Charles de Foucauld - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

Childhood and youth

The family of Foucauld is old, since several of its representatives took part in the Crusades, source of a great prestige in the French aristocracy. The young Charles de Foucauld had certainly to dream with the figures of his valorous ancestors who traversed the French history and of which the impetuous currency, " Never Arrière" , the ideal of courage and generosity translated.

His/her mother dies on March 13rd 1864 and is followed on August 9th of the same year by her father, the Viscount of Foucauld de Ponbriand, inspector of the forests. Charles and his young Marie sister are entrusted to their maternal grandparents, colonel de Morlet and his wife. Fleeing the war between France and Prussia, the family takes refuge with Bern, then with Nancy where it would be at the age of 15 or 16 years that it would have moved away from the religion. Charles prepares there, then obtains his baccalaureat.

He is sent to Paris with the Holy Ecole Genevieve, held by the Jesuits, in order to prepare the entrance examination to the military special École of Saint-Cyr military school. In 1876, it integrates Saint-Cyr military school, where it carries out a life dissolue in company of his comrades of the Plewna promotion of which Philippe Pétain, then, received after two years of training, chooses the school of cavalry of Saumur.

In March 1878, his/her grandfather dies. He inherits comfortable incomes which he gets busy to spend at the time of evenings agitated in company of his companion of barrack room, the Marquis de Morès, unrepentant fast liver.

Received at the school of Saumur, lieutenant Charles de Foucauld is affected with the 4 {{E}} hussard (which will become the 4 {{E}} Chasseurs of Africa) with Pont-à-Mousson in 1880. Envoy with Sétif in Algeria with his regiment, his control makes scandal. He posts himself with a mistress, making it pass for his wife, which is worth to him to enter in conflict with its hierarchy and to be striped executives for indiscipline in February 1881. He withdraws himself with Evian and lives there “with the vague concern of a bad conscience which, very deadened that it is, is not completely dead”. Learning that its regiment fights in Tunisia, it is reinstated in the 4th Hunters of Africa, with its request, a few months later.

Charles de Foucauld then joined his comrades who fight the tribe of Kroumirs in the South Oranais, after the insurrection directed by the marabout Bou-Amama. To the completion of the combat at the end of 1881, it leaves in garrison in Algérie, with Mascara.

It matures there a project of voyage in the East: “I like to better benefit from my youth while travelling; of this way, at least, I will inform myself and I will not waste my time”. He asks a leave which is refused to him; he resigns.

Explorer of Morocco

The meeting with Oscar Mac Carty - conservative of the library of Algiers and geographer - confirms the project: it will be Morocco, country still very badly known. For better preparing this voyage, he studies during one year Arabic and Islam as well as Hebrew. According to the councils of the conservative, he disguises himself in Jew in order to better pass unperceived in the great majority of this country still populated of tribes out of direct control of the sultan and prohibited to the Christians.

This voyage in the middle of the Morocco will take place of June 1883 at May 1884. Charles de Foucauld will tell thereafter his tour in company of his guide, the Mardochée rabbi, in a work, Reconnaissance in Morocco , published in 1888. The considerable mass of information, in particular geographical and ethnological, will be worth the gold medal of the to him Société of geography of Paris.

It is a revelation: “Islam produced in me a deep upheaval. The sight of this faith, of these hearts living in the continual presence of God, made me foresee something of larger and truer than the fashionable occupations. ”

Of return in France, it finds to them his, and in particular its aunt Ines Moitessier, sister of her father (and whose portraits by Ingres are famous), but Parisian life annoys it. It sets out again in Algiers where Mac Carthy introduces a specialist in geography to him, the Commander Titer. Charles meets the girl of the Commander thus, Marie-Marguerite, with whom it plans to found a hearth. Several months of reflection and a new tour in the desert decide its love life: it chooses in a final way the celibacy.

Conversion

From February in October 1886, it resides at Paris very close to his cousin Marie de Bondy (girl of its aunt Moitessier). The affection of this one and the frequentation of the living room of her aunt enable him to meet the abbot Huvelin, vicar of the parish Saint-Augustin. It is one second revelation: At once “that I believed that there was God, I understood that I could not make differently than to live only for Him: my religious vocation dates from the same hour as my faith: God is so tall. There is such a difference between God and all that is not Him… In the beginnings the faith had many obstacles to overcome; but me which had doubted so much I did not believe all in one day. ” The abbot convinces it to enter in religion.

The year 1887 is devoted to the final correction of the “Recognition in Morocco”. In 1888, the work appears. End 1888, it leaves for a pilgrimage four months in Holy Land until the beginning 1889, year of its religious preparation.

