Martha de Noaillat (1865-1926), Apostle of Christ the King

Martha de Noaillat, née Devuns, is called the apostle of Christ the King because she had to fulfill a very specific mission in the service of the universal kingship of Our Lord.

After seven years of trying to live a cloistered life, she became a missionary in the world and organized, with the approval of Popes Benedict XV and Pius XI, a world referendum that, in six years, would lead to the solemn proclamation of the sovereign rights of Christ and the institution of the feast of Christ the King by the encyclical Quas Primas in December 1925.

I] Martha before the campaign for the establishment of the feast of Christ the King: 1865-1919

A pious childhood

Martha was born on November 29, 1865 in Crotoy (a commune in the Somme) in a family that would have 12 children. Her father, a talented lawyer at the Saint-Etienne bar, was the eldest of a family of two priest brothers and a religious sister. As for her mother, Anne Goyard, she was so pious that Martha would say that through contact with her, "she understood the true meaning of life at a very young age.”

From the age of eight, she demonstrated an ardent piety, already placing sacrifice at the basis of her sanctification. During her first communion, she renewed the previously formulated gift of her whole life to Christ. Very early on, she showed a rare energy and an astonishing tenacity of character always oriented towards noble, great, and supernatural goals.

She was deeply devoted to the conversion of sinners: she took steps with servants and neighbors to encourage them to keep the Sabbath. She devoted herself to the poor of the village. It is said that, around the age of 12, she alone saved a poor woman who was bedridden and whose husband, under the influence of alcohol, threatened to take an axe to her.

Moreover, such firmness of character went hand in hand with a great intelligence. Indeed, a passion for reading emerged very quickly to the point that she read 400 volumes during her seven years of schooling at the private school, Clamecy, where she lived at the time.

A brilliant youth

At 15, she became a boarder with the teaching sisters of the Assumption of Auteuil and did brilliantly in her studies. It was, moreover, by helping her brothers in their homework that she became a distinguished Latinist and prepared for the higher certificate that she obtained in 1884.

She even exceeded the program by doing, without a teacher, her philosophy "in a true intellectual rapture" according to her words, and by undertaking on her own an in-depth study of St. Thomas Aquinas. 

A painful experience of religious life

In 1888, she entered the Assumptionists’ novitiate in Paris. Her uncle, Fr. Paul Devuns, to whom she had confided her decision to become a religious, shuddered inwardly: “Such a constraint [is] so out of keeping with the needs of Martha’s extremely lively nature.” He was right. She fell ill and was transferred to the Jouarre convent, which would have suited her better. But her health deteriorated even more quickly, to the point of forcing her to return to the world.

In 1889, she took the habit with the Assumptionists, but this time in their convent in Poitiers. Then she returned to the novitiate in Paris, but she was so thin that she was sent back to her family for the summer. She was finally taken back but was transferred from convent to convent as her health was so poor: Cannes, Saint-Martin-Vésubie, Bordeaux, Genoa (from 1892 to 1894).

Finally, she fell so seriously ill that the superior of the order definitively ended her religious life after seven years of unsuccessful attempts. Martha was then 31 years old.

An apostle's soul in the world

"Martha is not made to live between four walls," said one of the superiors of the Assumption. "It is in public places that she must preach." After having traveled to Jerusalem, to Rome twice, and to Our Lady of Loretto, she began a missionary apostolate in Nevers that would last five years, driven by a great thirst for holiness.

She also cared for the sick, showing herself to be particularly attentive to the dying. She led an ascetic life, made up of privations, especially concerning food. Later, nuns, secularized by the 1901 law, came to ask her for help, on the advice of Cardinal Richard, to open an institution for young girls in Paris: the Cours Bossuet.

Finally, she took over the direction of studies and gave higher education classes herself, but also classes for the very young. She stayed in the humblest room of the house, gave a catechism class, and visited the poor. In three years, success was complete.

It was then that her life took an unexpected turn: she met Simone and Georges de Noaillat, who was the vice-president of the ACJF (Association of Catholic Youth of Paris). A friendship was born between Martha and the Noaillat siblings.

