Blessed Marie-Anne Vaillot, Daughter of Charity and Martyr of Angers

Who was Blessed Marie-Anne Vaillot?

Blessed Marie-Anne Vaillot was a Daughter of Charity, one of the gray-habited sisters of St. Vincent de Paul and St. Louise de Marillac, who served the sick poor at the Hôpital Saint-Jean in Angers. During the Terror of the French Revolution she refused to swear an oath that she believed betrayed her faith. On February 1, 1794, she was shot at Avrillé, outside Angers, together with a younger sister of her community, Blessed Odile Baumgarten.

Pope John Paul II beatified the two sisters on February 19, 1984, among the 99 Martyrs of Angers. We keep her feast on February 1.

The life of Marie-Anne Vaillot

A sister of the Angers hospital

Marie-Anne was born at Fontainebleau, south of Paris, on May 13, 1734, according to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints (one Vincentian source gives 1736). She entered the Daughters of Charity on September 25, 1761, and spent her religious life serving the sick.

The Hôpital Saint-Jean in Angers was an old foundation. Its long Gothic sick ward had stood since the Middle Ages, and the Daughters of Charity had cared for the patients there since 1639. By the time of the Revolution, Sister Marie-Anne had been in the community for over thirty years. The Daughters of Charity remember her as the sister who "competently and accurately held responsibility for finances."

The oath of liberty and equality

From 1791 the sisters watched the persecution grow. Their bishop and many priests refused the oath required of the clergy, and they were driven out and imprisoned. In 1793 members of the city council came to the hospital and demanded that the sisters swear the oath of "liberty and equality." The council spoke at length about how much the sick needed them, and each sister was given time to think.

The community tried to act as one. The revolutionaries soon saw that three sisters were leading the refusal: Sister Antoinette Taillade, the sister servant (superior); Sister Marie-Anne, the treasurer; and Sister Odile Baumgarten, a Lorrainer of forty-three who prepared medicines in the hospital pharmacy. On Sunday, January 19, 1794, all three were arrested. Sister Antoinette was taken to one prison; Marie-Anne and Odile were locked in the former Benedictine monastery of the Calvary, crowded with women prisoners and their children, where they spent their days consoling the mothers.

The martyrdom of Blessed Marie-Anne Vaillot

On January 28 the two sisters stood before a military commission. To the judges' threats Sister Marie-Anne said simply, "You can do with me whatever you want." She was condemned as a fanatic and rebel. Sister Odile, after hearing the record of her sister's interrogation, added, "My conscience does not allow me to take the oath," and received the same sentence.

On the morning of February 1, a long column of about two hundred women, tied two by two to a central rope, set out on foot for the field at Avrillé. On the way, Sister Odile stumbled while reaching for the rosary she had hidden in her dress, and a guard kicked her. Sister Marie-Anne held her up. Pope John Paul II, in his homily for the beatification, quoted what she told her companion, from the testimony of a priest of Angers, Abbé Gruget (our translation from the French):

We are going to have the happiness of seeing God, and of possessing him for all eternity... and we will be possessed by him without fear of being separated.

The Dicastery's account adds another line of hers on the road: "A crown is destined for us today. Let us not lose it!"

When the condemned women saw that the hospital sisters were among them, they cried out for mercy for the Sisters of Charity. The officer in command came over and offered to save the two nuns by declaring that they had taken the oath. Sister Marie-Anne answered:

Citizen, not only do we not want to take this oath, but we do not want to pass for having done so.

According to the Dicastery, she was among the last to fall that day. Wounded in the arm, she stayed on her feet, holding up the dying Sister Odile, and prayed, "Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do," until she fell into the common grave. She was fifty-nine.

• Approved: her martyrdom, recognized for the beatification of 1984. As martyrs, she and her companions were beatified without a miracle.

The seventeen sisters of the hospital who still refused the oath were arrested that March and marched to Lorient for deportation to Guiana. The commander there, who saw them nurse sick sailors, would not let them be put on the ship, and around 1804 they returned to the hospital in Angers.

The Champ des Martyrs

The field at Avrillé was the site of nine mass shootings between January and April 1794. The Dicastery puts the number shot there at about two thousand. Of these, the Church beatified 99 named martyrs of Angers in 1984, among them some eighty women, whom John Paul II noted could not be accused of armed rebellion. A chapel was built over the graves in 1852, and in 1895 it was given a set of stained-glass windows telling the martyrs' story.

Symbols of Blessed Marie-Anne Vaillot in art

Sister Marie-Anne is almost always shown with Sister Odile. Look for:

• The habit of the Daughters of Charity, gray-blue wool with the great white winged cornette, the headdress of the community until 1964;
• The rosary, for the beads Odile carried hidden on the road;
• The crown, for her words "a crown is destined for us today";
• Revolutionary soldiers around them, as in the Avrillé window.

Feast day and prayer

We keep the feast of Blessed Marie-Anne Vaillot and Odile Baumgarten on February 1, the day of their martyrdom. The Daughters of Charity and the Vincentian family celebrate it worldwide. See the feast day calendar.

We know of no traditional prayer to her that we can quote. Let us ask Blessed Marie-Anne to pray for nurses and all who care for the sick, for those pressed to deny their conscience, and for the courage to stay faithful to the end. Blessed Marie-Anne Vaillot and Odile Baumgarten, pray for us.