COUTURIER
456
COUTURIER
Diocese of Avhanches. — Nepos, the first bishop
known to history, assisted at the Council of Orleans
in 511. Among its bishops Avranches included:
St. Pair, or Paternus (d. 565), a great founder of
monasteries, notably that of Sessiacuni, near Gran-
ville, which took the name of Saint-Pair; St. Leodo-
valdus (second half of sixth century) ; St. Ragert-
rannus. Abbot of Jumieges (about 682) : St. Aubert,
who in 708 founded the Abbey of Mont Saint-Michel;
Robert Ceneau (1533-1560), author of numerous
works against the Cah-inists; and Pierre- Daniel Huet
(1689-1699), a celebrated savant who assisted
Bossuet in educating the son of Louis XIV and
directed the publication of tlie Delphin edition of the
classics. Between 875 and 990, in the troubled
period caused by the victories of the Bretons and the
incursions of the Normans, the archbishops of Rouen
were titulars of the See of Avranches. In the
Middle Ages the bishops of A\Tanches were at the
same time barons of Avranches, barons of Saint-
Philbert-sur-Rilles, and proprietors of numerous
domains in England and Jersey. The school of
Avranches, in which Lanfranc taught and Anselm
studied, was famous in the eleventh century. The
cathedral where, in September, 1171, Henry II of
England swore Ijefore the legates of Alexander III
that he was entirely innocent of the murder of St.
Thomas Becket was a beautiful monument of the
eleventh and twelfth centuries. It collapsed during
the Revolution. (See Mont Saint-Michel.)
The Diocese of Coutances and Avranches honours in a special way St. Pientia (Pience), put to death in the third century for having facilitated the burial of St. Nicasius, the apostle of Vexin, and conspicuously honoured in the liturgy of Avranches; St. Floxel, born in the district of Cotentin, and martyred at the beginning of the fourth century; St. Scubiho, com- panion of the bishop St. Pair, and founder of the monastery of Mandane on Mont Tombe (subse- quently Mont Saint-Michel); Sts. S6nier, Gaud, and Fragaise, monks of Sessiacum; St. Germanus of Scot- land, who, in the fifth centuiy, evangehzed the Saxon colonies of the district of Bessin; St. Severus, the shepherd (sixth century), who was perhaps Bishop of Avranches; the monk St. Marcouf (sixth century), founder of an abbey called after him, and whose name is borne by an island to which he retired each Lent for extraordinary mortification; St. Helier, disciple of St. Marcouf, beheaded in a grotto at Jersey; St. Ortaire, Abbot of Landelles (end of sixth century); St. Paternus of Coutances, monk at Sessiac- um, then at Sens, and finally assassinated (eighth cen- tury); St. Leo of Carentan, bom about 810, a proteg^ of Louis the Debonair and martyred at Bayonne; the English hermit St. Clair (ninth century); St. Guillaume Firmat (eleventh centuiy), hermit, pil- grim to the Orient, and patron of the collegiate church of Mortain; Blessed Thomas Helie of Biville, chaplain to St. Louis (thirteenth century); JuUe Postel, known in reHgion as Soeur Marie-Madeleine (1756-1846), a native of Barfleur, declared Venerable in 1S97.
Many men worthy of mention in ecclesiastical history were natives of this diocese: Alexandre de Villedieu (thirteenth century), canon of Avranches and author of a Latin grammar universally studied during the Middle Ages; the learned but visionary Guillaume Postel (d. 1.581), professor of mathematics and Oriental languages in the College de France; the Franciscan friar Feuardent (1539-1()10), promi- nent in the Wars of the League; Cardinal du Perron (1556-1618), who converted Henry IV; the Calvin- istic publicist Benjamin Basnage (1.580-1652); the
Chysician Hamon (1618-1687), well known in the istory of Jan.seni.sm; Jean de Launoy (1603-1678), celebrated for his critical work in ecclesiastical his- tory; Marie des VallA's, the demoniac (tl. 16.56), who made a great sensation in her day and whose sayings
were gathered into four volumes by the Venerable
Pere Eudes, who had exorcised her; the Abbd de
Beauvais (1731-1790) and the Jesuit Neuville (169.3-
1774), both great preachers; the Abbe de Saint-
Pierre (16.58-1743), author of the " Paix perpetuelle",
and the Eudist Le Franc, superior of the Coutances
seminary in the eighteenth century and the first
Catholic publicist to write against Freemasonry.
Before the enforcement of the law of 1901 there were in the diocese Oratorians, Sulpicians, Eudists, and a local congregation of Brothers of Mercy of the Christian Schools, founded in 1842 (mother- house at Montebourg), and there are Trappists still at Bricquebec. The diocese incliiiles several congre- gations of women; the Tertiary Sisters of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, founded in 1686; the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, founded in the seventeenth century by Pere du Pont, a Eudist, and in 1783 placed under the patron- age of the Sacred Heart, being the oldest French con- gregation known by that title; the Sisters of Mercy of the Christian Schools, founded in 1802 at Saint- Sau veur-le-Vi- c o m t e by the Venerable Soeur Postel. Diocesan missionaries aif installed at Bivillr, near the tomb of Blessed Thomas Helie, a much frequented place of pilgrimage.
In 1900 the diocese included in religious in- stitutions, 28 infant schools, 1 orphanage for boys and girls, 3 boys' orphanages, 24 girls' orphanages, 6 industrial schools, 35 hospitals, hospices, and asylums, 30 houses of nursing sisters, and 3 insane asylums. The statistics for the end of 1905 (close of the Concordat period) indicate a population of 491,372, with 61 pastorates, 612 succursal parishes (mission churches), and 284 curacies, then remu- nerated by the State.
Gallia Christiana (ed. nova, 1759), XI, 466-509, 562-3, 863-9U, 983, and Inslrummla, 105-24, 217-82. L'Histoire rhronologique des Hvques d' Avranches de maUre Julien Nicole (1669) and UHistoire ecclisiastiqtte du diocise de Coufances, also written in the seventeenth century by Rene TorsTAl.v he Billy (1643-1709), euri? of Mesnil-Opac, are works of sufficient historic value to have been repubUshed in our day, the first by Beaurepaire, the second by H^ron (Rouen, 1884-6). Lec.vnu, Histoire du diocese de Coutances et Avranches (Coutances, 1877); Pigeon, Le diocl-se d'Avranches (Coutances, 1890); Idem, Vies des saints du diocese de Coutances et Avranches (.-Vvranches, 1S92, 1898); Le Cachecx. Essai historique sur l'H6tel-Dieu de Coutances (Paris, 1895); Duchesne, Pastes (piscopaux, II, 221-4, 236-40; Chevauer, Topo-bibt., 816-818, 286-7.
Georges Gotau.
Couturier, Louis-Charles, Abbot of the Benedic- tine monastery of Saint-Pierre at Solesmes and Presi- dent of the Frencli Congngaticm of Benedictines; b. 12 May, 1817, at ChcmilU'-sur-Dome in the Diocese of Tours; d. 29 October, 1890, at Solesmes. _ He was educated at the petit simtnaire of Combrfe in Anjou and at the gram! ttanimiirc of Angers, and was or- dained priest 12 March, 1812. .Vfter teaching history at Comliri!' from 18.36 to 18,54, he entered, in tlu' latter year, the Benedictine monasterv of Saint-1 at Solesmes, then newly restored by t)om GuOranger,
i