Geneviève de Bournonville, president of the Patriotic League of French Women, who was campaigning for France to remain Christian, got Martha, by means of Simone Noaillat, to give conferences for her League. The new speaker was struck by the success of her speeches. Martha ended up abandoning the Bossuet course in 1906 to devote herself to lecture tours with great success. She was the worthy heir to her father's talents for eloquence.

Despite her exhausting travels, she maintained a strict rule of interior life: daily prayer and Communion, as well as austere penances. She became the director of the Patriotic League and, in 1911, founded the first women's youth circle aimed at the intellectual and religious training of those women.

The Noaillats and Martha now lived in the same apartment, each traveling to their congresses or conferences. But Simone's marriage in June 1911 led to the separation of the trio. Finally, Georges, aged 37, and Martha, aged 45, agreed to marry a few months after Simone. They entered into a Josephite marriage [1] and had these words of St. John engraved in their rings: "Lucerna ejus est Agnus" ("Her light is the lamb").

The Hiéron Museum of Paray-Le-Monial

In 1876, Baron Alexis de Sarachaga [2] and Fr. Victor Devron, S.J., conceived the idea of ​​a Eucharistic museum and association, both aimed at promoting the social reign of Jesus Christ. This would be the Hiéron Museum of Paray-Le-Monial, built between 1890 and 1893, and the Society of the Social Reign of Jesus Christ founded in 1877. The museum dedicated to "Jesus-Host-King" brings together works of art on the theme of the Eucharist, closely linked to the Sacred Heart.

In 1881, Fr. Jean-Marie Sanna-Solaro, a Jesuit from Turin, passing through the Hiéron, conceived the idea of ​​a feast of Jesus Christ the King while listening to Mr. de Sarachaga. The religious addressed a petition to Leo XIII for the establishment of this feast, but the pontiff did not consider the idea opportune.

In 1908, the baron chose Georges de Noaillat, who had become his friend, as his successor as director of the museum and the Society of the Kingship. In 1919, the Noaillats moved into the basement of the museum and devoted themselves, body and soul, through a series of conferences to the service of the reign of Christ the King.

II] The Referendum for the Feast of Christ the King organized by the Noaillat spouses (1920-1925)

The request of Benedict XV for episcopal approval of the Feast of Christ the King

In December 1919, Martha had the thought of taking up Fr. Sanna-Solaro's idea in favor of establishing a feast of Christ the King. From that point on, she formed the unshakeable conviction that the proclamation by a papal encyclical of the universal kingship of Christ and the institution of a liturgical feast would deal a blow to secularism which, imbued with the principles of the Revolution, loudly proclaimed the rights of man to the detriment of the rights of God.

In 1920, the Noaillats obtained the support of Albert Nègre, Bishop of Tours, who agreed to preface a historical presentation in which Mr. de Noaillat showed the successive developments of the idea of ​​the kingship of Christ. Then, Martha wrote a petition addressed to Pope Benedict XV, asking him to institute a feast of the Social Reign of Jesus Christ.

This petition was communicated to the Pope by Désiré Hyacinthe Berthoin, Bishop of Autun, during the celebrations of the canonization of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. The bishop approved the spirit of this request, but before instituting a feast of Jesus Christ the King, he wanted proof of the universal consent of the Christian peoples speaking through the voice of their bishops. The pontiff would only accept the petition if it was signed by the majority of the episcopate [3].

The requests of Pius XI

In 1921, the Noaillats obtained their first significant support. Fr. Joseph Calot, S.J., director of the Apostolate of Prayer, would become the powerful intermediary of the Society of the Kingship, led by Georges de Noaillat, with the foreign episcopate. The same year, at the National Eucharistic Congress of Paray-Le-Monial, Bishop Nègre presented a doctrinal thesis on the establishment of a feast of Christ the King. The wish for this feast was expressed in public and approved.

In 1922, the Noaillats were received by Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, Secretary of State, who, enthusiastic about their petition, obtained an audience with the new pontiff, Pope Pius XI. The latter asked them to send him a memorandum of their expectations.

Cardinal Antonio Vico, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, asked them to obtain the approval of the bishops for the establishment of a new feast. In Rome, they received the support of Cardinal Camillo Laurenti, Prefect of the S.C. of Religious, and of Fr. Galileo Venturini, S.J., organizer of the Apostolate of Prayer, a friend of Fr. Calot.

