Blessed John Mary du Lau and Companions, Martyrs of September 1792

Blessed John Mary du Lau and Companions are 191 martyrs killed in Paris in early September 1792, during the French Revolution. The Church names three bishops at their head: Archbishop John Mary du Lau of Arles and the brothers Francis Joseph and Peter Louis de La Rochefoucauld, bishops of Beauvais and Saintes. The Roman Martyrology commemorates most of them on September 2, and those who died a day later on September 3.

In 1790 the revolutionary authorities of France enacted the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and demanded that the clergy swear an oath of fidelity to its provisions. Pope Pius VI condemned the law, and many bishops and priests refused to take the oath. After the monarchy was overthrown on August 10, 1792, the arrest of clergy began in Paris. They were held, among other places, in the Carmelite convent on the rue de Vaugirard, in the prison of the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, in the seminary of Saint-Firmin, and in the prison of La Force.

On September 2, armed men broke into the Carmelite convent. The killers, posing as a tribunal, called the prisoners one by one and demanded the oath, and those who refused were killed in the garden. Archbishop du Lau was run through with a sword, and the bishop of Beauvais, mortally wounded, fell dead upon the body of his brother, who had already been killed. Most of the bodies were thrown into a well in the garden. About one hundred fifteen prisoners died there; the Church has declared ninety-five of them blessed.

Of the other blessed, twenty-one were killed the same day in the Abbey prison, seventy-two on September 3 in the seminary of Saint-Firmin, a former house of the Congregation of the Mission of Saint Vincent de Paul, and three in the prison of La Force. The martyrs included parish priests, curates and canons, professors and seminary superiors, many former Jesuits, the superior general of the Benedictines of the Congregation of Saint Maur, as well as deacons and several laymen.

The only one of them who is a saint today is Brother Solomon Leclercq of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, born in 1745 in Boulogne-sur-Mer. He was secretary to the superior general and was the only one to remain in the Paris house of the congregation when the other Brothers had to leave it. Arrested on August 15, 1792, he was killed in the Carmelite garden on September 2. A few days earlier he had written to one of his sisters that crosses and afflictions should be accepted with joy and gratitude. Pope Francis canonized him on October 16, 2016.

From the beginning, those who were killed were called martyrs. In 1916 Benedict XV approved the introduction of their cause, and Pius XI, having established that they died solely because of their faith, beatified all 191 martyrs on October 17, 1926. Part of their remains now rest in the crypt of the church of Saint-Joseph-des-Carmes in Paris, where they are venerated by the faithful.