Jean-Martial Besse
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Jean-Martial Besse OSB (29 October 1861 – 26 July 1920) was a French Roman Catholic priest, writer and historian, author of scholarly studies and political essays. He is notably famous for having been the spiritual director of writers such as Joris-Karl Huysmans, Paul Claudel and Georges Bernanos.
Biography
Jean Besse was born in Saint-Angel, Corrèze. His father was an innkeeper. At the age of 20, he entered the novitiate of the Benedictines at the Solesmes Abbey, in the Sarthe region. Two years later, he made his profession and took the name of Martial in honor of the apostle of the Limousin.
In 1885, his superiors sent him to the Ligugé Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in the Vienne department founded by the hermit Saint Martin in 361. On the initiative of Cardinal Pie, Bishop of Poitiers, monastic life had been restored there by Dom Prosper Guéranger beginning in 1853. Expelled in 1880, the monks had just been authorized to return.
On June 19, 1887, he was ordained a priest by the Bishop of Tulle, Henri Dénéchau.
In 1890-1894, he becomes master of novices at the Ligugé abbey, where met Joris-Karl Huysmans who was received as an oblate. It was during this same period that Paul Claudel stayed at the abbey. Dom Besse dissuaded him from becoming a Benedictine monk, and the painter Jean-Louis Forain converted. Along with several brothers from Ligugé, Dom Besse was charged with reviving Saint Wandregisel's monastery, of which he was named superior. His ambitious project did not succeed. It was Dom Joseph Pothier, the restorer of Gregorian chant in France, who became the new abbot of Saint Wandrille in 1898.
In 1895, he was sent to Spain, to the Abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos, which also belonged to the Solesmes congregation. The abbot, Dom Alphonse Guépin, continued his initiation into historical studies. In 1897, Besse returned to Ligugé as sub-prior and master of novices.
He opposed the reconciliation with democracy ("ralliement") proposed by Pope Leo XIII and Cardinal Lavigerie. From 1900 he was a contributor (under the pseudonym Léon de Cheyssac) to the monarchist newspaper Gazette de France.
In 1901, following the Waldeck-Rousseau law on Associations and against religious congregations, the Benedictines of Ligugé Abbey were expelled from France and found refuge in Chevetogne, Belgium.
In 1905, Besse founded the Revue Mabillon. This magazine was followed by the Revue de l'Année liturgique, La vie de la paroisse and La vie et les arts liturgiques.
He wrote regularly columns and reviews in the daily newspaper L'Action française under the pseudonym "Jehan". Holder of the Syllabus chair of at the Institute of French Action, Dom Besse was close to Charles Maurras and the French neo-monarchist movement since 1906. His active political militancy in royalist circles earned him a warning from Dom Hildebrand de Hemptinne, Abbot Primate of the Benedictine confederation, in the autumn of 1908.[1]
In 1912, while in Chevetogne, he encouraged the monastic vocation of Bénédicte Waddington-Delmas and accompanied her in the spiritual process that lead to the foundation in Paris of the Benedictine nuns of Sainte Bathilde.
On October 13, 1914, Dom Besse, was chaplain of the Benedictine nuns of the Rue Monsieur in Paris, and celebrated the baptism of André Charlier, then 19 years of age, who was about to be mobilized and leave for the front.
On May 11, 1917, he celebrated the wedding of Georges Bernanos with Jeanne Talbert d'Arc, a descendant of a brother of Joan of Arc, who would give him six children.[2]
He died on July 26, 1920, in Chevetogne, Belgium, at the age of 59.
Jean-Martial Besse made lasting contributions to the history of monasticism and French monasteries. His editing of the monastic history of Charles Beaunier (1676–1737), Benedictine monk of Fontgombault Abbey, was in fact a newly reprinted in 1999. To cultivate the history of monasteries, he founded the Revue Mabillon in 1905, published by Brepols since 1990 (90th vol. 2018).
Works
- Histoire d'un dépôt littéraire, l'abbaye de Silos (1897)
- D'où viennent les moines? (1901)
- Huysmans et la mystique traditionnelle (1902)
- Les bénédictins en France (1903)
- Les moines de l'Afrique romaine, IVe et Ve siècle (1903)
- Une page d'histoire politique. Le ralliement (1906)
- Les moines de l'ancienne France (1906; awarded the Baron-de-Courcel Prize by the Académie française in 1907)
- Église et monarchie (1910)
- Le catholicisme libéral (1911)
- La question scolaire (1912)
- Le Syllabus, l'Église et les libertés (1913)
- Les Religions Laïques: Un romantisme religieux (1913)
- Les Oblats de Saint Benoît (1916)
- Les mystiques bénédictins des origines au XIIIe siècle (1922)
- Le tombeau de saint Martin de Tours (1922)
- La messe (1923)
Notes
- ↑ "Without doubt we must take an interest in political questions which can modify in one way or another the destinies of a people, but we must not be too preoccupied with them. S. Benedict did not worry much about the hordes of barbarians who followed one another like the waves of a torrent... Whoever abandons himself to the waves of politics is carried along with the currents. This may be a necessity, a duty for the Christian in the world, but the monk must work in silence for the preservation and development of the foundations necessary for all civilizations. I understand very well the monarchical principles and I also understand that one hopes in the return to these ideas. But it is not our business to prepare handshakes to bring back royalty. It is necessary to evangelize with patience and dignity".
- ↑ The published correspondence of the novelist contains about ten letters to Dom Besse.
References
- Besse, Jean-Paul (2005). Dom Besse. Un bénédictin Monarchiste. Paris: Editions de Paris.
