The Tragic Tale of Claire Ferchaud and the Great War (review)

In March 1917, at the height of World War I, Claire Ferchaud, a peasant girl from the pious region of western France, managed to arrange a meeting with Raymond Poincaré, the president of the French Third Republic. Based on a series of visions of Jesus she had experienced over the past several months, Claire asked that Poincaré dedicate France to the Sacred Heart and place its image on the French tricolor, long-standing Catholic requests that needed to be fulfilled if the nation were to win in its war against Germany. Ray Jonas' study provides the biographical, political, and religious contexts that explain how such an unlikely meeting could have occurred, and thereby opens up a fascinating new perspective on the war.

Jonas opens with two chapters that serve as context for Claire's story. In the first he reviews some of the different visions of war circulating in Europe before 1914, and suggests that Claire's sense of its meaning merits comparison with the ideas of the artists and statesmen who are generally more familiar to historians. After a brief overview of the early stages of the war Jonas shifts his focus to the personal story of Claire. Extremely devout, Claire claimed to have had visions and conversations with Jesus even as a child of three. Her spiritual development was encouraged by a friendly local priest, Father Audebert, whose support led her to further clerical connections. By the end of 1916 her visions of Jesus and her call for the dedication of France to the Sacred Heart had generated extensive publicity in the local press and a pilgrimage movement which was bringing thousands to her small village of Loublande. An episcopal investigation chaired by Bishop Humbrecht of Poitiers interviewed Claire in December 1916, but produced no definitive ruling, and thereby encouraged the popular movement surrounding her campaign. With the help of a local politician, Claire finally reached Paris in February 1917, a stay which culminated in her interview with Poincaré, who listened politely, but took no action in response to her request.

In the second half of his study Jonas concentrates on a variety of initiatives coming from the French episcopacy and laity aimed at accomplishing the same goal generated by Claire's visions. As Jonas writes, Claire's campaign "was merely one manifestation of a popular movement that had pursued victory from the opening weeks of the war" (p. 86). Jonas describes the devotion of the Sacred Heart for Catholic women on the home front, but also for the many soldiers who used its image to ward off death in battle. Claire's visions thus intersected with and gained power from their connection with a deeply rooted spiritual tradition that experienced a wartime revival, as people responded to a devotion that seemed to offer both personal and collective redemption. Claire's story ends somewhat anticlimactically. Even before the official Vatican disapproval of 1920 some French clergy had expressed their reservations. Claire lived on until 1972 at the center of a small but marginalized congregation of women. In his epilogue Jonas recounts his 1998 meeting with an elderly priest in Loublande who had dedicated himself to Claire's memory, preserved in her house which also serves as a shrine, although not apparently one that draws many visitors.

Jonas tells Claire's story with sympathy and sensitivity, and through it illuminates a spiritual dimension of World War I that has not been sufficiently acknowledged, despite the work of scholars such as Annette Becker, Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, and Jay Winter. In his desire to be fair to Claire, however, Jonas sometimes describes her as an almost heroic figure, driven by her vision to battle against her own shyness and public authorities. During a retreat in 1916 that served as a turning point in her career, for example, Claire is described as achieving autonomy, free for the first time "to contemplate her life on her own account and on...