Jeanne-Marie Chavoin

Jeanne-Marie Chavoin

Theodore Chavoin was 20 when he married 19-year-old Jeanne Vercheres on May 31, 1786.

Barely three months later, their first child, Jeanne-Marie, was born.

Two more children were born into the family: Marie, who lived only a year, and Claudine-Marie, who married Jacques Millot, a local weaver.

A country girl, Jeanne-Marie grew up with little formal education (her spelling was never quite accurate), but with a great deal of common sense and good judgement.

The Chavoin family was closely-knit, and Jeanne-Marie’s childhood was secure and tranquil, even though these were the times of the French Revolution. By temperament she was an extrovert, for whom action was second nature. Being the daughter of the respected village tailor, and used to meeting people in her father’s shop, she developed an open, friendly and outgoing attitude to people.

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Marcellin Champagnat

Marcellin Champagnat

Marcellin Champagnat was the first of the founding people to succeed in forming a Marist group, and his company of Marist Brothers became the fastest growing and the most numerous of the branches of the Marist project.

This in itself explains a great deal about this most loveable of characters who did so much for the enterprise in his short life.

From beginning to end, Marcellin was a practical person, and everything about him reflects this: the way he understood the ideas exchanged at the seminary, the way he responded to needs, the way he formed his Brothers.

Much of this can be traced to his background. His mother was a woman of strong and robust faith, who more than once accompanied Marcellin on foot to the shrine of St Francis Regis at La Louvesc, when difficulties threatened his seminary studies.

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Jean-Claude Colin

View from Jean-Claude Colin's birthplace

When Jean-Claude Colin’s parents married in 1771 his father Jacques was 24 years old, and his mother Marie Gonnet was not yet 14.

Jean-Claude, born on August 7, 1790, was their eighth child. All told, nine children were born into the family. Claudine, Jean, Mariette, Sebastien, Jeanne-Marie, Pierre, Anne-Marie (who died at birth), Jean-Claude, and Joseph. Jean-Claude’s oldest sister Claudine was his godmother, and his brother Jean was his godfather, hence the baby’s name Jean-Claude.

His parents owned and cultivated a piece of land, and during the winter turned to weaving. The home in which Jean-Claude Colin was born was as secure and loving as any of the ordinary homes of Les Barbery where they lived, considering these were the cataclysmic times of the French Revolution.

The Revolution and the subsequent Civil Constitution of the Clergy brought a split into the Church, separating priests who supported the Constitution from those who remained faithful to Rome.

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Silent Voice

Gabriel Claude Mayet

In Lewis Carroll’s book, Alice in Wonderland, the King advises the White Rabbit who is about to read some verses: “Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” With our story it’s a little different.

The beginnings of the Marist story are very complicated.

Unlike other movements which have one clear personality spearheading the group, the Marist project seems to have been much more of a corporate experience, with many different personalities entering the stage, some remaining in the forefront, some disappearing temporarily, and some disappearing forever. For this reason, it may be better for us not to follow the advice of the King, and instead to start somewhere after the beginning, meeting a man who was neither a founding personality nor a member of the first group of Marists. His name was Gabriel-Claude Mayet, and he was born in Lyon, France, in 1809.

An echo of what I heard

Mayet Memoirs

From 1838 Mayet began to separate his personal notes from what would become his notes on the Society of Mary. The latter formed the basis of what he called his Memoirs.

At the end of the academic year of 1838-1839, Mayet’s health began to deteriorate, and the sickness which affected his speech worsened. Being unable to speak, Mayet could not involve himself in the normal apostolic work of a priest. He spent a year away from Marist houses in the hope of convalescing, but this was ineffectual, and he remained virtually unable to speak for the rest of his days. Such a personal tragedy for Mayet proved to be a blessing for Marist history.

While he was convalescing, Mayet conceived the idea of organizing his personal notes to ensure that what was personal to himself could be kept separate from what concerned the history of the Society of Mary and his personal memoirs of Jean-Claude Colin.

Six thousand pages

What Mayet noted was not just the factual information of the Society’s growth; what he collected during this time reflects Colin’s concern to stamp the “Marist way” on the Society, and to give its members a Marian approach to action.

This was Mayet’s mission, provide the means for future generations to discover the essence of the Marist way of life and a good portion of what he recorded was taken from the talks that Colin gave to Marist priests at the annual retreat; even more significantly he recorded the off-the- cuff spontaneous comments that Colin made at table or at informal times after a meal.