After a short passage to Solesmes then with the large Trap door of Soligny, Charles de Foucauld enters to the Monastère of Our-Lady-of-Snows, located in Ardèche on January 16th, 1890, where it takes the dress of beginner and the name of Marie-Albéric Brother. After having resigned of the Company of Geography, it also gives up its rank of reserve officer. “This step pleases to me; January 15th I left all that was to me a good but they remained behind these poor wretches embarrassment, the rank, small fortune and that pleases to me to throw them by the window. ”

Then a new departure comes towards the East and the Syria. Charles de Foucauld joined the Trappe of Cheikhlé in June 1890. There will remain six years there. This new cenobitic existence is made meditations; the monks also get busy with the agricultural work and the construction of roads. In spite of the reserves which it expresses near the Master of the beginners, Dom Louis de Gonzague, about the relative comfort of the Trap door, it pronounces on February 2nd 1892 its vows monastic and receives the tonsure.

It starts to wonder whether it can carry out with the Trap door its ideal of poverty, abjection and penitence: “If one speaks to me about studies, I will state that I have a very sharp taste to remain to the neck in corn and in wood and an extreme loathing for all that would tend to move away from this last place that I came to seek in this abjection in which I wish to be inserted always more following Our-Lord… and then, in the final analysis, I will obey. ”

Very early, the monk is eager to free himself from the collective existence for a eremitic experiment. He sees himself opposing a refusal and must gain the Trappe of Staouéli in Algeria. Then it leaves for Rome at the end of October 1896 in order to follow courses of theology. However, the general abbot of the Trappists is convinced soon of the personal vocation of Charles de Foucauld. He exempts it his wishes on January 23rd 1897.

Charles de Foucauld sets out again then in Palestine and March 1897 to it to March 1900 leads a life of hermit. Installed in a modest hut at the Clarisses of Nazareth, it gets busy incognito as servant. Equipped like the poor, Foucauld lives surrounded by its books, maintains a narrow correspondence with its family remained in France and achieves two voyages to foot until Jerusalem. Its meditations then lead it towards a new orientation: the apostolate.

In 1900, it wants to buy the Mont of the Blisses to settle there as priest hermit; the project not succeeding, it returns in France and decides to prepare with priesthood.

At the end of August 1900, Charles de Foucauld embarks for Marseilles and, from there, gains the monastery of Our-Lady-of-Snows. After having received the minor orders, on October 7th 1900, it is finally ordered priest with the Great Seminar of Viviers on June 9th of the following year. In October 1901, the Father of Foucauld settles with Bless-Abbots, an oasis located on left bank of the Saoura at the south of Oranie in the Western Sahara.

Hermit in the Sahara

January 9th 1902, it repurchases a first slave whom it calls Joseph of the Sacred Heart. Part of the year 1902 is devoted to an exchange of correspondence with Mgr Guerin, Apostolique prefect of the Sahara about the Esclavage. The following year, he thinks of achieving voyages to the Morocco and of installing a Fraternity there. He would like to be joined by companions which he would ask three things: “to be ready to have the head cut - to be ready to die of hunger - to obey to him in spite of its unworthiness”.

To June, in front of impossibility of going to Morocco, he entrusts to the Huvelin abbot, Mgr Guerin and to the commander Laperrine his project of évangéliser the country Tuareg. At the end of the summer, it will carry help to the soldiers wounded by the combat of Taghit and El-Moungar. It writes a small introduction to the catechism which it entitles the Gospel presented to the negro poor of the Sahara .

Between 1904 and 1905, it begins its rounds “of domestication”. Accompanying by the columns of soldiers who nomadisent through the desert, it contacts the populations of the south or the central Sahara. Its tour leads it Bless-Abbots to Adrar, In Salah, Aoulef, El Goléa, and Ghardaïa. During the steps he learns the Tamachek (idiom of the Tuaregs) and undertakes a translation of the Gospel in this language. During the year 1905, it completes the drafting as of its Meditations on the Saints Gospels, and is authorized by the Huvelin abbot and Mgr Guerin to be taken part in a round of nomadisation towards Hoggar. With In Ouzzel, on the road of Tamanrasset, it becomes acquainted with Foamed Ag Amastane, Amenokal of the tribe of Ahaggar. The mission arrives at Tamanrasset in August 1905. The Father of Foucauld starts by living in a Zériba . Then it builds a dried ground and stone-built house. It decides to settle for a few months and to spend each year there three months to Béni Abbots, six months with Tamanrasset, three months with going and coming. The Tuaregs quickly dedicate a veneration with the “Brother Charles of Jesus”, although a woman will entrust later that it and her partners did not cease requesting God so that the hermit converts with Islam, sorry that a so holy man was promised with the eternal damnation.

(December 9th 1905, law of separation of the Church and the State).

