Saint

Saint Jacques-Alexandre Menuret

To see more pictures

of the Church of St. Joseph des Carmes

in Rue Vaugirard, Paris:

Abstract

Jacques-Alexandre Menuret
Jacques-Alexandre Menuret made history by being martyred during the first "Reign of Terror" of the French Revolution in what is sometimes called the "September Massacres" or the "Martyrs of Paris". He was among the 191 members of the clergy executed on this fateful day- September 3, 1792.
St. Menuret, a native of Montélimar, in Province (Southern France), was the Vicar there for some years. The Revolution finds him in Paris where he was Monsignor of a community of priests. He was put to death in the garden of the Carmes on the 2nd or 3rd of September, 1792.
All one hundred ninety-one priests who died at this time were beatified by Pope Pious XI in 1926.   Menuret’s Saint day is September 3.¹

French readers may learn more at: Diocese de Valence

The Church of St. Joseph des Carmes in Rue Vaugirard, Paris is between Rue d’Assas and Rue Cassette, near the Luxembourg Gardens.

Church of St. Joseph des Carmes

Though not a tourist haunt, a short tour is often scheduled around mid-afternoon which takes in the crypt, containing not only the tomb of Blessed Frederic Ozanam but also, laid out neatly in glass reliquaries, the skulls of over 100 priests and religious stabbed or beaten to death at this former Carmelite monastery on 2 September 1792 for refusing to renounce the Faith.

Is one of these skulls St. Menuret’s?

One can also visit the courtyard garden where the Archbishop of Arles and the Bishop of Beauvais were slaughtered before the carnage began ("I am the man you are looking for," said the Archbishop echoing his Lord at Gethsemane, at which the revolutionaries plunged a pike through his chest).

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The Massacres of the French Revolution

“In all, more than fourteen hundred were murdered during the diabolic orgy of violence that constituted the September massacres. All done, of course, under the flag of "liberty"; a point immortalized in a small attic above the church. On the wall, alongside a faded streak of blood, one reads the desperate cry of an ill-fated prisoner:

‘Liberty, Liberty, what have they done to thee, what horrors are committed in thy name….’

In the crypt of the Church of St-Joseph-des-Carmes, built by the Carmelites between 1613 and 1625 and now the church of the Institut Catholique, are the tomb of Ozanam and the remains of the 120 priests massacred in this church on 2 September 1792, after fifteen days of captivity. In this crypt, Lacordaire remained attached to a cross for three hours.

This group of beati consists of 191 individuals who were martyred during the French Revolution, including 120 who were massacred at the Carmelite church (Les Carmes) on the rue de Rennes, Paris. They were imprisoned by the Legislative Assembly for refusing to subscribe to the constitutional oath that had been condemned by the Holy See. They were massacred by a mob with the connivance of the assembly.

Among them were these prominent figures: Augustine Ambrose Chevreux, OSB, the last superior general of the French Benedictines of Saint Maur, was imprisoned at Les Carmes in Paris and killed in the general massacre; beatified in 1931. Charles de la Calmette, count of Valfons. Francis de la Rochefoucauld, bishop of Beauvais. John Mary du Lau, archbishop of Arles, was also imprisoned in Les Carmes and murdered by the mob. Louis Barreau de la Touche, OSB, nephew of Augustine of Chevreux and monk of Saint Maur. Louis de la Rochefoucauld, bishop of Saints and brother of Blessed Francis (Benedictines).

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On the 10th of August 1792 the Parisians invaded the Louvre, killed the king’s guards, the Suisse, and placed the royal family under arrest in the prison of the temple, thus ending the constitutional monarchy. It had taken about six weeks, but this was basically after the nuit de Varennes, the night of Varennes, when the king had attempted to flee the country and was caught on the border and brought back, basically placed under house arrest at the Louvre.

The ferment then led eventually on the 10th of August to this huge rushing of the gates of the Louvre and massacring of his guards and taking them all off to one of the prisons called the "Temple." All those who could be suspected of complicity with the royalty, no matter how tenuously, were arrested during the following month, and the prisons in Paris were jammed.

On the second through the fifth of September, less than a month after this already disturbing event, which Ruault characterized as a "new revolution that annuls that of 1789", there occurred a series of attacks so monstrous that they shook the entire city no matter what people's political allegiances, and led to the splintering of the revolutionaries among themselves. This was the massacre of these revolutionary prisoners, primarily nobles and clergy.

The victims were dragged out of their cells, often not even asked their names, and gutted on the spot. The first one is at the Hotel de la Force, and the second one is at Saint-Firmin. What's really quite astonishing is that people went in with these giant long white steel sabers and they just started massacring people right and left.

After you massacred somebody you usually put their head on the spear, and then you walked around Paris with them, and then they would planted in the ground in sort of great rows, and people would come up and see. They were also piled up in manure wagons as soon as their throats were cut.

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One of the people massacred precisely on the 2nd of September was the best friend of Marie-Antoinette, the Princess de Lamballe, who after she had been murdered, her head was cut off, her hair was frizzed up, they put makeup on her, they put her head and took and put it right in the Place du Roi, now the Place de la Concorde, where the poor queen had to sit and look at it for several days.

From “The Blessed Pierre Landry (1762-1792)” – compiled by Dr. Don Landry, in collaboration with Roger Landry).

On July 27th 1792, a decree from the Directoire of the Department, ordered to Pierre Landry to leave the Deux Sevres department for refusing to take the oath. The three clergymen, who were joined by father Andre Azure, priest of Usseau and former vicar of Notre Dame de Niort, took refuge at the home of Arch priest Jean Goizet’s sister.

