"I shall fear nothing even in the midst of the shadows of death." ~ The remarkable courage and fidelity of Madame de Lafayette

Portrait of Madame de Lafayette later in life. 

The town where I grew up is a small suburb of Philadelphia called Lafayette Hill. As a kid, I was only vaguely aware that the town was something of a historic site, mostly thanks to the General Lafayette Inn, an old-time watering hole perched at the curve of Germantown Pike since the 1730s. Situated a mere ten miles as the crow flies from Valley Forge, the area near the town was the site of an abortive attempt by British General Howe to bring the Continental Army to battle by cutting off a contingent sent to reconnoiter an area along the Schuylkill River where several important roads came together.

The general in command of the Continental reconnaissance column was Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette, the dashing young French officer fighting under the command of General Washington. Lafayette had taken up a defensible position atop Barren Hill, and had stationed pickets on a somewhat lower rise to his north in an area that would latter be called Lafayette Hill. 

Lafayette's actions at Barren Hill won him praise from General Washington, but the details of that encounter are a story for another post.

Lafayette himself was a mere twenty years old when Washington gave him command of his 2,000 best troops in May of 1778. And as remarkable as he was to be given such responsibility at such a young age, he was, by that time, married to a woman who was perhaps even more remarkable than he was.

Lafayette had wed Marie Adrienne Françoise de Noailles on April 11, 1774 when he was sixteen, and she not even fifteen. After less than two years of marriage, Lafayette's imagination had been fired by stories of the goings-on in America. Against his family's wishes—and indeed, against King Louis XVI's formal decree—he left for America to join the cause of liberty, arriving in June 1777.

Adrienne remained behind, caring for an infant daughter, and pregnant with another. Sadly, her first child would pass away at age two while her husband was still en route to America. Her second daughter, Anastasie, would be born while her husband was recovering from a bullet wound in the leg he suffered at the Battle of Brandywine. 

It's hard to imagine the distress suffered by this very young wife and mother during this part of her life, but by all accounts she bore it well. Writing after her mother's death, her youngest daughter, Virginie, revealed the source of her mother's resilience:

All she felt appeared to her beyond her strength, and she placed herself under the protection of God to whom, in the midst of her disquietudes, she never ceased to look for support. [Lasteyrie: Life of Madame de Lafayette, p. 167]

But these early travails would prove to be a mere prelude to what she would suffer in future years. Adrienne de Lafayette had been a devout Catholic all her life. She would need every ounce of faith and divine support to endure what was coming. 

During her husband's absence, the young mother would prove a gifted student in the managing of the family estates. As a member of the high nobility of France, she mixed and mingled in circles that included members of the royal family. 

Upon her husband's successful return from his American adventure, she gave birth to two more children, both of whom were named for aspects of America that were dear to her husband's heart. The daughter would be named Virginie, and the son Georges Washington. Young Georges would be christened with General Washington as his godfather in absentia, as acknowledged by Washington himself in a letter to Lafayette on October 20, 1782:

I have just sent for Mrs. Washington, who will think herself honored by yours and Madm. La Fayette’s notice. Make a tender of my best respects to her, and offer a blessing in my name to your Son, and my God Son. [The Writings of George Washington, Vol. X (1782-1785)]

It should be kept in mind that though the Marquis de Lafayette was a baptized Catholic, he embraced enlightenment thinking and had become a Freemason. He was also rumored to be a skirt-chaser, as was common among the French nobility of the time. Adrienne, however, remained a very devout Catholic to the end of her life, and exclusively devoted to the husband she adored. 

This devotion would be proved during the French Revolution. When the initial disturbances erupted in 1789, Lafayette found himself in the uncomfortable position of being suspected by both those loyal to the king, and by the commoners as well. As a champion of liberty abroad, he attempted to play a leading role in an orderly and peaceful transition of France from a monarchy to a republic. But when the revolution turned violent, the Lafayettes, as members of the nobility, became targets for arrest by the Jacobins. Fleeing France in August of 1792, Lafayette was captured and imprisoned by the Prussians, and later transferred to the prison of Olmütz in Austria. 

