IN PARIS
Dom Stephen Marron
Douai Magazine 5:3 (1929) 202-207
In two former essays I have given some details of the early years of our monastery in Paris. I have been asked to take up again the thread of our story and to follow it a step further with the aid of such materials' as are at present to hand.
One may recall that in the year 1615 the Lady Abbess of Chelles undertook to finance in great part the start of a house of studies in Paris university, to be dependent on the small monastery of English Benedictine monks serving as confessors and chaplains to the great convent at Chelles. The arrangement lasted only two years. For several reasons the dependence on Chelles proved unsatisfactory and so in 1617 Fr. Gifford, who was Prior of the Paris house and also President elect of the whole Congregation, broke off this dependence and established his community in a house hired at his own expense, declining any further help from Chelles. This step was taken with the approval of the whole Regimen. Henceforth the Paris house, which was invested by General Chapter (1621) with the rights of Bury St. Edmund's and came to be known as St. Edmund's, ranked as an independent monastery.
For the next fifteen years its existence was in peril. The powerful princess Abbess, instigated by her confessor the restless Fr. Walgrave, used all her influence to bring about its suppression. Fr. Gifford in 1622 was raised to the Archiepiscopal see of Rheims, the highest ecclesiastical dignity in France, and thus was able to exert much influence in the defence of the house he had founded. Gradually the peril was removed and in 1632 the Archbishop of Paris authorised the monks to continue in Paris with all the rights they had heretofore enjoyed.
Archbishop Gifford passed away at Rheims in April, 1629. Since the Obit Book makes no mention of his connexion with St. Edmund's, it will not be out of place to emphasise the point a little. He was the first superior to have the title and dignity of Prior of the house and was really its founder as an independent monastery. As archbishop he continued to take a keen interest in it until his death, aiding it not only financially, but also with personal service. Not only did he issue written attestations and letters in its behalf but from time to time he came personally to Paris to exert his influence for it. On one occasion he asked to come for a whole month. The first Edmundian novice, Mr. Latham, received the archbishop's religious name Gabriel, and the second novice, Ferdinand Throckmorton, was a kinsman of his, probably placed there by him, and for whom he paid an annual pension to the monastery to the day of his death.
Another prominent figure in the making of St. Edmund's was Fr. Bernard Berington, professed of the monastery of Onia in Spain, who having acted as superior of our house in its early days (1616-1617) was again appointed prior in 1619. He first established the Council and set the house in regular order, and through all the comings and goings remained steadily as prior or vicar until his death there in 1639. One can truly say that the community of St. Edmund's grew up round him, and on his deathbed he had the happiness of seeing the house under the rule of a superior, the first, from the Edmundian familia.
The authorisation which the Archbishop of Paris gave to our fathers in 1632 to continue as before was just that and no more. It was a very long time before they were securely established, ten years before they were able to purchase any property of their own in Paris, nearly another ten years before they obtained royal letters of establishment and full recognition from ecclesiastical authorities as a monastery, and still another twenty years after that before they were able to lay the foundations of their church and monastery. For the present they were a community of foreigners living in a hired house, subsisting mainly on the voluntary offerings of friends and allowed by ecclesiastical authorities to continue in Paris per modum hospitii.' Anyone who has studied the history of English Catholic establishments abroad at that period will know that the difficulties experienced in founding this monastery were nothing unusual; most English foundations experienced similar and often much greater difficulties, and one cannot but admire the courage and perseverance that carried them through.
During the period of peril and uncertainty only six members had been professed for St. Edmund's and as the house usually contained about fifteen persons, according to contemporary returns, it is clear that the community was still composed for the most part of monks from other houses. The prior, Fr. Placid Gascoigne, was away in Germany on congregational business, and the faithful vicar, Fr. Berington, was in charge. Along with him, to judge by our council book, there were in community Frs. Matthew Sandford, Dunstan Everard, Gabriel Brett, Francis Crathorne, Paul Robinson, Gabriel Latham, Aemilian Throckmorton, Wolstan Ingham, Thomas Anderton, Brs. Michael Cape, Dunstan Gibson and probably also the lay-brother Gregory Moore who died about this time: who else, I do not know.
Within the next ten years the Edmundian familia throve (in 1639 there were as many as nine novices) and by 1640 the community was practically exclusively Edmundian with an Edmundian prior at their head. This period produced some of the best men we ever hadmen like Fr. Thomas Anderton and his brother Robert, Frs. Benedict Nelson and Augustine Latham, builders of the Edmundian community, and it may be added, all from Catholic Lancashire. - The following years were leaner. Up to 1673, when the foundations of the monastery and church were laid, forty-six monks had been professed, of whom four were lay-brothers. Of these death had claimed about twenty.
One can understand how our house missed the honour of martyrs. During the real martyr period, up to 1650, only three Edmundians went on the English mission, and up to 1681, when Archbishop Plunkett the last of the martyrs suffered death, not more than a dozen. Of this small band, however, some suffered imprisonment for the faith. Fr. Placid Adelham was condemned to death for his priesthood and died in Newgate prison. Fr. Robert Anderton was well in the martyr zone, had the honour both in the prison and at the scaffold of assisting his martyr confrere Ven. Philip Powell and possibly others tooand finally was himself marked out for martyrdom by Titus Oates, but escaped to the continent. The only venerable martyr connected with our house is Ven. Alban Roe, who though not an Edmundian, was at one time a member of the community.