Then, the Noaillats sent the memorandum to the Pope, approved by Hyacinthe-Jean Chassagnon, new Bishop of Autun. They learned shortly after that the Pope had read the memorandum favorably and that he was requesting the list of cardinal and episcopal adherences nation by nation.

Fr. Venturini announced to the Pope that about 300 hundred bishops from all over the world had adhered to the project of establishing the feast of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ. But the Holy Father refused to read the episcopal petitions and demanded broad preparation before thinking about the creation of this solemnity.

In 1923, the Noaillats had the joy of announcing to Cardinal Laurenti the support of 13 major religious orders. They were received the same year by Pius XI, who told them that the request for the feast of Christ the King was in accordance with the program he had outlined in his first encyclical Ubi Arcano Dei, of December 1922. He accepted the episcopal petitions that he had refused three months earlier.

In 1924, almost 1,000 bishops supported the project, but the Pope, according to Cardinal Laurenti, wanted wider support by arousing a universal movement through the press, periodicals, and newspapers. He wanted "a worthy, grandiose, worldwide achievement, which would be epoch-making, which would shake minds." 

The popular petition

Martha then wrote a circular letter as a popular petition which, for two years, would bring a considerable number of signatures to the feet of Pius XI. She wrote to the presidents of all the associations known to her, in France and abroad. She asked the directors of the Apostolate of Prayer and eight other associations to launch this petition.

The director of the Sunday La Croix agreed to make it known to his readers who, for months, would send individual letters of support to the Hiéron. Then began the vast petition campaigns that spread from France to Italy, Poland, Hungary, Canada, Central America, South America, Africa, and even Beijing.

The dioceses of Tours and Autun, under the impetus of their bishops, set to work. In Paray-Le-Monial, during the entire pilgrimage season, the most fruitful campaign for Christ the King, the campaign by word of mouth, was carried out at the Hiéron museum. The bishop of Toulon made the work of his Eucharistic Congress revolve around the “Universal Sovereignty of Christ.”

In parallel with the popular petition, the directors of the Hiéron did not abandon the episcopal referendum, which reached a figure higher than that obtained for the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception or that of papal infallibility. The cause of Christ the King was successfully presented at La Semaine Sociale in Turin and the episcopate of Piedmont wrote a request to the Pope.

The National Eucharistic Congresses of Paray-Le-Monial in 1921, of Paris in 1923, of Rennes in 1925, the International Congresses of Catholic Youth in Innsbruck in 1923, of the International Catholic League in Lugano in 1924, in Oxford in 1925, and several congresses in Canada, sent the Sovereign Pontiff very fervent wishes concerning the feast.

The Noaillat couple were received in Rome by at least 17 cardinals and they presented the episcopal support and the lay supplications to the Pope. The latter recommended that they not bring into their efforts the argument of authority: "The Pope is in favor of the project." For him, if Rome influenced the support of the episcopate, it no longer has the same probative value.

Four weeks later, Cardinal Laurenti announced to them in a letter that the Pope wished to proclaim the feast of Christ the King at the closing of the Holy Year, in December 1925. Furthermore, the promulgation of the encyclical was scheduled for the same date. A Benedictine specialized in Gregorian chant worked to prepare music for the Mass and the Divine Office.

Finally, 764 cardinals, patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops, 102 superior abbots of communities, 149 women's communities, and 12 universities supported the petition.

III] Martha’s tragic death in 1926

In December 1925, Martha hurried to print the first issue of the new bulletin Au Christ-Roi, echoes of His social reign, aimed at popularizing the teachings of the next encyclical, Quas Primas, and the feast of Christ the King. The couple received a copy of the papal text from Cardinal Laurenti, the day after the proclamation of the encyclical, dated December 11.

They visited the members of the Sacred College who had deigned to receive them each year. The welcome from Cardinals Gasparri, Vico, and Merry del Val left them with an unforgettable memory. On December 29, they knelt at the feet of the Pope, who listened to them with kindness. They would not see Pius XI again until, in the Vatican Basilica, he was celebrating the first Mass of Christ the King, on December 31, 1925.