While her husband was playing a great and dangerous role in the affairs of state, Madame de Lafayette was running risks every bit as great. Despite the increasingly hostile attitude of the revolutionary government toward Catholics in general, and priests and religious in particular, Adrienne broadcast her devotion to the Church without fear:

The civil constitution of the clergy was a subject of great tribulation to my mother. She considered that on account of her peculiar situation, it was her duty to testify her attachment to the Catholic cause. She was therefore present when the curé de Saint Sulpice whose parishioner she was refused from the pulpit to take the oath. She was there surrounded by those who were most known for their aristocratic tendencies. She repaired assiduously first to the churches then to the oratories where the persecuted clergy had taken refuge. Nuns who had suffered insults would come to her for protection and likewise priests who had refused to take the oaths and whom she encouraged to exercise their ministry and to demand liberty for their form of worship. [Lasteyrie: Life of Madame de Lafayette, p. 191]

In September of 1792, Madame de Lafayette was arrested by Jacobin soldiers along with her daughters and an elderly aunt. She would spend several months crammed into cramped prison quarters with other political prisoners before being transported to Paris where the Jacobins were sending sixty people per day to the guillotine. She spent fifty days in various prisons in Paris during the Terror, expecting at any moment to be summoned to the scaffold. During that time, her grandmother, mother and sister were all executed. While in prison, Madame de Lafayette penned a will which included the following testimony:

O Lord, Thou hast been my help and my strength in the fearful troubles which have befallen me. Thou art my God; all the events of my life are in Thy hands; come to my help do not forsake me and I shall fear nothing even in the midst of the shadows of death. 

I have always lived and hope with the grace of God to die in the bosom of the catholic apostolic and Roman Church. I declare that it is in the principles of that holy religion that I have found my support and in its practices my consolation. I have full confidence that it will bear me up at the moment of my death. I believe in Thee, O my God, in all Thou hast revealed to Thy Church. I put my hope in all that Thou hast promised and my full confidence in the merits of Jesus Christ, and in the price of His blood. My wish is to conform my life to His, to unite my sufferings to His sufferings, and my death to His death. I hope, O God, I may always love Thee beyond everything and attain by Thy grace the bliss of loving Thee eternally. I accept unreservedly the means Thy providence may choose to lead me to that blessed end. 

I pardon with all my heart my enemies if I have any, my persecutors whomsoever they may be, and even the persecutors of those I love, I pray God to grant them His blessings and to pardon them as I pardon them myself. O Lord when, by the means of Thy grace, I pray for my persecutors as sincerely as I now do, Thou wilt not reject my prayers for those whom I love, and thou wilt treat us according to the greatness of Thy mercy. Have pity on me, O my God! 

I declare that I have never ceased to be faithful to my country, that I have never shared in any political intrigue which could disturb its peace, that my most sincere wishes are for its happiness, that the principles of my attachment to it are immovable, and that no persecution can shake them from whatever side they may come. An example most dear to my heart sets me the example of these feelings. 

I give my tenderest blessing to my children, and I pray God at the price of my life, which I should have wished to devote to their happiness, that He may Himself bring about that happiness by making them worthy of Him. 

It is in the name of Jesus Christ that I pray for all these blessings. Filled with confidence in Thy loving kindness, I deliver up my dear children, I deliver up my soul into Thy hands. I know, my God, that it is to Thee I have intrusted those who were committed to my charge, and that Thou art powerful enough to restore them to me on the great day of Eternity, and to unite us all in a place where we may bless Thee for ever. In Thee and in Thee alone, I have put my trust. Have mercy on me, O God. [Lasteyrie: Life of Madame de Lafayette, p. 298-302]

God would hear her prayers. Adrienne was saved by the timely death of Robespierre on July 28, 1794 which ended the Terror.

