family.
In Paris there was a
group called The Jacobin Club, a meeting-place for people who embraced all the
revolutionary ideas of the time. It took its name from the fact that it met in
the former Dominican priory on the Rue Saint-Jacques. Because of the location
of their priory the Dominicans had been known as the Jacobins. Throughout
France similar clubs were established, including one in Arras. At the meetings
of the club all matters relating to the implementation of the various laws and
decrees were discussed, along with specific plans for putting them into
practice in Arras. Two wealthy Catholic men of the town, at considerable
personal risk, used to attend all meetings of the club in order to learn what
was being planned, and they passed on what they learned to persons who might be
concerned. They tipped off the Daughters that it would be prudent to get the
two youngest sisters across the border into Belgium as soon as possible. They
brought to the house the sort of clothes two young local women would wear, and
arranged for a trustworthy man, a merchant who supplied goods to the house, to
escort them to the frontier. This was successfully achieved, and they continued
their lives as Daughters of Charity first in Germany, later in Poland and
eventually in the neighbourhood of Geneva. With their departure only four
sisters remained in Arras, Marie-Madeleine Fontaine, aged 71, Marie-Françoise
Lanel, 49, Thérèse-Madeleine Fantou, 47, and Jeanne Gérard, 42.
On 5 February 1794 a
representative of the revolutionary administration took possession of the
Daughters’ house, and assumed control of all finances. He was one of the people
who thought that the sisters had been given too much freedom to continue their
work, when every other female religious community in the town had been
suppressed. Nine days later, on the 14th, the four sisters were arrested on the
charge of not having taken the prescribed oaths. They were taken to a mansion
in the town which had been confiscated and turned into a detention prison.
Lebon had drawn up a very severe regime for the prisoners, but as always seems
to happen in such cases, the persons appointed to administer the regime did not
always do so with the severity intended. Some of the wardens permitted breaches
of the rules, such as allowing prisoners to speak to each other and to
communicate with people outside, and they also helped in the provision of
proper food. One official connected with the prison had been involved in some
way with the administration of the Daughters’ dispensary, and he did as much as
possible to help the four imprisoned sisters.
At the beginning of March
Lebon issued further decrees about the prisoners. They were to be divided into
separate categories, and each category brought to a different place of
detention. This meant that families were broken up, with men, women and
children being put in different places. He also decreed that each detained
person be allowed keep only what was absolutely necessary. This meant, in fact,
that the officials were licensed to steal from the detainees anything which
took their fancy, money, watches, books and articles of clothing. This was done
over the two days of 8 and 9 March, in the fourth week of the sisters’
detention. They were also brought to a new prison, the former convent called
the convent of the Good Shepherd, or of Providence.
This building had been
designated as a place of detention for women who were under suspicion. Lebon
even invented a category of “women under suspicion of being under suspicion”.
Most of the detained women were from noble and rich families from all over that
part of northern France. There were about five hundred persons in the building,
resulting in gross overcrowding. Lebon drew up a set of rules for the house
much more severe than any previous one, especially as regards the question of
food. The detainees were not allowed visitors, and were also forbidden to send
or receive letters. To make sure that the regime would be enforced Lebon
stipulated very severe penalties for any prison officer who allowed any
relaxation of the rules. The governor and vice-governor of the prison were two
very cruel women who were in full agreement with Lebon’s ideas. The governor
used to celebrate on the days when women were taken out to execution, and get
blind drunk. She, in spite of Lebon’s decree, was ready to take bribes,
provided they were large enough.
Several women who had
spent time in that prison, but who were not executed, have left written
accounts of what went on there. These were educated women who needed some form
of intellectual relaxation to break the monotony of prison life. Some of them
used to meet in small groups, around the bed of one of them, for intelligent
and stimulating conversation, each contributing from her own background and
experience. For variety, each meeting was held around a different bed. The
Daughters of Charity were invited to take part in these meetings, and naturally
their contribution was on religious matters. They were, in fact, exercising a
much needed ministry, in view of the shortage of priests after so many
expulsions.
On 4 April, after about
three weeks in their first prison and almost four in the second, the four
Daughters of Charity were brought before a tribunal. They were charged with
having been in possession of counter-revolutionary printed material, found in
the Maison de la Charité. There seems to be evidence that this material had
been planted, and then conveniently found, hidden under some straw, by the
daughter of the civil administrator of the house who had been put in charge
before the arrest of the sisters. The entire transcript of the tribunal
proceedings is still extant, in the archives of the department of the Pas de
Calais. Marie-Madeleine was asked if she knew why she had been arrested, and
she said she did not. Asked if she had any suspicion, she said she supposed it
was because she had not taken the oath, but that as she was not a religious she
was not obliged to take it. Asked if she read the local newspapers, she said
she could not afford to buy them. She was shown the publications which, it was
alleged, had been found in the house, and she said she had never seen them
before. There were other questions as well, and at the end the transcript of
the proceedings was read to her and she signed it as being accurate. The other
three sisters answered in the same way, except that Marie-Françoise Lanel admitted,
for the sake of absolute truth, that while she had never read such papers in
the house she had, in fact, read parts of them elsewhere.