At the time of its return of Bless-Abbots in September 1906, the Général Lyautey comes to visit him. During all this period besides, it often receives French officers with whom it has very profitable exchanges; it is the case for example of the Captain Edouard Charlet, which one will give the name to Djanet (Fort-Charlet), as well as lieutenants Ardaillon, Gardel, etc.

In December 1906, with Maison Carrée, house of the White Fathers, Mgr Guerin gives him a companion, the Michel Brother. It also grants the authorization to him to expose Blessed Sacrament each time two admirers can be present at least three hours. One year later, the two monks leave for the Hoggar. The Michel Brother, whose health does not resist tirednesses of the voyage, leaves the Father with In Salah. From July 1907 with Christmas 1908, the Brother Charles takes again his regular and monastic life with Tamanrasset. In January, it obtains the Holy See the authorization to celebrate the mass without being useful. He works up to eleven hours per day with linguistic work which will absorb it until its death: drafting of a lexicon, which will become little by little a monumental dictionary Tuareg-French; transcription, translation and comment of poetries touarègues (six thousand worms in all), work which it will complete only on September 28th, 1916, three days before being assassinated. Of this work, which today still makes authority, only a small portion will be published of alive sound.

Beginning 1909, and on request of its family, it makes a first stay in France during 3 weeks. Mgr Bonnet, bishop of Fish ponds and Mgr Livinhac, Supérieur General of the White Fathers approve its statutes of “the Union of the Brothers and Sœurs of the Sacred Heart”, “pious union” for the evangelization of the colonies. At the time of the voyage return in March 1909, it stops in El-Abiodh Sidi Sheik. It is there that the first Fraternity in March 1933 will be founded.

As of 1909, it undertakes to organize the apostolic brotherhood of the “Brothers and Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus”.

In 1910, it learns death from Mgr 37 years old Guerin. Comment: “Alas yes, it is a great loss for me; but one should not be egoistic; it is right that the saints receive their reward…”

From January to May 1911 it turns over in France. It devotes the two following months to a fourth stay with Tamanrasset during which it continues its work of lexicon.

In December 1911, to follow the Touaregs which carried out their herds because of the persistent dryness to it elsewhere, it remains with Assekrem, plate in the middle of the Hoggar. It writes its will there: “I wish being buried with the place even where I will die and there to rest until resurrection. I prohibit that my body is transported, that it is removed place where the good god will have made me complete my pilgrimage. ”

It will make build later according to its plans a small hermitage which it will be able to use the summer.

End 1913, Charles de Foucauld makes his last voyage in France and, seven months during, visit its family and friends: Foucauld, Blic, Bondy and his/her friend Laperinne.

In September 1914, with the news of the declaration of war in Europe, it writes with his/her Marie cousin, after multiple debates of conscience: “You feel that it costs some to me to be so far from our soldiers and of the border: but my duty is, with obviousness, to remain here to help to hold the population in the calm one to with it”.

That which wanted to die martyr is assassinated of a shot the 1 {{er}} December 1916 by rebels and plundering Senousis your with the door of its hermitage.

In its last letter with his/her cousin Marie de Bondy, Charles de written Foucauld: “It is found that one never likes enough, but the good god who knows of which mud it kneaded us and who likes us more than one mother cannot love his child, said to us, Him which does not lie, that it would not push back that which comes to Him”.

It rests since April 26th 1929 in a tomb with El-Goléa, called El Méniaa today.

In 1919, the cardinal Amette gives an favorable opinion for the resumption of the Union of the Brothers and Sœurs of the Sacred Heart (Association the laic ones living in the world), under the presidency of Mgr Roy, indicated by Mgr Livinhac.

In 1924, the Admiral Malcor, ordered priest, takes the dress of the Father of Foucauld and settles in Sidi Saad, close to Kairouan in Tunisia. The Henrion Father joined there.

In August 1933, foundation with Montpellier of Small the Sister of the Sacred Heart. In September of the same year, foundation of the Little brothers of Jesus: ceremony of taking the cloth of the first five Little brothers, in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre. In September, the first fraternity of the Little brothers with el Abiodh Sidi Sheik with the the Sahara. In September 1939, foundation of the Little sisters of Jesus to the the Sahara.

The spiritual radiation of the Father of Foucauld is perpetuated today by nearly a score of congregations and religious associations which propose “to relearn the mystery of the incarnation to the men of today”.

April 24th 2001, the Pape Jean-Paul II approves the decree of heroicity of the virtues of the Father of Foucauld which becomes thus Vénérable.

In addition to his Recognition in Morocco (1888), Charles de Foucauld left many scientific documents which published the Université of Algiers like its spiritual Écrits . In 1925 and 1930, André Basset published in two volumes the poems of which it had completed the translation only the day before his death. In 1951, the HMSO of France, with the assistance of the general Government of the Algeria, published the dictionary complete Tuareg-French, in four volumes, splendid work of the HMSO and incredible amount of work of Charles de Foucauld, for many Touaregs and more generally of the Berbère S.

