Claude Poullart des Places:
Birth of the Spiritans
They said he should have gone to the Sorbonne, where his exceptional academic abilities would have enabled him to get an honours degree in theology. Coupled with his public speaking gifts, this would assure Claude Poullart des Places from Brittany of a brilliant career in the Church. Instead he went to the seminary of Saint Louis Le Grand, where the poorer seminarians studied and where they gave no degrees.
Claude
came from a well-off family. He could have inherited their wealth
and become a nobleman. He finished high school at the age of fifteen,
and then graduated first in his class from a two-year course in
philosophy. He had a rare talent for acting and loved ballet. He
travelled, rode horses, became an accomplished marksman, hunted and
danced. The world awaited this talented eighteen-year-old. At his
father's urging he studied law and after three years was called to
the bar. But he never practised. Much to his parents' disappointment,
he opted to become a priest.
The street kids from Savoy - the chimney sweeps of Paris - were lonely and homesick in this faceless city. While a seminarian, Claude became their friend, taught them to read and write, gave them some basic religious education and looked after them as best he could.
It struck him that many of the seminarians were not much better off. In order to pay for their accommodation they had to get minimum wage, part time jobs. Claude shared his father's allowance with four or five of the poor students and prevailed on the Jesuits to give them any leftover food. Eventually he was able to rent a house for about twelve seminarians. On Pentecost Sunday 1703 he began the community and seminary consecrated to the Holy Spirit and dedicated to the Immaculate Conception of Mary.
The Seminary of the Holy Spirit
Only poor seminarians were accepted. Claude did not want those who chose the priesthood as a career. There was one rule for everybody, staff and seminarians, including Claude: he washed dishes, cleaned shoes, ran messages and did the shopping just like everyone else. He expected everyone to "eat with gratitude what was placed before them and not go looking for something better." In addition to being poor, the seminarians had to be willing to work in the most difficult and impoverished parishes, and as hospital chaplains. Bishops would later seek them for overseas work in the French colonies. They were trained to be both competent and caring. "A dedicated priest who lacks learning is blind," said Claude. "A learned priest who lacks dedication is in danger of falling into heresy." He gave these penniless future priests a training that was better and longer than that of most of their contemporaries.
It soon became apparent that he could not do it all by himself. He gathered a small community of formators who together would shoulder the responsibility for these young men. This marked the real beginning of the Spiritans.
Claude himself was ordained in 1707 and less than two years later he was dead. The severe winter of 1709 proved too much for him. They cared for him in his seminary as no bed was available in the local hospital. They buried him in a pauper's plot in the nearby churchyard of St Etienne - in a common ditch, to be covered over with earth and used again as needed. An unmarked grave. No monument. But an enduring legacy.
To Suscribe
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