Though no longer in fear of her life, Madame de Lafayette found herself yet in prison. Her release was accomplished in no small part due to the efforts of the American ambassador to France, James Monroe, and his wife, Elizabeth, whose importunate requests to their erstwhile ally became an embarrassment to the French government. Monroe's persistence was no doubt inspired by the fact that he and Lafayette had served together as young men in Washington's army at Brandywine.

Once released from prison, Madame de Lafayette learned of her husband's imprisonment in Austria. Sending her son, Georges, to the United States to reside with his godfather for safety's sake, Madame Lafayette and her two daughters made their way to Vienna, using their status as naturalized American citizens (and an assumed name) to ease a passage fraught with peril. Upon arriving there, they were granted an audience with Emperor Francis II. The emperor permitted them to visit the Marquis de Lafayette, but only on condition that they remain there in prison with him for as long as his term lasted. 

Engraving of the reunion of Lafayette with
Adrienne and daughters while in prison in Olmütz.

As it turned out, the term lasted another 23 months. The Marquis had been kept in solitary confinement for many months prior to that due to a failed escape attempt. Thus, he had no idea what was going on in the outside world, and when his wife and daughters suddenly arrived to be with him, his surprise was total. Adrienne found her husband in terrible health, despite the assurances of Francis II that he had been well fed and well treated. But the arrival of his family helped him rally his spirits and he soon began to revive. 

Life in the Austrian prison was miserable. Adrienne and her daughters saw no one except the officer assigned to deliver their meals. At no time were they given any utensils, and thus had to eat with their fingers. Worse, an open sewer ran just outside their window, filling the dank space with foul odors at all hours. Within a short period of time, these conditions played havoc with Adrienne's health. Her daughter, Virginie, wrote:

My mother's illness made rapid progress. The doctor was only allowed to see her a moment during the officer's visit. Being ignorant of the French language, he could not understand her but would express in Latin his fears to my father. She had a violent eruption first on her arms, which swelled in such a manner that she could neither make use of them nor lift them up, and afterwards on her legs. Fever scarcely ever left her. This state lasted eleven months from October 1796 till September 1797. During these eleven months, no alleviation of the prison treatment was obtained. She had not even an arm chair. Her sufferings did not in the least impair her spirits. Seeing her always serene always enjoying my father's company and the consolations she had brought with her, we were all less anxious than we ought to have been. [Lasteyrie: Life of Madame de Lafayette, p. 358-359]

What caused Adrienne the most dread, however, was that she and her daughters were forbidden to attend Mass, though there was a Catholic church very close by the prison. In the biography of her mother, Virginie includes letters from Adrienne to the Austrian commandant in charge of the prison politely requesting permission to attend Mass. Every request was denied. 

The Lafayettes would be released from prison in 1797 thanks in part to backchannel appeals from presidents Washington and Adams, but mostly due to demands from the victorious General Bonaparte whose defeat of Austria in his Italian campaigns had electrified France. Lafayette returned from captivity to find France much changed. Napoleon would come to view him as a potential rival, but allowed his family to live quietly unmolested in France in exchange for a promise that Lafayette would remain aloof from politics.

Adrienne's health would never completely recover from the years of misery in prison. On Christmas Night, 1807, she died surrounded by her beloved ones. The Marquis de Lafayette wrote a long description of her death and the last conversations which they had together in a letter to his friend, Marquis de Latour-Maubourg. "You never saw anything so extraordinary or so touching," Lafayette remarked regarding Adrienne banter as she drifted in and out of febrile delirium. "There was also a refinement in the way she expressed herself, a loftiness of thought which astonished every one. But what was admirable above all, was that tenderness of heart which she was incessantly showing." [Lasteyrie: Life of Madame de Lafayette, p. 400-401]

