Rochefort martyrs
The 64 Martyrs of Rochefort were some of the 829 Roman Catholic clergymen deported in the course of persecutions of opposition clergymen after the French Revolution. They were held in prison ships off Rochefort in inhumane conditions, of whom at least 505 died. The Rochefort martyrs were beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1995. History. As part of the increasingly radicalized anti-Christian policy of the French Revolution, Decree No. 906 was issued on October 21, 1793, concerning the deportation of clergy to West Africa. All priests who had refused or revoked the oath to the civil  constitution of the clergy (the so-called "réfractaires") or who had been denounced for not supporting the revolution were to be deported. Priests who had not yet emigrated or were unable or unwilling to hide were arrested and transported in groups to Nantes, Bordeaux, or Rochefort on horse-drawn carts between March and July 1794 under military or police guard, along with other exiles. Of the total of 2412 deported clergy, 829 arrived at Rochefort and were interned on prison ships, mainly the "Deux-Associés" and the "Washington"; they were former slave ships. The first prisoners were taken on April  11, 1794, on the "Deux-Associés", which was actually intended to transport 40 slaves and at times housed up to 400 captive priests. The "Washington" was added in mid-June. A departure for Africa was never seriously considered, especially since the ships were not able to survive the journey and leaving French ports was not possible anyway because of the British naval blockade. The priests were kept on the overcrowded ships in agonizing confinement under the strictest guard, with insufficient food and sanitary conditions. There was a strict ban on praying and speaking Latin. In August, after conditions on board  had become intolerable, the sick were ordered to disembark on Citoyenne Island (now Île Madame, part of Port-des-Barques), where a makeshift tent hospital was prepared. Of 83 prisoners brought to the island from August 18 to 20, 1794, 36 died within hours of their arrival. At the end of October, due to the harsh weather conditions, the field hospital was closed after many tents were blown away by the wind, and all prisoners had to spend the winter back on the ships. Due to changes in the political situation in France, treatment by the guards was somewhat milder  from late fall 1794, and the priests were allowed to leave the ships in January 1795; the survivors were forced to march in two groups to Saintes, where they were released. In all, at least 505 of the 829 priests died of typhus or debilitation, mainly between June and September 1794. About half were buried on the island of Aix near Fouras, 254 on Citoyenne/Madame, where today a recumbent cross formed of pebbles commemorates the martyrs. Reception. In 1796 and 1803, survivors published a total of three reports. In 1806, survivor Pierre-Grégoire Labiche de Reignefort had a "very  detailed account of the things suffered for the sake of religion by the priests detained on board the ships Les Deux Associés and Le Washington in 1794 and 1795 for refusal to take an oath in the harbor of the island of Aix and its surroundings," which contains an appeal written by his group of prisoners and illustrates the spirit and hope for the future of this part of the victims. According to this testimony, the survivors promised to bear their suffering in surrender to the will of God with serenity of mind, to maintain discretion about what they had  experienced and not to answer any questions, in particular to maintain silence about any weaknesses and faults of fellow prisoners, and after their release to harbor no regrets about material losses and no resentment and to renounce future political activity. In the interest of national reconciliation, Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte suppressed any public discussion of the subject, so that the fate of the priests was forgotten over the decades. Only in the immediate vicinity of the affected villages did the memory of the events remain common knowledge. In 1863, the new parish priest of Saint-Nazaire-sur-Charente near Rochefort, Isidore  Manseau, learned of the events and drew attention to them in 1886 with a two-volume publication. The "Martyrology of the French Revolution", published in 1821 during the royalist restoration under Louis XVIII by the former Dominican Aimé Guillon de Montléon, compared the victims of religious persecution in revolutionary France to the early Christian martyrs. It contained a detailed chapter on the fate of the Rochefort ship's occupants. Veneration. In 1910, the tradition of an annual pilgrimage to Port-des-Barques in August began; it continues to this day. At the same time, Bishop Jean-Auguste-François-Eutrope Eyssautier  of La Rochelle launched the preliminary information for a beatification process, for which Pierre Lemonnier (1848-1924) compiled the material published in 1916 and 1917 (including 590 short biographies). In view of the high demands made in Rome for beatification, the process had to be reopened after Lemonnier's death by his successor Léandre Poivert. He benefited from the fact that the historian Jacques Hérissay (1882-1969) had meanwhile published "Les pontons de Rochefort" "(1792-1795)", the book awarded a prize from the Académie Française in 1925. The beatification process which took place from 1932 to 1936 could concentrate on  102 historically well-documented names. Nonetheless, proof of martyrdom according to valid canonical requirements was not easy to prove. It was not until 1989 that the theologian and historian Yves Blomme (* 1948) took another look at the case and in 1992 presented a new "Positio super Martyrio", which limited the trial to those 64 priests whose identity and venerability could be sufficiently determined and secured. The process led to the beatification of Jean-Baptiste Souzy, 1734-1794, and his 63 companions as martyrs by Pope John Paul II on October 1, 1995.