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Denise Egéa-Kuehne
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Monsignor Antoine
Blanc (1792-1860)
First
Archbishop of New Orleans
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| Antoine Blanc is by far the most famous among all the priests who, during the nineteenth century, went from France to the United States. After coming to Louisiana as a missionary priest, he was appointed Grand Vicar, fourth Bishop (1835-1850) then first Archbishop of New Orleans (1850-1860). He was not only a missionary, but also "a man of broad-based vision, unostentatious piety, sound administrative judgement, uncompromising determination, unswerving courage, blunt firmness, gentlemanly courtesy, unflagging tenacity, and Gospel-based respect for others" (after R. Baudier, in C. Nolan, A History of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, 2000, p. 29). He was also a main organizer of the Louisiana Church, and a builder. The name of this carpenter's son from Sury-le-Comtal was given to a Memorial located in New Orleans which hosts the Archdiocesan Archives, and the most ancient memories and memorabilia of the history of the Church in Louisiana. The first Ursuline Convent (1734-1752) was located on that same site, so was the second Ursuline Convent from 1752 to 1824. In a letter dated January 1823, the nuns transferred the property to the Bishop of New Orleans, and it became the residence of Bishop Du Bourg and his successors, from 1824 to 1899. It also housed the archdiocese archives and the archbishops' chapel from 1845 to 1899, today Our Lady of Victory Church. |
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| Family
roots: the Blanc family in Estivareilles and Sury-le-Comtal1
The Blanc family comes from Estivareilles, in the Forez Mountains. In the seventeenth century, Jean Blanc was a farmer in the village of Tourtourel. His son Antoine lived in the village of Les Granges, and in 1708, married Jeanne Monnet. They had eight children, two of whom settled in Sury-le-Comtal as master carpenters. The older one, Georges Blanc, came to Sury in 1734 and, in 1739, married Marie Coste. The younger one, Jean-Baptiste Blanc (1726-1798) joined his brother a few years later, somewhere between 1745 and 1750. In 1750, Jean-Baptiste married Reine Jamme, the daughter of a tailor, Claude Jamme, and his wife Antoinette Jacquet. They had five children. After Reine died, Jean-Baptiste entered a second marriage with Benoîte Menu, daughter of André Menu, a lime-burner2 in Sury, and of Françoise Vincent. They had four children. Jean-Baptiste was to be Monsignor Blanc's grandfather. In Sury, the Blancs rapidly became a very large family with many branches, well integrated to the town through marriage, their spouses being all natives of Sury. They were a family of craftsmen. From the first generation, Georges and Jean-Baptiste were both carpenters, and from the third generation, three also grew to be carpenters: two sons of Jean-Baptiste's, and one of Georges's sons. Another one became a locksmith. They were a Catholic family, and in Sury, Jean-Baptiste Blanc was the rector of the Company of the Sacred-Host. From his two marriages Jean-Baptiste Blanc had a total of nine children. Laurent Blanc took his succession as a carpenter, so did his younger brother, Jean Blanc. Born in 1750, Laurent Blanc married Jeanne Pinand in 1784. Jeanne was the daughter of Rambert Pinand and Antoinette Poizat, and daughter, granddaughter and niece of bakers from Sury-le-Comtal. The Pinands were also a very large family, with deep roots in the town of Sury going back several generations. Between 1785 and 1804 they had nine children, all boys. |
| Antoine
Blanc: childhood and youth
Antoine Blanc was the fourth son born to Laurent Blanc and Jeanne Pinand, his wife. Antoine was born on October 11, 1792 in Sury-le-Comtal. By then, Laurent and Jeanne's first child, named Jean-Baptiste, had died at a young age. There remained another son, also named Jean-Baptiste, five years old when Antoine was born, and a two year old already bearing the name of Antoine. On Antoine's baptismal record, the following entry can be found: Antoine, born yesterday, the legitimate son of Laurent Blanc, free town bursar in the parish of Sury, and of Jeanne Pinand, was baptized by me this twelvth day of the month of October. His godfather is Antoine Bouté,3assessor of the judge of Sury, and his godmother, Jeanne Pinand. (Municipal Archives, Sury-le-Comtal)Twenty days earlier the Republic had been proclaimed by the National Convention and affirmed by the victory of Valmy. So Antoine was born right in the midst of the Revolution. As noted in the baptismal record, Antoine's father was "the free town bursar," which means that he was one of the town administrators. He was also a partisan of the Revolution. On the 10th of Fructidor of the year II, before the Mayor, the Municipal Officers and the General Counsil, Laurent Blanc discussed the necessity of reorganizing the national guard "in order to be able to fight against the tyrans of liberty" (in Henri Ramet, "Sury-la-Chaux," in Echo du Cercle Amical). When the officers of the National Guard were elected in Sury, several among Laurent's allies and family members were appointed: Guillaume Poizat, Jean Montmey, Pinand, and Jean-Marie and Antoine Michalon. This is the extent of what is known about Laurent Blanc's "revolutionary" activities. The patriotic and republican sentiments expressed while France was being threatened at its frontiers do not necessarily imply an adhesion to the politics and the campaign of dechristianization which