But to return to the thread of our story. In 1633, Fr. Gabriel Brett, newly appointed Prior, received from Fr. .Walgrave who had now left Chelles and was reconciled to us, the offer of the priory of S.S. Peter and Paul at La Celle en Brie, which he had just acquired. I merely mention it because it enters into the history of our house down to the French Revolution; it served us in various ways, and moreover required manning. With the agreement of Fr. Leander of Douai, and also of Prior Elmer and his community at Dieulouard who had the best claim to it, Fr, Brett accepted it guaranteeing to Fr. Walgrave an annual pension of four hundred livres. Four monks were required to man it and for some years at any rate it was scarcely a benefit.
Prior Brett's period of office which lasted until 1639 was one of quiet progress. One of the main uses of St. Edmund's was as a house of studies where the young monks, of other houses also, might pursue their course and take degrees in the university. They attended the Sorbonne and other colleges. This was apparently not in accordance with our constitutions which required that our monks should be taught by professors of our own order and a few years later Prior Cape had a scruple and asked for formal leave from the president to continue the custom. Formerly the difficulty was overcome apparently by having in the house a 'reader of cases' as he was called, to which office Fr. Gascoigne had been appointed and after him Fr. Nicholas Curre. At this time occasional boy boarders were received into the house, with the president's permission in each case. Later on a general permission was obtained to receive suchbut apparently there were no classes in the house and they went to school in the city. We do not appear to have had any sort of a school in the housealthough masters were named on one occasionuntil early in the eighteenth century when we had a school of a dozen boys or more at La Celle. It was during Prior Brett's term that Lady Faulkland sent her two sons Patrick and Henry to us 'to be made Catholics and brought up amongst us in learning and virtue' but so secretly that their whereabouts should not be discovered.
An interesting item that appears in our council books is the amount of money borrowed from us by travelling English Catholics. Thus ' Mr. Chichester, second son of my lord Chichester' borrows 50, Mrs. Everard borrows 40 and wants more, the Countess of Banbury 40 or 50, even the Abbot of Arras borrows 20 crowns; three young ladies, Mary Ward, Mary Poynes and Winifred Wigmore arrive in Paris from Italy having 'the messenger with six horses and two men lying upon there handes' and no money, so they borrow 50. One wonders in our then impecunious state how we managed to meet all these demands. From the frequent borrowings of pounds, crowns or pistolls one is led to presume that it was in those times expected of religious houses to act the banker.
In 1640 Fr. Thomas Anderton was prior and in December of that year he purchased a house near to that in which they dwelt.1 It was acquired for them by a certain Francois le Bossu for 12,000 livres, the reason being that they needed naturalisation for the secure legal possession of property. In the following April ' the right reverend the Bishop of Meaux, brother to the King's Chancellor ' whose ' love, favour and friendship ' they had acquired, offered to obtain for them gratis the naturalisation of any two of them, an offer which was gladly accepted. Thus soon after M. le Bossu was able safely to transfer the property to them.
In the month of September the General Chapter appointed as prior Fr. Francis Cape, another notable figure in our history. He had already formerly been a member of the community and now he entered on a term of priorship that lasted almost unbroken for twenty-five years. He spent, the rest of his life at St. Edmund's and died there in 1668. Soon after his arrival the new house was made ready and the community moved into it in March, 1642, thus for the first time in their history having a roof over them that they could call their own. It was situated at the corner where the Rue des Marionettes cut into the Rue S. Jacques. In the course of the next thirty years they purchased one by one all the houses at that corner and so obtained the land on which finally the monastery and church of St. Edmund were raised. On January 14th, 1642, they had obtained from the Archbishop of Paris leave for the transference and he had granted them 'un establissement par forme d'hospice' with leave to celebrate Mass in their chapel 'a basse voix' and also to sing the Hours and Vespers and to hear confessions of all British in Paris, except at Easter.
The Revolution in England that brought about the death of Charles I. and drove his queen Henrietta Maria back to her native Paris, sent to us in her a good friend. Louis XIV. was at the time but a boy. His mother, Anne of Austria the Queen Regent, was also a good friend of ours as our council book witnesses. One great favour which she obtained for us from the king, but which the chancellor opposed, was the right to a copy of every book published in Paris. The great convent of Val de Grace which stood next to us was her foundation and favourite retreat and often after her visits there she would step into our small chapel, which was but a room accommodated, and say her prayers there. At any rate when Queen Henrietta Maria asked the young king, her nephew, to grant to the little community of St. Edmund's full letters of establishment in Paris with right to build a monastery and church and enjoy all the privileges of their order, she could count on the concurrence of the Queen-Mother in our favour. Thus in October, 1650, when Louis XIV. granted us this great privilege it was as he states in his letters 'in favour of our most dear and well beloved Aunt the Queen of Great Britain' and 'with the advice of the Queen Regent our most honoured Lady and Mother.' This grant securely established our monastery in Paris with all rights and privileges of a Benedictine monastery. It marks an epoch in our history, which we may here leave for the present.