On the evidence presented
there was really no case for the sisters to answer, but the administration of
law at that time did not follow normal rules. The decision of the court was
that there was a very strong presumption that the four accused had hidden the
counter-revolutionary publications in their house, publications which “tended
to excite revolt and ignite civil war in the départment”. They were sentenced
to remain in detention, and the file of the case was to be forwarded to the
civil authorities of the town of Arras. The next day they were moved into their
third house of detention.
The new prison was named
the prison of Les Baudets, because it was on the street of that name; the name
means the street of the donkeys. The actual building in which the detainees
were kept was formerly part of the town mansion of a wealthy family. Conditions
were worse than in the previous prison. One of the added sources of suffering
was the fact that this prison was regarded as the last stage on the road
towards an appearance before the revolutionary tribunal, and therefore as the
ante-chamber to the guillotine. Every day there were new arrivals, and equally
every day there were departures of others to trial and execution.
The sisters were to spend
twelve weeks there, and they realized that there was no real likelihood that
they would escape the guillotine. In that realistic frame of mind they prepared
for death. Thérèse-Madeleine Fantou managed to get a letter smuggled out to her
family in Brittany, in which she urged them to remain loyal to their religion.
Unfortunately the letter was lost later, and that would seem to be the only point
remembered from it. It was an obvious point to put in the letter, as she and
the three other sisters were doing precisely that in their own situation. There
is a letter still extant, written from Arras by a friend of the Robespierre
family to Robespierre’s sister on 24 April that year, in which it is stated
that in the previous three weeks five hundred persons had been guillotined and
about three thousand arrested. The writer added that other atrocious details
were not being included in the letter because one had to be an eye-witness in
order to believe they had happened. The three weeks mentioned were, of course,
during the period of detention of the four Daughters of Charity.
In spite of that
description of what was going on in Arras, Lebon was not certain that he could
get a death sentence for the four sisters. They were too well known in Arras
for their charitable work, and he knew that they still had the support of the
majority of the people of the town. He was presented with the possibility of achieving
his wish in April. His superiors wrote to him that the ideas of the revolution
were still not being adequately implemented in his area and he was ordered to
go to Cambrai, about forty miles from Arras, to alter that situation. He left
on 5 May, and the following day started repeating in Cambrai what he had been
doing in Arras. As well as arresting people in Cambrai he also brought
prisoners from Arras for trial and execution in Cambrai, and all through the
last month of their detention in Arras the four sisters saw the carts, known as
tumbrels, loaded with prisoners leave for the neighboring town.
On 25 June a letter was
received by the authorities in Arras that the four “former Sisters of Charity”
were to be sent to Cambrai immediately. The letter ordered that they were to
arrive in Cambrai very early in the morning, which meant a departure from Arras
very late at night. The four sisters were to be the only persons in the cart,
but at the last moment orders were received to collect another prisoner, a man,
at another prison. There was a delay of one hour there, midnight to one o’clock
in the morning, and this gave the sisters an unexpected chance to speak to a
woman who used to be involved with them in their work, a Madame Cartier. It is
not exactly clear how this was possible, but it is likely that the guards who
were with the sisters, seeing that there would be a delay, confided the care of
the sisters to some of the warders of the prison where the cart stopped, and
this gave the sisters the chance to meet Madame Cartier and speak to her.
Madame Cartier and her
family, imprisoned with her, survived the period of the Terror, and later told
what had happened at that midnight meeting. First of all, Marie-Madeleine tried
to give hope to her and strengthen her in her faith. She realized that she
would be executed in a few hours, so she gave her rosary to Madame Cartier.
Oddly enough, the sister had seven francs of personal money still in her
possession, and she gave this money to Madame Cartier with instructions that
when the two youngest Daughters of Charity, who had escaped from Arras some
time previously, returned from exile and re-occupied the former house of the
Daughters in Arras, they were to be given this money. Madame Cartier was, in
fact, later able to do precisely that. The final memory she had of that
midnight meeting was that Marie-Madeleine told her she was not to have any
fears about the future, because the four Daughters of Charity would be the last
persons to be executed. This also proved to be true.