All four of them took the road to Paris where many faithful priests (presumably including Jacques-Alexandre Menuret) had been able to hide themselves. Their intention was to go abroad. But the refuges in the capital, especially in the district of the Luxembourg, where they were hiding, were located. They were arrested and put in prison in the convent of Carmes.

Organized by the Communal Comity of Supervision, which was directed by Marat and where citizens were judged without appeal, the terrible insurrection days of September started by the massacre, during their transfer to the Abbey prisons, of twenty-four priests, arrested because of their refusal to take the oath.

The next morning the Secretary of the Luxembourg Section had all the bodies of the victims gathered and had them stripped of all their clothes. These clothes were shared, half to the executioners and half to the poor. The bodies were then loaded on two large wagons and carried to the cemetery of Vaugirard, where they were thrown pell-mell, into a large pit.

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The Slaughter begins with the "Massacre of the Clergy" in the courtyard of Abbey de St. Germain des pres. When the first carriage reached the Abbey de St. Germain des pres, it was stopped in the narrow rue de Buci, at the gate of the Abbey, the crowd pushes forward and the carriage is surrounded by the angry and menacing crowd.

Members of the crowd mount the carriage steps and attempt to open the doors. The guards do nothing to stop them. As the door to the carriage is being pulled open, the priests try to prevent them from being opened.

A prisoner in the first carriage, a tall young man, clad in a white dressing gown on whose dark hair could still be discerned the bluish trace of a tonsure, huddled with his companions, all of whom were struck dumb with terror. The crowd screams insults at them and rushes in and pulls one to the priests out of the carriage.

Faced with the men who had been paid to murder him, he seemed to hesitate a moment, then raised his arms and whispered "Mercy! Mercy". He was then struck down by ten saber blows. The guards that were paid to protect the prisoners joined in the attack.

The second priest tries to get back into the carriage and close the door, but he is pulled from the carriage and killed. As the second carriage arrives, the crowd abandons the first carriage and rushes toward the other carriages, and one by one the doors of the carriage are pulled open by the angry mob. The priests try to close the doors, but are prevented from doing so and suffer blows and insults, as the carriages move toward the Abbey.

After just having escaped the violent assault from the crowd at the rue de Buci, the 24 priests reached the courtyard of the Abbey. Another crowd, possibly the same group that had attacked them earlier, and swollen by reinforcements, demanded summary "judgment". The carriages are then emptied by the mob and all 24 prisoners were slaughtered in the courtyard.

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In the midst of all of the butchery, there is an account of: "Suddenly, however, one of the men steps forward. He had on a blue frock - coat; he seemed about 30, his stature was above common, his look noble and martial, "I must go first" said he, "since it must be so: adieu!

Then dashing his hat sharply behind him: "Which way?" cried he to the brigands. "Show it to me then". They opened the folding gate. He is announced to the multitude. He stands a moment, motionless; then plunges forth among the pikes, and dies of a thousand wounds".

Billaud-Varennes steps in the blood and on the bodies of the slaughtered priests and shouts to the crowd of cut-throats that "they have done their duty". He (Billaud) then joins Stanislas Maillard and continues to incite the crowd with cries of "on to Carmes!" The mob of assassins and cut-throats follow them to the nearby Carmelite Convent, which had been converted into a prison and held 150 more priests.

The Archbishop of Arles and a number of other priests, being held prisoner at Carmes, had sought refuge in an Oratory in the garden and were kneeling with their eyes lifted up to the heavens in prayer. As the angry mob, urged on by Maillard approached the convent, the clergymen, in anticipation of what was to happen, embraced one another, and kissed each other as they approached their death.

The crowd enters the courtyard and garden of the convent and cries out for the Archbishop of Arles. They search for and kill him immediately by a saber blow to the head. The other priests in the garden are then slaughtered with pike thrusts, saber cuts, guns, axes and shovels.

Condemned they were pushed down the corridor to the steps descending into the garden. At the foot of the stairs, the murderers awaited them. They were then pushed down the steps and into the garden, where their killers waited armed with knives, axes, hatchets, sabers and in some cases of a butcher named Godin, a carpenter's saw. The seminarians are held by their feet, and thrown in the yard and are slaughtered one by one. The fortunate ones were shot.

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In a desperate attempt to escape, some from the convent garden climbed trees and threw themselves over the fence and escaped into the neighboring rue Cassette; others ran into the chapel, and were dragged and bludgeoned and stabbed to death.

Because it was proved that the death of the imprisoned clergy had resulted for reasons of faith, and their opposition to the 1790 "Constitution civile du clerge" (Civil Constitution of the Clergy) and had refused to take an oath to support it, all of the martyred clergy, were beatified by the church on October 17, 1926.

The Carmes, used as a prison for bishops and priests, seminarians, brothers and other political prisoners were imprisoned still stands. The former convent, now an old building, is located at the Catholic University of Paris in a large park, and is used as an Ecclesiastical School of Higher Learning. The martyrs were buried in the crypt of the church at the convent. (pp. 1011-13 - New Catholic Encyclopedia)

In 1845, Denis Auguste Affrefre, Archbishop of Paris, opened an Eccliastical School of Higher Learning in the former Carmelite Convent and the 1860's excavations in the garden and in an abandoned well unearthed a large number of human bones. Fractured jawbones, fractured skulls. Apparently the men hired to carry away the bodies simply tossed them down a well and then covered them with debris such as brooms, wine bottles, baskets, plates and dishes, pots of jam and grease pots.

Today these items and the bones of the victims, including the remains of the martyrs were interred in the crypt, are in the chapel located in the basement of the convent building, and can be viewed by visitors today. (pp. 1011-13 - New Catholic Encyclopedia).

¹From http://newsaints.faithweb.com/martyrs/MFR02.htm

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