Patrick Comerford
The 40-day season of celebrations of Christmas and Epiphany came to an end with the Feast of the Presentation or Candlemas on Friday (2 February), and we are now in Ordinary Time, that short time before Lent begins next week.
Charlotte and I are planning to visit Paris later this week. So, in these 11 days in Ordinary Time, my reflections each morning are drawing on the lives of 11 French saints and spiritual writers.
As this series of reflections began, I admitted that I have never been very comfortable with many aspects of French spirituality, and that I need to broaden my reading in French spirituality. So, I have turned to 11 figures or writers you might not otherwise expect. They include men and women, Jews and Christians, immigrants and emigrants, monks and philosophers, Catholics and Protestants, and even a few Anglicans.
I am taking some quiet time early this morning for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, A reflection on a French saint or writer in spirituality;
2, today’s Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.
French saints and writers: 3, Eugénie Mouchon-Niboyet (1796-1883):
Eugénie Mouchon-Niboyet (1796-1883), the granddaughter of two Reformed pastors, was a French author, journalist, early feminist and a Christian activist who is best known as the founder of La Voix des Femmes (The Women’s Voice), the first feminist daily newspaper in France.
Eugénie Niboyet was born Eugenie Mouchon in Montpellier on 10 September 1796. In The Real Book of Women (Le vrai livre des femmes): ‘I come from a literate family with origins from Geneva, Switzerland.’ Her paternal grandfather, the Revd Pierre Mouchon (1733-1797), was a Swiss pastor in Geneva and Basel, and compiled the index to the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot and Jean-Baptiste le Rond d’Alembert, the monument of the Enlightenment. Her maternal grandfather was a pastor from Gar.
During the French Revolution, her father fled the Cevennes where he sought refuge to avoid execution. She was raised in a family that was loyal to Napoleon, and during the Bourbon Restoration the family lived in Lyon. Eugenie was marked for life by the arrest of some family members and by her visits to prison.
At 26, Eugénie married Paul-Louis Niboyet, a 30-year-old lawyer, in a Protestant wedding in 1822. The couple lived in Mâcon in Burgundy, where their only child, a son Jean Alexandre Paulin Niboyet, was born in 1825.
Eugénie moved to Paris in 1829, and began to make a living as a writer. In a prize-winning essay for la Société de la morale chrétienne (the Society of Christian Morality), she focused on the theme of the blind and their education. She joined the Society of Christian Morality and become involved in many social issues, including prison reform, education reform and the abolition of slavery in French colonies.
The Society of Christian Morality shared its conference rooms with the Saint-Simonians. Eugénie attended the sermons of the Saint-Simonians and, inspired by their ideas, followed their movement with her husband and son.
The Saint-Simonians were radical and fringe Christians and utopian socialists. She became one of the four women who became responsible in 1830 for preaching to the workers but bringing them aid and education. The radical religious movement eventually split and Eugénie distanced herself from the Saint-Simonians without disowning their economic and political ideas.
She was part of the group of women who took part in the first periodical written entirely by women, La Femme libre (The free woman), created by Marie-Reine Guindorf and Desiree Veret.
Back in Lyon in 1833, Eugénie founded the first feminist periodical outside Paris region with the publication of The Women’s Adviser (Le Conseiller des femmes), followed by The Lyonese Mosaic (La Mosaïque Lyonnaise), and in 1834 she took part in the creation of The Athenaeum of Women (L’Athénée des femmes).
Back in Paris, Eugénie founded The Gazette of Women (La Gazette des femmes) in 1836. She was the editor in chief of The Peace of the Two Worlds (La Paix des deux mondes) in 1844.
The revolution of 1848 gave new hope to feminism. In March 1848, Eugénie founded and ran The Voice of Women (La Voix des femmes). It was described as ‘a socialist and political newspaper representing all women’s interests,’ and was supported by a political club that included many feminists involved with small publications.
The Voice of Women took a radical initiative on 6 April when it nominated the writer George Sand (1804-1876) as a candidate to the French Constituent Assembly. Sand disavowed the initiative and claimed she did not know the women involved. Satirical cartoonists lampooned Eugénie and the journalists of The Voice of Women.
Discouraged and hurt by the fallout, Eugénie ceased publishing The Voice of Women on 20 June, and her group of feminist activists dispersed. She retired from public life and went into exile in Geneva, where she lived with difficulty translating Charles Dickens and children’s books by Lydia Maria Child and Maria Edgeworth.
Eugénie Niboyet returned to France in 1860, and published The True Book of Women (Le Vrai livre des femmes) in 1863. She took up the pen again after the Paris Commune in 1871 to call for pardons for the convicted Communards. By contrast, the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur was built on the summit of the butte of Montmartre to ‘expiate the crimes of the Commune.’ It looks down on the site where 30,000 Communards were slaughtered.
At the age of 82, Eugénie Niboyet was honoured at the feminist congress in Paris in 1878. She died in Paris on 6 January 1883.
Mark 6: 53-56 (NRSVA):
53 When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. 54 When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, 55 and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. 56 And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the market-places, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.
Today’s Prayers (Monday 5 February 2024):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Gender Justice in Christ.’ This theme was introduced yesterday by Ellen McMibanga, Zambia Anglican Council Outreach Programme.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (5 February 2024) invites us to pray in these words:
We pray for the Anglican Church in Zambia – for all the projects and programmes they are running to give justice and a voice to the oppressed and to care for their communities.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
you have created the heavens and the earth
and made us in your own image:
teach us to discern your hand in all your works
and your likeness in all your children;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who with you and the Holy Spirit reigns supreme over all things,
now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
God our creator,
by your gift
the tree of life was set at the heart of the earthly paradise,
and the bread of life at the heart of your Church:
may we who have been nourished at your table on earth
be transformed by the glory of the Saviour’s cross
and enjoy the delights of eternity;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Almighty God,
give us reverence for all creation
and respect for every person,
that we may mirror your likeness
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection (Francis Le Jau, 1665-1715)
Continued Tomorrow (Albert Schweitzer, 1875-1965)
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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