The Holy Hosts of Faverney

Faverney lies in the valley of the Lanterne, north-west of Vesoul, in what is now eastern France. In 1608 it was not in France at all. It belonged to the County of Burgundy, the Franche-Comté, a Habsburg land ruled from Brussels by the Archdukes Albert and Isabella.

Tradition places the founding of the abbey in the eighth century. It was first a house of nuns, and in 1132 it passed to Benedictine monks of La Chaise-Dieu. Its church held an old statue of Our Lady, Notre-Dame la Blanche, Our Lady the White, and pilgrims came to it. Scholars note that parents also brought stillborn infants to this shrine, in the hope of a sign of life that would allow baptism.

By 1608 the community was small. Éberlé says there were six professed priests, with a few younger members, and that their fervour had faded. The region was also uneasy, because Reformed teaching and armed bands had crossed the frontier from nearby lands in the years before.

Pope Clement VIII had granted indulgences for pilgrims at Pentecost, and the Archbishop had authorised their publication. To encourage pilgrims, the monks set up a temporary altar for the Blessed Sacrament.

On Saturday 24 May, the eve of Pentecost, Dom Prudent Chalon sang the high Mass and consecrated two hosts. The deacon, Dom Nicolas Noirot, placed them in the lunette of a silver monstrance, partly gilded, that also served as a reliquary. It was small, about a good palm in height. Below the lunette, in a crystal tube, was a bone believed to be a finger of St Agatha.

That afternoon the sacristan, Dom Jean Garnier, built the altar against the iron grille between the sanctuary and the monks' choir. It had a wooden tabernacle, a canopy, curtains, lamps and candles. Before Vespers the prior carried the monstrance to it in procession. The papal brief and the Archbishop's letter were placed there too. About 8 in the evening Garnier closed the church and left two oil lamps burning.

On Pentecost Sunday, 25 May, pilgrims came and went. In the evening the parish priest of Menoux, Nicolas Aubry, knelt a long time before the altar. Garnier refilled the lamps and closed the church.

About 3 in the morning Dom Garnier came in to ring for Matins and found the church full of smoke. The altar was burning. Éberlé says a cork holding the wick in a glass lamp caught fire and spread burning oil over the cloth, while other accounts blame melted candles. The altar, its wood and its hangings were burnt, and the marble slab broke. Garnier ran out crying for help.

The monks and townspeople beat at the embers. Then the youngest novice saw the monstrance. Éberlé calls him Gabriel Hudelot and says he was about thirteen. Other accounts call him Antoine Hudelot, aged fifteen. The monstrance was in the air, near the grille, leaning towards it, above the burnt place, and nothing held it up.

The papal brief was found in the ashes with its wax seal melted and its text whole. So was the Archbishop's letter. Scholars note that this detail mattered in the telling: the indulgence documents had been spared too.

The Archbishop's council reckoned that the monstrance hung from about 1 in the morning on Monday, before the fire was found, until it came down on Tuesday: about thirty-three hours. Word spread fast. The judge Claude Lesvolay and the parish priest Oudot Hubert came. Dom Noirot rode to Vesoul to fetch the Capuchins. Three of them, Vincent Martel, Timothée and Rufin, arrived later that Monday, with others from Vesoul, among them a doctor. All day people came to look. The monks placed a missal and a corporal under the monstrance as a precaution.

The witnesses said they checked what could be checked. The grille shook when people passed. When two men carrying a large beam struck it, it shook hard, and the monstrance did not move. Later the Archbishop's official examined the grille for glue, bitumen or magnet, and reported none.

Among those who came was Frédéric Vuillard, a Protestant goldsmith from Montbéliard, about twenty-eight. Éberlé says he went in and out of the church more than thirty times, then knelt and prayed. Other Protestants are said to have come and gone away unconvinced. That detail comes from a later Capuchin writer.

On Tuesday priests from nearby parishes said Masses through the morning. The parish priest of Amance came with his people. About 10 o'clock Nicolas Aubry of Menoux was celebrating. At the elevation, witnesses said, the monstrance moved with a small sound, like a blade of silver, turned upright and settled gently on the corporal over the missal. A woman cried out that she had seen it come down. People shouted "Miracle!" and wept, and some fell to the ground in fear that the vaults would collapse.

Popular accounts give more than a thousand people in the church. The two hosts were found whole. The Capuchins and the monks signed a first report that same day.

Archbishop Ferdinand de Rye sent three officials of his court: Pierre Chevroton, procurator general; Jehan Morelot, fiscal advocate; and Bon Monnier, secretary. They recorded the physical evidence. They sealed the monstrance in a new tabernacle with the Archbishop's arms.

Witnesses were heard at the abbey, at Provenchère and at Vesoul until 4 June, when the record was signed. There were 54, among them seven monks, religious of three orders, secular clergy and laymen. Eleven could not write their names.

On 9 June ten theologians of the Archbishop's council studied the testimony. They set out what the witnesses agreed on: the monstrance was unharmed by the fire, it rose and leaned with no support, it stayed still when the grille was shaken, and it came down at the elevation. They concluded together that this was a clear miracle.

On 10 July the Archbishop signed his mandate. It was read in the parish churches of the county in late July, roughly 1,200 of them according to Éberlé. At Faverney the judgment was read at high Mass on Sunday 27 July, the seal was broken, and the hosts were carried through the streets. Accounts were soon printed in Lyon, Paris, Rouen and Cologne. On 13 September the nuncio in Brussels, Guido Bentivoglio, wrote to Pope Paul V about this very great miracle of the Blessed Sacrament.

