A LOSS TO FRANCE

New Zealand Tablet, 27 November 1913, Page 49

A LOSS TO FRANCE

Ten years have now passed since the monks of the Grande Chartreuse were expelled from their monastery and scattered to the four corners of the earth (says a writer in the Saturday Review). Members of all political parties in the Department of the Isere joined at the time in an almost unanimous protest against the degree which drove them forth. Even some strong supporters of M. Combes’ government objected to the exile of a body of men who had not only rigidly abstained from all political agitation, but who had shown their charity and their philanthropy on every occasion. Their wealth, which was the product of their own industry, had also done substantial good to the whole countryside. The wages that they paid were very high for the poor district in which they lived, and varied from sixteen to eighteen shillings a week for their farm laborers, to whom they also gave an old-age pension of £l6 a year after 25 years’ work. They contributed £60,000 a year to national and local taxation. They did not waste their substance in riotous or extravagant living, but built churches, presbyteries, schools, and hospitals. Thus these monks subscribed £2OOO to relieve the distress occasioned by a disaster at Voiron. A boys’ school was opened by them at St. Pierre d’Entremont and a girls’ school at St. Pancrasse. Annual subscriptions of £2OO were paid to the hospital, at Voiron, and £520 to that of Entre-deux-Guiers ; £56,000 were spent in 1892 in building a hospital at St. Laurent-du-Pont, and from that time until their expulsion they donated £3600 annually towards its maintenance and its support. They opened a school for sixty-five deaf and dumb children at Curieres, and devoted £2400 a year to their elementary education and instruction in the trade to which they were best fitted. Their liberal contributions gave substantial help to every public object. Thus they rebuilt the village of St. Pierre des Chartreux in 1846. They repaired over and over again all the mischief done by fires and floods, and spent their substance liberally wherever a road had to be either mended or opened. _ None of this good work was of the slightest avail against sectarian animosity. They had all assembled in the church choir on April 29, 1903, every monk in his own stall, when they were forcibly removed by two men and escorted to the door of the monastery by the police, who then marched them off to the hotel. Since then all the buildings have been in the custody of the State, which during ten years did little or nothing to arrest the havoc wrought by time, and by the inclemency of the weather. The long corridors are threatened with ruin, the vast roof was giving, way under the weight of the winter snow, water did its full work through the leakages in the gutters and pipes, and much of the masonry was crumbling away ; the windows were broken and neither they nor the doors sufficed to keep out the wind or rain. No urgent repairs were made, and it was estimated that if this were allowed to go on the buildings would crumble into decay in two years’ time. It is said that a member of our own royal family who lately paid a visit to the Grande Chartreuse* observed, ‘ln my own country this would be called a crime.’ It is only within the last year that an agitation has been started by all those who have the interests of the country at heart. They have succeeded so far in inducing the Ministry of Fine Arts to class the Grande Chartreuse as a ‘monument historique ’ and to devote a small annual subvention to its preservation from absolute ruin. This money will necessarily come out of the pockets of the taxpayers ; whilst had the authorities consented to eat humble pie and acknowledge the hideousness of their monstrous mistake, the Chartreux might themselves have been invited not only to return to their old home, but to restore to the Department of the Isere the wealth and prosperity which they once brought in their train.

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