Adrienne was a woman sincerely attached to her Catholic faith, but who was also deeply in love with a man who had little use for it. Because of her love for him, she refused to make his apostasy an issue between them, though it clearly disturbed her. As the illness muddled her head and broke down her natural reserve, her heart's desire that her husband return to the faith seemed to become reality to her. Lafayette records the following incident in the context of her deathbed prayers:

Sometimes we could hear her praying in her bed. She made her daughters read prayers to her. There was something heavenly in the manner she twice repeated Tobit's prayers applicable to her state, the same she had recited to her daughters on seeing the steeples of Olmütz for the first time. I approached her. "It is from the book of Tobit," she said. "I sing badly that is why I recite it."

Another time she composed a most beautiful prayer which lasted full an hour. She only once or twice seemed in error about me, persuading herself that I was a fervent Christian. "You are not a Christian?" she said one day. And as I did not answer, "Oh, I know what you are: you are a Fayettiste."

"Do you think me so presumptuous," I replied. "But are you not a little Fayettiste yourself?"

"Oh yes," she exclaimed, "with all my soul, I feel I could die for that sect." 

[Lasteyrie: Life of Madame de Lafayette, p. 408-409]

It is likely that she retained a hope that God would grant her husband the grace of final penitence. One of Lafayette's comments about her beliefs points to that hope, and possibly reflects a little wishful thinking on his part:

Her religion was all love and confidence the fear of hell never came near her mind. She did not believe in it for beings good, sincere, and virtuous whatever their opinions might be. "I do not know what will happen at the moment of their death," she would say, "but God will enlighten them." [Lasteyrie: Life of Madame de Lafayette, p. 402]

Shortly before the moment of Adrienne's death, she murmured that she was not suffering. Hearing these words, her nurse said: "No doubt she does not suffer; because she is an angel." [Lasteyrie: Life of Madame de Lafayette, p. 415-416]

Engraving of the death of Lafayette which accompanies Dr. Cloquet's account.

The Marquis de Lafayette would live on for another 27 years after Adrienne's death, passing into eternity in 1834. Among his later acts was a triumphal tour of the United States in 1824-1825 where he was celebrated as a venerable hero of American liberty. During that tour, he visited the site of the Battle of Bunker Hill, taking some soil from that hallowed ground back to France with him as a memento.

Whether Lafayette repented before breathing his last can not be known. A single sentence preserved in Recollections of the Private Life of General Lafayette by M. Jules Cloquet, MD, who was present at the deathbed, offers some hope:

The venerable rector of the church of the Assumption came to join in prayer with the family. [Cloquet: Recollections of the Private Life of General Lafayette, p. 278]

The same account records that Lafayette's catafalque was taken to the church of the Assumption where a service for the dead was performed before a large crowd of mourners. The Marquis's mortal remains were then taken to Picpus Cemetery in Paris to be interred beside the body of his beloved Adrienne. This cemetery is remarkable because it is also contains the mass graves of nearly 1,500 headless bodies—victims guillotined during the Reign of Terror. Among these victims are the sixteen Carmelite nuns of Compiègne, canonized in 2024, who went singing to their deaths. Burial in proximity to such saintly martyrs can not help but be efficacious. 

Spread atop Lafayette's grave by his son, Georges Washington, was the Bunker Hill soil that he had brought back from America during his tour ten years before. 

From that time even to this day, an American flag flies over the Lafayette gravesite.

Saint Genevieve and barbarism: From Attila to the Republic

St. Genevieve and Attila, though these Huns look more like Franks to me.

January 3 is the feast of Saint Genevieve (or Genovefa in Latin). History tells that this great late Roman saint was born in the Western Empire about the year AD 422, and passed to eternal life on January 3, AD 512. During her life, she witnessed the momentous events which transformed her home in Roman Gaul to a province of the new Frankish kingdom, and indeed she played an integral part in these events.

