René-Pierre Nepveu de la Manouillère

René-Pierre Nepveu de la Manouillère (13 August 1732 – 31 May 1810) was a French Roman Catholic priest, canon of the Saint-Julien chapter at the Le Mans Cathedral, mainly known today as a diarist.

Biography

René-Pierre Nepveu de la Manouillère was born in Le Mans into an old noble family of Anjou origin. He was the son of Jacques Nepveu (1687–1748), provincial provost of Maine and Louise-Françoise Le Maçon de la Cornillière et de la Manoullière (1706–1780).

After studying at the seminary of Angers, he became a canon of the Le Mans Cathedral in 1759. For almost fifty years (1759–1807), he kept a journal which he entitled Remarks on everything that has happened since I became a Canon of St Julien, either in the church or in my family, and in the city (sic) and which constitutes a testimony on the life of the chapter at the cathedral of Le Mans and the life in Maine in the second half of the 18th century.

He lived in Le Mans in a house in the rue du Porc-épic (today's rue Victor Bonhommet) near the place des Halles (today's place de la République) from 1763 to 1794, then from 1798, in the rue des quatre roues (today's rue du Docteur-Leroy). He also spent time in his country estate of La Manouillère located in Pruillé-le-Chétif, about ten kilometers from the center of Le Mans.

Its bishops were successively Charles Louis de Froulay, Louis-André de Grimaldi and François-Gaspard de Jouffroy de Gonsans.

In April-May 1789, while traveling in Paris, he heard about the Réveillon affair and attended the opening of the Estates General in Versailles as a spectator.

In 1790, he refused to take the oath to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and did not recognize the authority of the constitutional bishop Prudhomme de la Boussinière. He thus became a member of the refractory clergy.

In his newspaper he criticized the actions of members of the revolutionary clubs of Le Mans like René Levasseur and Pierre Philippeaux.

Sometimes forced to hide, he was imprisoned at the end of September 1793 in the chapel of the Visitation, which had been transformed into a prison; at the beginning of December 1793, while the Battle of Le Mans was raging, he was transferred to Chartres, where he was freed by the representative Jacques Garnier at the end of April 1794.

He regained his dignity of canon under the Concordat while the bishop of Le Mans was Bishop Johann Michael Josef von Pidoll.

Having become hemiplegic in January 1804, he continued writing his manuscript with difficulty until April 1807.

He died in May 1810 in his native city. Abbé Nepveu de la Manouillère is known today and has reached a certain posterity thanks to the publication of his journal in 1877 and 1878.

Father Nepveu's diary

Like that of Sieur de Gouberville in the sixteenth century, the diary of the Abbé de la Manouillière belongs to the domain of private writings.

The manuscript diary was kept chronologically from 1759 to 1807, it presents the events of the life of the chapter at the cathedral of Le Mans (Saint-Julien chapter), the ecclesiastical life but also the life of the elites of Le Mans and of the province of Maine (births, marriages, deaths, social events, public executions); it also presents his point of view during the events of the French Revolution. The manuscript is all the more precious since the archives of the Saint-Julien chapter have almost completely disappeared for this period.

The last known owner of the original manuscript was Catherine-Mathilde de Savonnières (1805–1876), great-niece of Abbé Nepveu de la Manouillère.

The original manuscript was entirely and very faithfully copied by hand (because the original was, it seems, difficult to read) by Abbé Gustave Esnault, secretary of the Historical and Archaeological Society of Maine in 1866–1867 before its publication in three volumes (Vol. 1, 1877; Vol. 2, 1878 and Table of names of persons and places, 1879)

Only Esnault's handwritten copy survives in the archives of the Bishopric of Le Mans.

Esnault's printed version waters down and expurgates Nepveu de la Manouillère's original text, deleting the few allusions that are made to shocking subjects, occasional banter or concerning non-noble persons.

Esnault "rewrites" the journal in academic French, whereas Nepveu de la Manouillère's manuscript is written in eighteenth-century French and uses turns of phrase peculiar to the Maine language. In 2013, the diary was the subject of a scientific re-edition based on Abbé Esnault's manuscript by three historians from the Centre de recherches historiques de l'Ouest (CERHIO), UMR 6258 of Le Mans University, which restored the original language of the diary. The authors of this re-edition insist on the fact that with his diary, Abbé Nepveu de la Manouillère created a "database" before the letter.

Works

• Mémoires de René-Pierre Nepveu de la Manouillère (1877–1879; edited by Gustave Esnault)
• Journal d'un chanoine du Mans, Nepveu de La Manouillère (1759-1807) (2013; edited by Sylvie Granger, Benoît Hubert and Martine Taroni)

References

• Charles, Olivier (2014). "Le Journal d'un Chanoine du Mans. Nepveu de La Manouillère (1759-1807)," Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l'Ouest, No. 121, pp. 178-180.
• Granger, Sylvie; Serge Bertin (2015). "Le Diariste Obstiné Devenu Immortel." In: Hommes en Sarthe, Acteurs de Leur Temps. Le Mans: Editions Libra Diffusio.

External links

• Works by René-Pierre Nepveu de la Manouillère at Gallica