L’aventure missionnaire lyonnaise, 1815–1962: De Pauline Jaricot à Jules Monchanin (review)

L'aventure missionnaire lyonnaise, 1815-1962: De Pauline Jaricot à Jules Monchanin. By Yannick Essertel. (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf. 2001. Pp. 427. 190 F paperback.)

Dr. Yannick Essertel, a young French Catholic historian who focuses on the history of missionary priests dispatched throughout world from the Archdiocese of Lyon, has given to not only the scholarly world, but the Catholic faithful in general, an outstanding tome on this subject in his L'aventure missionnaire lyonnaise, 1815-1962. The book is an outgrowth of Essertel's doctoral dissertationcompleted a few years ago at the Université de Lyon III under the directorship of the renowned French Catholic scholar Jacques Gadille. Your reviewer first became aware of Essertel's work when the Frenchman submitted to Catholic Southwest: A Journal of History and Culture, a publication for which your reviewer serves as editor, an article tracing the story of several French missionaries from Lyon who had labored in Texas during the nineteenth century.

The strength of Essertel's study—written in impeccable French—is that it is based upon thorough research, much of the primary source materials coming from Europe's best-known archives, especially ecclesiastical repositories from throughout France. Three historical foci dominate the coverage in L'aventure missionnaire lyonnaise. There is an initial in-depth discussion of the role of Catholic seminaries in the formation of missionary priests and brothers since the Council of Trent, especially the institutions of the Sulpicians and the Congregation of the Mission, the Vincentians. Second, L'aventure kneads into its pages a carefully written illumination of the vast expanse of missioning activity of French churchmen from Lyon throughout the world. Finally, individual missionaries, such as the Vincentian Jean-Marie Odin, first Bishop of Galveston, Texas, and second Archbishop of New Orleans, and Claude Marie Dubuis, second Bishop of Galveston, are highlighted.

L'aventure missionnaire lyonnaise is divided into two major parts: Première Partie: Le Diocèse de Lyon, Sa Vocation Missionnaire et Ses Missionnaires, and Seconde Partie: Les Missionnaires Lyonnais et les Formes d'Évangélisation. The first part begins with a detailed discussion of the work of the supporters of the missions: Pauline Jaricot and the efforts of the Propagation of the Faith, various other sources of financial aid, and the missionary press. The four subsequent chapters in the première partie cover such topics as missionary congregations evangelizing throughout the entire world, social geography and formation of the future missionaries, and the departing of the missionaries as such occurred right up to 1962.

The second part treats in scholarly detail the regions of the first evangelization: North America—including the United States and Canada—the ocean areas, and Africa. As the chapters of the seconde partie further unfold, evangelization in such lands as the Indies, Latin America, the Levant, and North Africa are featured. An added dimension of this excellent study is its inclusion throughout of assessments on various issues significant to missionary history: the rise and decline of missioning efforts, changes in the religious and secular history of regions all over the world, and so on.

Yannick Essertel's L'aventure missionnaire lyonnaise is a tome worthy of any Catholic's study. But it cannot be ignored by scholars of religion, in particular of Christianity, and especially Roman Catholicism, as the search for historical truth in the field of missionary evangelization is continued. It is a book that needs to be in libraries everywhere and available to researchers wherever possible. This reviewer highly recommends it as a publication that cannot be ignored.