The spirituality of the Brother Charles

The intense spiritual life of Charles de Foucauld is marked by its will of imitation of Jesus and by a innovating apostolate.

The imitation of Christ

The life of Christ is a fundamental inspiration for Charles de Foucauld. More than Jesus, prophet on the roads, it is the Jesus craftsman in Nazareth which is used to him as model. It is a question of living in a humble way: like Jesus, it is necessary to adopt a poor lifestyle, but more still, it is necessary to avoid trying to dissociate itself from its next. Jesus with Nazareth prèche not yet the good news, it incarnates it. Charles de Foucauld did not want to be an institution, a different man, but on the contrary only wished to mix with the population in which he exerted his apostolate. Like Jesus, he wanted to gain his daily bread while working with his hands. Its priesthood was not to appear like a higher function. Consequently, Foucauld invents a particular apostolate: the apostolate of the medium by the medium (quoted in Paul), by fraternity.

A innovating apostolate

It is not an active apostolate. Quite to the contrary, Charles de Foucauld refuses to preach the Gospel with a population which would be interested only superficially in the Holy Scriptures. By imitating Christ, Charles de Foucauld hopes to present a model of holiness to the eyes of all, and thus to interest them in his Master, Christ: while seeing how much its servants are good, they were to deduce the size from it from their inspirer. The father of Foucauld preached fraternity between the men: he gave all for his “dear nomads”, without anything to require in return. The reading of the biography of Rene Bazin involves a reflection as for its motivations. It seems that this different apostolate was seen like better, but also more effective. Foucauld saw the limits of a traditional proselytism, of a sermon imposed, on a population, the Tuaregs, remained very independent, even with respect to Islam. To know the language, not to seek to impose themselves, post its qualities initially, to be made like, for better bringing to the religion: this apostolate was indeed more carrying. The word “domestication”, used to describe its action, described well these problems. One should not however take out the word of its context: France of beginning of century, where one still believes in the superiority of the model of French civilization and with the need for importing it for many crueler populations.

The spiritual family of Charles de Foucauld

The influence of Charles de Foucauld was large: its biography, “Charles de Foucauld, explorer of the Morocco, Hermit with the the Sahara”, was a best-seller (written by Rene Bazin, available to the editions news quoted). He is regarded as one of the major theologists of the century. A spiritual family contributes to répendre her ideas. It is necessary to quote the Little brothers of Jesus, founded by Rene Voillaume, and the Little sisters of Jesus, founded by Magdeleine Little sister of Jesus.

Charles de Foucauld, Father of Foucauld, brother Charles?

This minor question relates to the various names designating Charles de Foucauld: Charles de Foucauld is his complete name. It is used to indicate its first period, before its entry in the orders. Father of Foucauld indicates his function since his ordination. It was the most current name. Brother Charles with the preference of his spiritual family: for the Little sisters of Jesus, this name expresses better its ideal of fraternity and its will to remain humble. One finds also the name of “universal little brother”.

Beatification

Charles de Foucauld was béatifié by the Pape Benoît XVI the November 13rd 2005. He is indeed credited with a Miracle, the cure of an Italian attack of a Cancer, in favor of which he would have interceded near God. At the time of the ceremony of beatification, where were present Pascal Clément and Madam Marie-Laure Guay, the pope declared that the life of Charles de Foucauld was “an invitation to be aspired to universal fraternity”.

See too

Internal bond

Tuareg

External bonds

* The site of Spirituality Charles de Foucauld
Charles de Foucauld by Hugues Didier, Professor at the university Jean Mill-Lyon III.
Charles de Foucauld' S Coils for Humankind TCRNews.com
Chants Tuaregs. Collected and translated by Charles de Foucauld. Paris, Albin Michel, 1997
the lesson of history of Charles de Foucauld, abbot Marc Guelfucci, re-examined Objections.
Charles de Foucauld and the Tuaregs, Meets and misunderstanding, '' Terrain '' 28,1997: 29-42 by Dominique Casajus.
Rene Bazin and Charles de Foucauld: a missed appointment? , '' Impacts '' 2-4, 2000: 139-153 by Dominique Casajus
'' Lettres with the marabout. Messages Tuaregs with the Father of Foucauld ''. Paris, Belin, 1999, edition of Lionel Galand, director of studies with the EPHE.
Charles de Foucauld and Tuaregs, 1996 per Dominique Casajus
Homélie of the beatification of Charles de Foucauldsur the site of the Vatican
Biography of Charles de Foucauldsur the site of the Vatican

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