would take place two years later.4 Antoine Blanc's childhood was uneventful. He grew among his brothers, as five more sons were born to Laurent and Jeanne Blanc, and among his cousins who must have all made for a rather rumbunctious lot. In all, there were twenty five to thirty children, all sons of carpenters on the Blanc side, and of bakers on the Pinand side. It is not known from where Antoine Blanc's religious calling originated or how it manifested itself. One could speculate that it was due to his mother's religious zeale, as was often the case then; or perhaps to the influence of his great maternal uncle, Léonard Pinand, priest in Chazelles-sur-Lyon. In any case, Antoine Blanc entered the seminary at Verrières-en-Forez. Tucked in the Forez mountains, this seminary had first been opened in more or less clandestine conditions. But after the 1801 Concordat, it was officially organized by Cardinal Fesch, then Archbishop of Lyon, who set high stakes on the training of new priests destined to replace the members of the clergy decimated during the Revolution. Since 1809, the seminary of Verrières was under the direction of the Abbot Jean Joseph Barou, former professor of philosophy at the seminary of Argentière. Barou took over the management of Verrières, charged with the mission to "rekindle discipline and study" (Joseph Barou, "Le petit séminaire de Verrières," Bulletin de la Diana, 1980-81). In November 1813, Antoine Blanc entered the first year of theology at the main seminary in Lyon, located on the Croix Paquet square. He was 21 years old. There, he was taught by the priests of the diocese, the Sulpicians having been ordered to leave by Napoléon 1er. He remained there until July 1815. His father had died in 1798, and it fell to his mother to pay for his keep which amounted to about 130F a year. Antoine proved to be a barely above average student. In theology his work was rated fere bene, that is just above mediocre. |
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| On January 6, 1814, he received the tonsure from Cardinal Fesch in the chapel of the Archdiocese of Lyon, then located near the Primatial of Saint Jean, on the quays of the Rhône river. The same day, he received the four minor orders. On July 2, 1814, he was ordained subdeacon by Monsignor Simon, Bishop of Grenoble,5at the Primatial of Saint Jean de Lyon. One year later, on June 23, 1815, the day Lyon learned of the defeat of Waterloo, he was ordained deacon in the chapel of the main seminary by the same Monsignor Simon. That day, his peers were called Marcellin Champagnat (to become Saint Champagnat, the founder of the Maristes brothers), and Jean Marie Viannet (to become the famous Vicar of Ars). |
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Curé d'Ars |
| Going
to the United States
In 1816, Antoine Blanc met Monsignor Dubourg, Bishop of New Orleans. This meeting was to have a momentous influence on the direction Antoine's life was to take. Louis Guillaume Valentin Dubourg was born in Cap Français, Saint Domingue, in 1766. In 1816, he came to France to recruit new missionaries for Louisiana. Later on, he became Bishop of Montauban (1826), then Besançon (1833) where he died a few months later (1833). Monsignor Dubourg remained several months in Lyon, and since Cardinal Fesch was still in exile, Monsignor Dubourg ordained a number of priests. By then, Antoine Blanc had already made his decision: he was to leave for Louisiana with Monsignor Dubourg to become a missionary priest in southern United States, a South which was in the process of gradually joining the Union.6 However, in order to go to Louisiana as a missionary, he needed to secure an authorization from his former diocese. On May 10, 1817, the Grand Vicar granted seven young men the authorization to be incorporated to the New Orleans diocese: three priests (Richard, Velay and Blanc), a deacon (Janvier), a subdeacon (Portier), and Gabriel and Barthelemy Goutte. Antoine Blanc and his companions sailed out of Bordeaux on the Caravane, along with Monsignor Dubourg. They left on July 1st, and the crossing lasted sixty five days before their ship finally reached Baltimore. Antoine Blanc had just arrived in what was to become his new homeland. |
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| Notes
1. The remainder of this text is after C. Latta's Evêques et Prêtres Foréziens aux Etats-Unis (1817-1867), Montbrison: Village de Forez (1988) pp. 17-29. 2. Lime furnaces were common in Sury, so much so that during the Revolution the town was called Sury-la-Chaux ("chaux" meaning lime). 3. Antoine Bouté was Antoine Blanc's uncle by marriage to Marguerite Blanc. He was a tradesman in Sury. 4. Although Henri Ramet writes that Laurent Blanc "will place an interdiction on the access to the baptismal fonts for all children" after his own son was baptized, it must be noted that, in fact, it so happened that Antoine Blanc's baptismal was the last one to be entered on civil records. The civil records having been "laïcized," what was now entered on them were birth records only. Baptismal records were transcribed on registers now kept in the presbytaries. 5. In May 1814, after the first abdication of Napoleon I, Cardinal Fesch had left Lyon to go to Rome. He did not return to Lyon, but always refused to resign from his position as Archbishop of Lyon. The diocese was administered by the General Vicars, then later on by an administrator: Monsignor de Pins. 6. France sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States in 1803, and Florida was ceded by Spain to the United States in 1819. |
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