Transcript Document
Jean-Baptiste de La Salle 1651-1719 Reims in the time of De La Salle The City of St. Rémi, the City which crowned Kings, Reims in the time of De La Salle The Old City Wall - De La Salle’s Beginning A close up of De La Salle’s Childhood Reims De La Salle House Moët’s House Hôtel de la Cloche Archbishop’s Palace Bons Enfants Notre Dame Cathedral Reims, France ANCESTRY? • JOHAN SALA: Legendary ancestor of the De La Salle Family. A Catalonian knight in the service of Alfonso the Chaste, king of Orviedo in Spain. He died in the year 818 in the war against the Moors, his legs broken in battle. A legend originating in the 19th century ascribes the origin of the three broken chevrons in the family coat of arms to this incident. • ARMAND SALA: During the 10th century this putative descendant of Johan, built a castle for his family, which thereafter was known by the name De La Sala. • THE DE LA SALA KNIGHTS: In the 12th century the De La Sala knights were dispersed widely throughout France, serving the armies of local princes. In this way the name assumed its French form of De La Salle. The name became common in France. There is no genealogical evidence to connect any of the De La Salle families to the original Sala family. • BERNARD DE LA SALLE: Surfaces in the 14th century a captain of Aquitaine who had only one son, a bastard who left no heirs, and his brother Hortingo de La Salle who fought on both sides in the struggle between the Italians and the Avignon papacy. He was rewarded in 1376 with a castle in Aougny in northern France. There is no historical evidence of his being connected to the Reims De La Salle family. THE FAMILY • The De La Salle family of Reims always traced its ancestry to Menault de La Salle who lived in Soissons in the late 15th century. His grandson Lancelot de La Salle II moved the family to Reims in 1561. Louis de La Salle, the father of John Baptist, was the youngest of the six surviving children of Lancelot de La Salle III and his wife, Barbara Coquebert. Despite the claims of the early and more recent biographers, the De La Salle family did not belong to the nobility. They were rather wealthy members of the upper bourgeoisie and some of them,including the father of John Baptist, married women of noble rank. These women however lost all claim to noble rank once they were married to a bourgeois. • Brother Claire Battersby, in is 1957 biography, claims that the family of John Baptist de La Salle was “nobility of the robe,” as distinguished from hereditary nobility derived from knighthood, “the nobility of the sword.” It is true that judges in the courts of Paris were given noble titles on that basis. The magistrates of Reims, however, such as Louis de La Salle, were merely members of a provincial court with limited jurisdiction and not thereby ranked among the nobility. JOHN BAPTIST DE LA SALLE’S FAMILY John Baptist de La Salle was born in Reims on April 30, 1651. His parents were LOUIS DE LA SALLE, a magistrate of the presidial court at Reims, and NICOLE MOËT, the daughter of the Seigneur de Brouillet. They had been married in August 1650, he was 25 years old at the time, she was 17. Altogether they had 11 children in 20 years of married life. Four of the De La Salle children died in infancy. In addition to John Baptist, the oldest, two girls survived, Marie and Rose-Marie and four boys, Jacques-Joseph, Jean-Louis, Pierre and Jean-Remy. At the time of the birth of John Baptist, his father and mother shared the spacious mansion known as La Cloche with the paternal grandparents and the family of his only paternal uncle, Simon de La Salle d’Etang. Lancelot de La Salle, the grandfather had died the year John Baptist was born, the grandmother, Barbara Coquebert died two years later. By a codicil in her will she provided that the rooms in the house would be shared by the families of her two sons, Simon and Louis, the father of John Baptist. As the family of Louis grew, he was able to buy from his brother Simon the exclusive rights to the spacious mansion. A PIOUS YOUTH “It soon became evident day after day that this amiable child was inclined to piety and had a great attraction to the ecclesiastical state. As soon as he was old enough to use his small hands, he began fashioning little oratories near which he sang and imitated, in his own way, the grand ceremonies of the Church. This was his usual preoccupation, and it led him to dislike taking part in the other more usual childhood activities expected of him…” (Bernard p. 273) “…he left the family entertainment to seek out his grandmother,whom he asked to read to him from the lives of the saints. This undoubtedly was a happy omen of the future in which he would imitate their holy lives. He began already to love what brought the saints great joy, namely, praying and visiting churches. Nothing pleased him more than to be taken to the celebration of the Divine Office by his father, who was most regular in its observance.” (Ber. 273) “The young boy’s piety in church was evident; he was eager to serve Mass and often volunteered to be an altar boy. How fervent and modest he was in the least functions in which he participated! He drew the attention for all who were there and inspired a sense of devotion in everyone who could see him. “Thus it was that he grew from day to day, like a precious plant destined to bear much fruit.” Ber 273 TONSURE John-Baptist received the tonsure (a ceremony in which a small cross of hair is cut from the person’s head to mark his option for the clerical state) in the chapel of the Archbishop’s palace at the hands of Bishop Jean de Malevaud of Aulâne on March 11, 1662, when not quite eleven years of age.This implied an intention to enter the ecclesiastic state. De La Salle wore the tonsure all his life and did not approve of ecclesiastics who did not do so. CANONRY Pierre Dozet, cousin of Jean-Baptiste’s paternal grandfather Lancelot de La Salle, had been a canon for fifty-two years (1614-1666) and Chancellor of the University of Reims (1619-1668). He resigned on July 9, 1667, in favor of his young relative, who was then fifteen years and three months. The impressive ceremony of investiture on January 7, 1667, was attended by other canons, priests, JeanBaptiste’s brothers, sisters, grandparents, and guests and Pierre Dozet himself. Among the sixty-four stalls, Jean-Baptiste took possession of number twenty-one, the stall once occupied by Saint Bruno, who in the eleventh century resigned his canonry to found the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse near Grenoble. Nineteen cannons at this time claimed some relationship with the De La Salle family. Jean Baptiste was a canon for sixteen years, from 1667 to 1683. This placed him in an ecclesiastical community that had obligations related to public prayer, solemn liturgies and processions. The canons also advised the archbishop, shared many common interests, and were held in high esteem.