page_title: Chavagnes International College
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Chavagnes International College / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Teachers of 1954, Chavagnes.
context_page_description: Chavagnes International College is a Catholic school for boys in Chavagnes-en-Paillers, France. Founded in 1802 by Louis-Marie Baudouin the school was re-fashioned an "international college" in 2002. The school's language of instruction is English, and it prepares pupils for British GCSEs and A-levels, with the French Brevet and Baccalauréat as options.
  The College claims to be a traditional English school in France. Although pupils come from Britain and other English-speaking countries there are also more and more pupils from France. In this international environment, modern languages are particularly strong, with many boys taking GCSE languages one or two years early. Older boys often speak several languages fluently.
context_section_description: Chavagnes en Paillers has a long history of association with England, and with a general attitude of welcoming outsiders. The motto on the official arms of the village comes from the 133rd Psalm (Ecce Quam Bonum): 'Habitare fratres in unum' (Behold how good it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.)
  The land on which the college is built, near the site of a Roman villa, was given to a community of Benedictine monks in the thirteenth century by the Anglo-French family
  Harpedan de Belleville, who then ruled the area. The monastery built at that time was dedicated to St Anthony of Egypt (also called St Anthony the Great), the founder of monasticism. The monastery received a canonical visitation from a Papal Legate, Bertrand de Got in the late 12th century. He subsequently became the first Pope at Avignon, Clement V.
  In the years that followed, Chavagnes saw many changes and much upheaval. In the nineteenth century, its walls housed the first junior seminary in France after the Revolution, founded by the Venerable Louis-Marie Baudouin in 1802. Father Baudouin recounted a prophecy whispered to him by a dying priest, renowned for his sanctity: "Il y aura toujours un séminaire à Chavagnes" ("There will always be a seminary in Chavagnes"). This legend would later inspire several successful attempts to keep the seminary open against the will of the Emperor Napoleon, the Fourth Republic and the Nazis.
  Already recognised by Napoleon, and under the authority of the diocesan bishop, it received a royal charter from Charles X in 1825, as the ‘Ecclesiastical School of Chavagnes’, during the brief period of the restored Bourbon monarchy (1824–30).
  The buildings were confiscated from the Church in 1905 as part of the anti-clerical crackdown throughout France. The priests then involved with educating the boys at Chavagnes were exiled to Shaftesbury in Dorset. In 1912 the buildings were bought back by a local aristocrat, the Comte de Suzannet, and reopened as a junior seminary, much to the chagrin of the Paris authorities.
  The college was shared between German soldiers and junior seminarians during World War II, housing a small garrison and a military hospital. A machine-gun was placed in the clock tower, dominating the village, but the Nazi soldiers turned a blind eye to more than 50 Jewish children sheltered by local families until the liberation. The villagers were so good at keeping a secret regarding the hidden Jewish children that the information only emerged in the 1990s.
  Chavagnes of the Popes
  Shortly after the Second World War the college (then the Petit Séminaire de Chavagnes) received the visit of Angelo Cardinal Roncalli, Papal Nuncio in Paris. The then Mayor, Mr Gilbert de Guerry de Beauregard, gave a welcome speech in which he alluded to the previous visit of a Papal Legate in the 12th Century and mentioned that the last one had become a Pope. He suggested that Cardinal Roncalli might also share the same destiny. Roncalli became Pope John XXIII a few years later. In an interesting turn of events, the Pope of the day, Pius XII, sent a long letter of greeting to the people of Chavagnes, referring to the historic faith of the people of the Vendée area, in the wake of this visit. The letter was signed by a substitute, by the name of Martini, later Pope Paul VI.
  In 1997, as had happened many times before in the history of Chavagnes, the building closed its doors for a time. In 1999 the buildings housed 50 refugees from Kosovo. Finally, in September 2002, with the support of the local bishop, a group of English, American, Australian and Irish teachers, led by Ferdi McDermott, reopened the school but with a different, international emphasis.
  In 2004, two founding Masters of Chavagnes International College, Robert Asch and Ferdi McDermott, were invited to visit Cardinal Ratzinger in Rome. Cardinal Ratzinger blessed rosaries for the boys at the college and expressed the hope that his forthcoming retirement would enable him to work more closely with his visitors. Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope, as Benedict XVI, making him the four
caption: Teachers of 1954, Chavagnes.
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