FREDERIC’S MOTHER AND CIVIL WAR – A Reflection
by Ronald W. Ramson, CMBlessed Frederic Ozanam’s mother, Marie Nantas, often spoke of the horrors of the Siege of Lyon in 1793. She and her sisters hid in cellars to escape detection. She remembered her father, one of the leading silk merchants of the city, appointed Captain of his section, spending days and nights in defense of the ramparts.
When Lyon was taken, she remembered her brother, Jean-Baptiste, just 18 years old, shot at Broteaux.
Her parents only escaped the guillotine by fleeing the city. The family found refuge at Echallens, in the Canton of Vaud, Switzerland, 15 km north of Lausanne, half way between Lausanne and Verdun. The small town of Echallens is nestled between the beautiful lakes of Geneva and Neufchatel. An old uncle, a former prior of the Carthusians of Premol, accompanied the fleeing family. The trip had to have been a difficult one and long because of the terrain and distance involved.
Marie remembered that it was there in a poor little church of Echallens, in which both Catholics and Protestants worshipped, that she had made her First Holy Communion. Interestingly, during the 18th century, the town was governed by a Council of twelve persons, 6 Protestants and 6 Catholics. The people seemed to have been a step ahead of us in the area of ecumenism.
When peace was restored in France, the Nantas family returned to Lyon to recover, not their property, but their social status. This took place before 1798.
In 1847, Frederic, his wife and daughter traveled from Venice to Geneva, Switzerland; he was doing some research for his lectures. From there he traveled to Echallens where his grandfather Nantas had fled during the months of the Terror. Frederic wanted to see for himself where his mother had lived and made her First Communion.
Frederic found it exactly as his mother had described it. The church was divided into two parts, one for Catholic, one for Protestant worship. He tells us that the church was very badly kept, yet he prayed in it with more fervor than usual. “I thanked God for the favors he had bestowed in this same place on the exiles. I prayed for my dear mother only because it is a duty to pray for the dead. As I believe she is happy and powerful in heaven, I asked her to watch over us, to help us to conclude safely this long drawn-out journey, and above all to obtain for her children some of her sweet virtues.
“My wife and my mother-in-law prayed with me, and my darling Marie knelt quite seriously at the altar rail. Amelie gathered some flowers on the height on which the church is perched. They are not the same flowers that our dear mother trod as she went to Mass, but they are like them, and please God we, too, shall be like her.”
Civil war and violence were part of the history of the Ozanam family. They knew it only so well.
