Jewels from Jane, June 17

June 17, 1794

“On June 16, 1794, five brigades of soldiers led a convoy of twelve prisoners from Craponne to Le Puy. There were three men, eight women and a child. Among the eight women was Jeanne Marie Aubert, a Sister of Saint Joseph. The next day, June 17, another Sister of the same Institute joined the twelve prisoners in the chief town of the department. She was Marie Anne Garnier….

“…during the morning of June 17, the judges found time to question the thirteen prisoners, to deliberate, to draw up the writ of condemnation and to execute it on the same day.

“Six were condemned to death: Father Mourier, Barthelemy Best, his wife, his sister and the two Sisters of Saint Joseph. Marguerite, the daughter, was fourteen years old, but she was so little that she seemed eleven. She was in the convoy, but the judge dared not condemn a child. The acquitted child was compelled to walk around the guillotine twice as her parents’ heads fell. This experience so deeply affected her that she died three months later.

“…a few days’ later posters told … that two of their Sisters had gone to increase the phalanx of virgin martyrs in Heaven. However great this glory, it did not keep their hearts from feeling the wounds. That of Mother Saint John bled often,--it was so tender, so good; but her ardent, faith, coming to the aid of her sorrow, gave courage to herself and to the others. All, united in fervent prayer, cast themselves into God’s arms and prepared with confidence and love for whatever might come.

“Once, out of prison, the venerable Mother [St. John Fontbonne] made, in the form of a litany, a list of the martyred priests of her acquaintance. We find in her notebook the names of twenty-one priests either guillotined or shot. Father Clavel is one and Father Mourier follows next. Mother Saint John, without wishing to anticipate the judgment of the Church, took pleasure in invoking them in the hours of distress. We seem to hear her cry mounting to Heaven:

‘Saint Clavel, pray for me!’

‘Saint Mourier, pray for me!’”

From Mother Saint John Fontbonne: A biography by a Sister of Saint Joseph Brentwood, New York