When the tumbrils finally
left for Cambrai they met, at a stop somewhere along the route, other tumbrels
with prisoners destined for the tribunal there. Marie-Madeleine recognized one
woman who had been a Lady of Charity in Arras. Once again she told her, and the
others, to have no fear for the future, as the four sisters would be the last
persons to be executed. She also gave another rosary to this woman. When the
tumbrels started off again for the final leg of the journey to Cambrai, the one
in which the sisters were was second in line. A prisoner in the first tumbrel
managed to cause a wheel to break, which stopped further progress for that
tumbrel. This meant that the one with the sisters became the first to arrive at
the tribunal, and so the sisters were the first to be tried and condemned, and
their execution was the final guillotining in Cambrai. The tradition has always
been that the accident, which the prisoner provoked in the other tumbril, saved
that group from being executed.
They arrived in Cambrai
at about ten o’clock in the morning and were brought to a house of detention
where they were to be kept until their appearance before the tribunal. However,
the governor of that prison refused to accept them as it was overcrowded. While
that point was being argued the sisters were able to mix with the prisoners
already there, and once again Sister Marie-Madeleine encouraged them by
repeating that the four Daughters of Charity would be the final victims of the
Terror in Cambrai.
The governor got his way
and the sisters had to be moved on, so they were brought straight to the
tribunal, and were immediately put on trial, simply because they were the first
to arrive. The tribunal held its sessions in the former seminary. The charge
against them was that they had kept in their possession counter-revolutionary
publications. They were interrogated about this, and apparently one of the four
judges was of the opinion that this charge was hardly one meriting the death
penalty, and he offered the sisters the chance of freedom if they would take
the prescribed oath, which they refused to do. This meant that the death
penalty had to be imposed, and it was. The refusal of the oath was, of course,
what underlay all the other matters, and was the real motive for the arrest and
condemnation of the sisters. Joseph Lebon, as an apostate priest, apparently
regarded priests and members of religious communities who refused to take the
various oaths as offending against one of the main aims of the revolution,
namely the bringing of the Church under state control. He was right, of course,
because it was precisely to prevent such a happening that so many refused the
oath and remained faithful to the Church.
An eye-witness, who was
present at the tribunal when the death sentence was passed, noticed one
important difference between the attitude of the members of the public who were
present on that occasion and the behavior of the public on previous occasions
when the death sentence was passed. The normal routine was that when an
aristocrat or someone else from the old regime was sentenced to death the
public clapped and applauded. When the four sisters were sentenced there was
complete silence in the courtroom. This silence of the crowd was maintained
right up till the last of the sisters was guillotined.
In the courtroom the
sisters kept saying the rosary. An official was ordered to remove these
“charms” from the prisoners, but another one thought it would get a laugh if he
twisted the rosaries around each sister’s head. The sisters accepted this as a
symbol of the crown of martyrdom.
When they were brought
out on to the central square of the town, where the guillotine had been
erected, Marie-Madeleine Fontaine again repeated her assertion that they would
be the final victims of the Terror. A letter written at the time, and still
extant, says that as she mounted the platform of the guillotine she shouted out
loud to the crowd: “Christians, listen to me! We are the final victims.
Tomorrow the persecution will be over, the scaffold will be dismantled, and the
altars of Jesus will rise glorious once again”. They were guillotined on 26
June 1794.
The following day an army
officer was charged with having counter-revolutionary ideas, but was acquitted
because it was alleged that this was inadvertence on his part. Such an
acquittal would have been unheard of a few days previously. Two factors were at
work here. The first was that the tribunal personnel had been very much
surprised at the changed attitude of the townspeople towards the work of the
tribunal in the case of the four Daughters of Charity. The second factor was
far more significant. Word had come from Paris that three days previously
Joseph Lebon himself had been denounced for what nowadays would be called
crimes against humanity. Documentary evidence had been collected and submitted
to the authorities in Paris showing how in his work he had gone far beyond what
the law demanded or allowed. These two factors changed the whole atmosphere in
Arras overnight, though arrests and imprisonments continued.
On one previous occasion
Lebon had been in trouble, but had managed to defend himself successfully. He
was quite sure he could do the same again, but he did have to give time to
preparing his defense and this meant less time for his previous activities.
Contrary to his expectations he was arrested on 2 August, six weeks after the
execution of the sisters, and was imprisoned in Paris, Meaux and Amiens for the
fourteen months during which his trial dragged on. He was guillotined eventually
on 15 October 1795.
Other persons who had
been prominent in revolutionary matters in Arras were also arrested and
imprisoned for various periods. In the case of some, the townspeople looted and
burned their houses. After release from prison some had tried to return to the
town but the people would not have them, and they had to go and settle in
places where they were not known.
