(Un-)Settling Exile
Journal: Cambridge University Press eBooks
Year: 2024

In 1806, Franois Ren de Chateaubriand, whom the French Revolution had turned into one of the most-traveled Frenchmen of his time, had an unsettling encounter in Palestine.He was presented to Frre Clment, a former Capuchin from Mayenne who lived in a monastery next to the Church of the Nativity.The monk, refusing to adhere to the 1790 civil constitution of the clergy, had been deported to Spain and from there was sent by his order as a missionary to the Holy Land.There, he hoped to "obtain by the