Enjoy this excerpt from the Vita Sancta Genovefa, translated into 17th century English. Though reproduced in The Golden Legend, a collection of hagiographical literature compiled in the mid-13th century, the Life of Genevieve is reckoned to have originated from a much earlier source, possibly roughly contemporary with the life of the saint. This excerpt tells of how Genevieve convinced the merchants of Paris to leave their goods in the city during the invasion of Attila, prophesying that Paris would remain safe, while other cities would be devastated:

"Tidings came to Paris that Attila, the felon king of Hungary, had enterprised to destroy and waste the parts of France, and to subdue them to his domination. The burgesses of Paris, for great dread that they had, sent their goods into other cities more sure. Saint Genevieve warned and admonished the good women of the town that they should wake in fastings and in orisons, by which they might assuage the ire of our Lord and eschew the tyranny of their enemies, like as did sometime the two holy women Judith and Esther. They obeyed her, and were long and many days in the church in wakings, fastings and in orisons.

She said to the burgesses that they should not remove their goods, nor send them out of the town of Paris, for the other cities that they supposed should be more sure, should be destroyed and wasted, but by the grace of God, Paris should have none harm. And, some had indignation at her, and said that a false prophet was risen and appeared in their time, and began among them to ask and treat whether they should drown her or stone her. 

Whilst they were thus treating, as God would, the archdeacon of Auxerre came to Paris, after the decease of Saint Germain, and when he understood that they treated together of her death, he came to them, an said: "Fair sirs, for God’s sake do not this mischief, for she of whom ye treat, Saint Germain witnesseth that she was chosen of God in her mother’s belly, and lo! here be the letters that he hath sent to her in which he recommendeth him to her prayers."

When the burgesses heard these words recited by him of Saint Germain, and saw the letters, they marveled and feared God, and left their evil counsel and did no more thereto. Thus our Lord kept her from harm, which keepeth always them that be his, and defendeth, after that the apostle saith, and for her love did so much that the tyrants approached not Paris, thank and glory to God and honor to the virgin."

Read the entire Vita as taken from the Golden Legend here.

Or, check out a more modern translation taken from Sainted Women of the Dark Ages by MacNamara, et al.

If you appreciate this fascinating period of history, when Roman Gaul became the Kingdom of the Franks, you will no doubt enjoy the excellent novel, Centurion's Daugher by Justin Swanton. 

2024 update: There's also a fantastic novel for young readers about St. Genevieve that came out 2023 entitled Matron of Paris. You can read my review of that book here. 

The relics of Saint Genevieve survived in Paris for nearly 1,300 years. Sadly, the anti-Catholic lunacy of the French Revolution brought about the destruction of the relics in 1793. In a bizarre satanic mimicry of justice, the Revolutionaries seized the relics on November 6, 1793 and held a mock trial. An excerpt from Striking Images, Iconoclasms Past and Present by Boldrick et al. tells the rest of the story:

"That evening, the revolutionary committee of the Section du Pantheon delivered up the reliquary of Saint Genevieve to the national Mint where it was broken up to be melted down to support the Republic’s war efforts. They then took the relics to the Hotel de Ville where they derided the objects’ efficacy in eliciting divine intervention, saying that, ‘The transit of this patron of Parisians took place with great tranquility and without miracles.”…They added derisively that ‘As the Parlement [of the ancient regime] could not be present, Saint Genevieve and her reliquary were lowered and transported to the Mint.’…To make the point unambiguously clear, on the municipality’s order, on 3 December 1793 the relics were taken to the Place de Greve and burnt, transforming objects deemed by Catholics to be saintly into profaned ashes that were scattered in the Seine…Indeed, as Sluhovsky has written, citing the contemporary newspaper Moniteur, ‘these bones were put on trial, were found guilty of collaboration with the royal authorities, and were condemned to be burned…to expiate thereby for the crime of participating in the propagation of error."

But Saint Genevieve would have the last word. The Revolutionary Republic would prove as short lived as Attila's empire--devoured just as thoroughly by God's cleansing fire.