This is how the two spouses described this papal ceremony in the February 1926 edition of the magazine Au Christ-Roi, echoes of His social Reign: “Beginning at 6 o’clock in the morning, the crowds poured towards St. Peter’s as for the most grandiose ceremonies.… The papal procession passed through around 10 o’clock, like a radiant vision, dominated by his holiness Pius XI, carried on the sedia gestatoria, amidst cheers.”

“At the Gloria, a celestial coup de théâtre. At the moment when Pius XI intoned the gloria hymn that the Dom Ferretti singers would extend into triumphant waves, the sky, dull until then, began to throw dazzling rays of sunlight through the large windows of St. Peter’s.… [Just before the Consecration], the Pope left his throne, slowly crossed the Presbyterium and went back up to the altar.”

“One by one, he stripped all the splendid ornaments of His Majesty, and bareheaded, he goes to sacrifice the divine Victim.… This is the culmination of this great day: Pius XI raises Jesus-Host-King over the world! Jesus all the more King of all nations because He is their voluntary and total Host, ablaze with love. Yes, King of all nations.”

“But our French hearts were breaking: Lord, if our homeland was insane to proclaim, on a day of madness, the Rights of Man, remember that it is from a French monument bearing on its frontispiece Jesus-Host-King, [the Hieron], that the seeds which sprouted in the four corners of the world requested the celebration of your Rights as God made Man!”

“[At the end of the Mass], there burst forth with fanfare the ancient acclamations resurrected by Dom Ferretti and which, summing up 20 centuries of Christianity, establish our hopes above all the tempests: Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat! . . . It was half past one in the afternoon. We had been there since 7 in the morning.”

“Time had flown by like lightning. The sacred trisagion was still resounding when, having climbed back onto his sedia, the Pope left us amidst endless cheers. Our hearts will never leave him again. Pius XI has just immortalized his name. For centuries to come, he will be the Pope of Christ the King!”

That evening, at midnight, Martha wrote these words to her husband: "Do you think that perhaps 1926 will open eternity to me..." On Friday, February 5, the first Friday of the month, in Paray-Le-Monial, a priest who was a friend of the family, was surprised not to see Martha and her secretary, Miss Jeanne Lépine, at the midday meal they usually had at the Hôtel du Sacré-Cœur. He went to the museum, rue de la Paix, to get news of them.

He took the stairs leading to the lodge and, to his shock, he saw himself in front of two inert bodies lying on the floor, those of Jeanne and Martha. A quick investigation established that the unfortunate women must have been asphyxiated by the toxic carbon monoxide fumes emanating from the stove in the next room. Martha’s husband would not arrive in Paray until the next day.

Fr. Quénard, Superior General of the Assumptionists, wrote: “Her death is like the ransom of an immense grace for the Church.” Later, in June 1930, Georges de Noaillat was ordained a priest and devoted himself to his apostolate at the Hiéron Museum. He died in 1948. 

Notes

1 Refers to a marriage based on abstinence from the conjugal act, as between the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph.

2 The personality of Baron de Sarachaga is ambivalent, and the role he played in the institution of the feast of Christ the King cannot serve as a guarantee for an unorthodox tendency, with a Gnostic flavor, detectable in his writings and his acquaintances. The first review of the Hiéron, Regnabit, was far from being recommendable in all respects. The Noaillat couple, as well as the review Au Christ-Roi that they founded, were free from these errors.

3 Perhaps it is appropriate to specify that the request of Benedict XV and Pius XI to consult the universal Church has nothing to do with synodality, the latest of the spoiled fruits of Vatican II. The consultation of the bishops is explained by the fact that, as members of the teaching Church, they have a share in the universal ordinary magisterium defined in Vatican I. They are the authorized witnesses of what has been believed "always, by all, and everywhere" that the pope is responsible for proclaiming.

The consultation of the Christian people is explained first by the fact that the belief of the faithful is a good reflection of the teaching of the bishops. But it also served to arouse an expectation so that the encyclical and the feast of Christ the King would not be a one-off event. Pius XI wanted "a worthy, grandiose, worldwide achievement, which would be epoch-making, which would shake minds." It was a way of preparing minds so that the pontifical act would bear more fruit.