Dole was the capital of the county and a walled town. Faverney was exposed and poorly defended. From 31 August the leaders of Dole sought one of the hosts. The new abbot, Alphonse Doresmieux, refused embassy after embassy. Only an autograph mandate of Archduke Albert, signed on 12 November, moved the matter. On 7 December the abbot agreed.

On 18 December a treaty was signed at Faverney. The host would always be called one of the miraculous hosts of Our Lady of Faverney, and the abbot would carry it in Dole's annual procession on Pentecost Tuesday. The party set out with about 300 people, by way of Port-sur-Saône, Vesoul, Gy, Pesmes and Rochefort, with crowds along the road. The host entered Dole in rain on 21 December. On 15 May 1614 the Archbishop consecrated the Sainte-Chapelle there to hold it.

The abbey church was sold to the town in 1791 and became the parish church in 1792. It was later renamed a Temple of Reason and of the Supreme Being, and its silver was sent to Paris.

At Dole, according to Éberlé, a mayor named Machard opened the coffer in the town hall on 26 February 1794, in an assembly called by a representative of the Convention, and the host was consumed there in mockery. Other sources give 1793, and all agree that the Dole host was lost.

At Faverney a crowd broke into the church on 25 June 1794. The mayor, Jean-Nicolas Bourgeois, took the monstrance and the sealed box. A councillor proposed burning the host. A lawyer, Claude-François Longchamp, argued that it should be sealed in a box and kept safe, and the mayor agreed. He kept it for a time, and after his wife had stopped him from burning it, he handed the box over to Longchamp.

On 14 June 1795, according to Éberlé's chapter on the Revolution (his later chapter says 4 June), the box was opened before six priests and a crowd. The host was found whole, with a few brown marks. Some 72 witnesses signed the record. That host is the one venerated today.

The records are strong for what witnesses said, and they come early. They were also gathered in a tense time, by the Church's own officers, in a land anxious about the Reformation, and the theologians' conclusion itself speaks of confounding unbelievers and heretics. A sceptic will think of a monstrance leaning towards an iron grille, of smoke, fear and crowds. Éberlé answers that the grille was examined and a later story of a hidden thread was mistaken. The nineteenth-century scholar Émile Littré is quoted by 1000 Raisons de Croire for a general doubt: that no miracle happens where it could be studied at leisure. Those who believe in Faverney reply that here many people watched for thirty-three hours.

The volume edited by Corinne Marchal and Manuel Tramaux (2010), from a colloquium held at Faverney in May 2008, studies the event as history: the inquiry, the pamphlets, the images and the cult. Its reviewer, Willem Frijhoff, notes that hosts preserved from fire are a distinct type among Eucharistic wonders, and that a Habsburg setting and the disputes of the time should be studied further. Historians in that volume do not need to settle the question of the miracle, and neither does the reader.

The times were hard on the losers too. Éberlé records Protestants of the area being imprisoned, banished or leaving. We report this because it happened, and not as a fruit of the Eucharist. Christians of every kind are today called to meet one another with charity.

• Ferdinand de Rye, Archbishop of Besançon, ordered the inquiry and gave the judgment in 1608. On 31 July 1609 he approved the statutes of a Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament at Faverney, and he visited in 1624 and sent a report to Rome.
• Paul V received the nuncio's report in 1608. A bull of 15 July 1610 praised the confraternity and granted it indulgences. A brief of 1613 commissioned Archbishop Guillaume Simonin to reform the abbey, and another of 9 January 1616 approved that reform.
• François-Joseph de Grammont, Archbishop, established in 1714 a feast on 30 October of the Host preserved in the flames.
• Césaire Mathieu, Archbishop, later Cardinal, visited on 25 March 1840 and recognised the relic. He took on oath the testimony of Claude-Pierre Mignot, called Frère Romain, a former lay brother of the abbey and the last witness of the Revolution years, who died in 1846. He took the records to Rome in 1862, returned the host to a new tabernacle, and proclaimed the miracle in 1864.
• Pius IX approved on 18 December 1862 the decree of the Congregation of Rites for the Office. The feast was raised in rank.
• St Pius X sent his blessing to the Eucharistic Congress of 1908 through Cardinal Merry del Val. In 1912 he made the church a minor basilica, according to Éberlé.
• The feast has moved over time. Éberlé says it was moved in 1900 to the Sunday and in 1914 to the Monday in the octave of Corpus Christi. Current sources speak of Whit Monday.

• The abbey reformed. On 31 October 1613 Faverney was joined to the reformed Congregation of Saint-Vannes and Saint-Hydulphe, and on 1 November twelve reformed monks arrived under the prior Mathias Pothier.
• The confraternity. About 200 people enrolled in 1609, including many noble families. Its aim was a deeper Christian life with more frequent Communion and adoration.
• Art. Engravings were made in 1609 at Dijon and Dole, and a monument was commissioned by Dole and placed at Faverney on 11 May 1622. The regional heritage inventory records stained glass of the miracle in the church.
• Pilgrimages. About 3,000 people took part in a pilgrimage and congress on 3 September 1878. The National Eucharistic Congress of 20 to 24 May 1908 marked the third centenary, under Archbishop Fulbert Petit and Cardinal Luçon of Reims. Éberlé reports about 20,000 visitors, in spite of rain that stopped the procession. In 1958, for the 350th year, a congress drew about 20,000 people, with about ten bishops. In 2008 there were new celebrations and the colloquium.
• Our Lady. Devotion to the hosts came, in time, to take the first place at Faverney over the older devotion to Notre-Dame la Blanche, whose statue local women hid and saved in the Revolution.