Les jésuites français dans la Grande Guerre: Témoins, victimes, héros, apôtres (review)

This very substantial work presents a wealth of information and intelligent discussion on the thoughts, experiences, hopes, and apprehensions of the French Jesuits in World War I. Marie-Claude Flageat has combed meticulously through a large amount of archival material, personal and official records, published articles, and other documents and has woven them into a clear and valuable account of the French Jesuit involvement in the war. She shows that the war was quite significant for the reintegration of the Jesuits in French society in the very anticlerical Third Republic. Most religious orders had been outlawed in France by the Associations Law of 1901. Jesuit schools and other ministries were brought to an abrupt halt, although their novitiates and seminaries did continue in exile outside France.

Clergy, including Jesuits, were still subject to the law of military service, and Jesuits welcomed the chance to show that they still loved their country. Flageat's very detailed study of the sources does not show any pacifist or antimilitary attitudes, but rather acceptance of the duty to help defend France from the German invaders. Eight hundred and seventy Jesuits—about 30 percent of the total—were mobilized, and the great majority was integrated into combat units, though mostly as medical orderlies or stretcher-bearers. Jesuit chaplains numbered 156. Some 163 died on the battlefield (forty-nine priests, ninety-seven seminarians, and seventeen brothers), which means that 18 percent of those that went to war never returned. Of all the 32,700 French clergy that were mobilized, 4618 died in the war. This service was recognized by the French government, which conferred honors on many clergy; 373 Jesuits were awarded the Croix de Guerre, and 105 the Legion of Honor. Flageat studies the influence on Jesuit thinking of their daily close and brotherly contact with all kinds of Catholics, devout and anticlerical, and many non-Catholics. She also gives a wealth of information on the continued activities of Jesuit missions in many parts of the world during the war, such as in the Ottoman Empire, which was allied with Germany.

An especially interesting topic that Flageat studies is the attitude of the Jesuits toward other countries involved in the war. Germans they perceived negatively, seeing in their aggression (the whole Jesuit province of Champagne was overrun by the German army) the spirit of Bismarck's Kulturkampf, Prussian Protestantism, and Kantian rationalism. Some thought at the war's end that Germany was treated too leniently in the peace settlement, although they defended Pope Benedict XV from accusations of pro-German sympathies. Perceptions of France's allies, including the United States, tended to be favorable. The hopes of Jesuits for an improvement in their image in the eyes of French society as a result of their participation in the war were only partially realized after the war. But their patriotism was recognized, and at least they were allowed to function in France again. In an appendix Flageat gives the names of the Jesuits who died, and where and how they met their end. All these topics and more are detailed in this major work on twentieth-century Catholic history, which concludes with thirty-five pages listing published and archival sources.