·
This text was
copied from MARIE-MADELEINE
FONTAINE, MARIE-FRANÇOISE LANEL, THÉRÈSE-MADELEINE FANTOU AND JEANNE GÉRARD
Martyred Daughters of Charity by Thomas Davitt CM, first published in
Famvin.org - CIF news page.\
Beate Maria Maddalena Fontaine e 3
compagne Vergini e martiri
m. Cambrai (Francia), 26
giugno 1794
Martirologio
Romano: A Cambrai in Francia, beate Maddalena Fontaine, Francesca Lanel, Teresa
Fantou e Giovanna Gérard, vergini e martiri, che, Figlie della Carità, durante
la rivoluzione francese furono condannate a morte in odio alla Chiesa e
condotte al supplizio incoronate per scherno con il Rosario.
MARIA
MADDALENA FONTAINE
Nacque ad Etrepagny (Francia) il 22 aprile 1723 ed entrò nella congregazione il
9 luglio 1748.
MARIA FRANCESCA LANEL
Nacque ad Eu (Francia) il 24 agosto 1745 ed entrò nella congregazione il 10
aprile 1764.
TERESA MADDALENA FANTOU
Nacque a Miniac-Morvan (Francia) il 29 luglio 1747 ed entrò nella congregazione
il28 novembre 1771.
GIOVANNA GERARD
Nacque a Cumieres (Francia) il 23 ottobre 1752 ed entrò nella congregazione
il17 Settembre 1776.
Queste quattro religiose, appartenenti alla congregazione delle Figlie della
Carità di San Vincenzo de' Paoli, subirono il martirio in testimonianza della
loro fede cristiana durante la Rivoluzione Francese nel periodo conosciuto come
“Grande Terrore”, cioè tra il settembre 1793 e l'agossto 1794. In tale
frangente storico Austria, Prussia, Inghilterra e Spagna attaccarono le armate
rivoluzionarie francesi e conseguentemente la politica di cristianizzazione non
poté che raggiungere il suo apice: fu proibito ogni culto pubblico e privato,
mentre preti e suori, accusati di essere “nemici dello stato”, furono
processati e condannati a morte.
La piccola comunità vincenziana di Arras era formata da sette suore, dedite
alla cura degli ammalati del paese ed alla gestione di una scuola per ragazze.
Il loro operare si fece rischioso dal 1793, quando Giuseppe Lebon, noto
sacerdote apostata, confiscò i beni delta comunità e pose un laico alla direzione
della scuola. Le suore poterono continuare a curare i malati ancora per qualche
tempo, ma indossando abiti civili. Presagendo che il peggio dovesse ancora
verificarsi, la superiora settantunenne Madre Maria Maddalena Fontaine pensò
bene di far fuggire in Belgio le due suore più giovani, camuffate da contadine.
Un'altra dovette invece raggiungere i suoi familiari.
La superiora rimase così con le rimanenti tre consorelle: Maria Francesca
Lanel, Teresa Maddalena Fantou e Giovanna Gerard. Rifiutandosi di prestare il
giuramento di Libertà ed Eguaglianza, prescritto dai rivoluzionari al clero ed
ai religiosi, vennero tutte e quattro arrestate il 14 febbraio 1974, quali
sospettate di “attività controrivoluzionaria” sulla base di prove quantomeno
discutibili.
Furono allora trasferite a Cambrai, ove Giuseppe Lebon era il magistrato
inquirente. Il 26 giugno furono condotte in tribunale e condannate a morte. Le
quattro suore, salite al patibolo incoronate da un Rosario, non esitarono a
cantare l'Ave Maris Stella e suor Maddalena, ultima ad essere ghigliottinata,
rivolse alla folla un breve discorso rivelatosi profetico: “Ascoltate
cristiani! Saremo le ultime vittime, la persecuzione sta per finire, i patiboli
saranno distrutti e gli altari di Gesù saranno ricostruiti in tutta la loro
gloria”.
La Francia era infatti ormai stanca di persecuzioni e Robespierre, l'artefice
del “Terrore”, fu ghigliottinato nel luglio successivo. Anche Giuseppe Lebon
subì la medesima sorte poche settimane dopo.
Le quattro martiri di Arras, Maria Maddalena Fontaine, Maria Francesca Lanel,
Teresa Maddalena Fantou e Giovanna Gerard, furono dichiarate “venerabili” il 6
luglio 1919 e beatificate il 13 giugno 1920 dal pontefice Benedetto XV.
Il Martytologium ROmanum le commemora al 26 giugno nell'anniversario del loro
glorioso martirio.
Autore: Fabio
Arduino
Voir aussi : http://newsaints.faithweb.com/martyrs/MFR01.htm
