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Jean-Martin Moye
Jean-Martin Moye (written later in his life as Moÿe) was a French Catholic priest who served as a missionary in China and was the founder of the Sisters of the Congregation of Divine Providence. He also organized the first expression of consecrated life among the women of China. He was beatified by the Catholic Church in 1954.
Moye was born on 27 January 1730 in the village of Cutting, then located within the Bailiwick of Dieuze, within the autonomous Duchy of Lorriane, a part of the Holy Roman Empire, now in the French Department of Moselle. He was the sixth of the thirteen children of Jean Moye and Anne Catharine Demange, part of a long-established and prosperous farming family of the region. The fervent Catholic faith of the family can be seen in the fact that, apart from Jean-Martin, a younger brother also became a priest, as well as five of his first cousins, and later two of his nephews.
Moye had an uneventful childhood, growing up on his family's extensive holdings. He received his basic education from his older brother, Jean-Jacques, a seminarian, who taught him until his untimely death in 1744 at the age of 24. Moye completed his education at the College of Pont-à-Mousson, following which he studied philosophy at the Jesuit College of Strasbourg. In the fall of 1751 he then entered the local diocesan Seminary of Saint-Simon in Metz, the same one at which his brother had studied. There one of his professors included Canon François Thiébaut, a noted Biblical scholar of the era, who would later serve as the representative of the local clergy to the Estates General.
Moye was ordained a priest on 9 March 1754 by Louis-Joseph de Montmorency-Laval, the Bishop of Metz. Upon his ordination, he was granted a benefice by King Stanislas Leszczynski, the last Duke of Lorraine, of the income generated from the Chapel of St. Andrew in the cemetery of Dieuze. This income allowed him to accept the poorly paid office of Vicar for three different parishes in Metz, one of which, the Parish of the Holy Cross (French: Sainte-Croix), had Canon Thiébaut as pastor. He then undertook a number of different ministries as part of his service, among them acting as confessor for the seminarians of Saint-Simon.
The parish extended well beyond the city limits, and Moye undertook the spiritual care of the members of the parish living in the small and isolated hamlets in the countryside. Through this service he became aware of the need of education for the girls of the region, who lacked any access to schools. He conceived of a project to remedy this situation by placing volunteer teachers in these rural locations. The first volunteer was a working class woman, Marguerite Lecomte, whom he stationed in the hamlet of Saint-Hubert on 14 January 1762. She would remain in this post without disturbance throughout the upheavals of the French Revolution. Volunteers were quickly sent out to various other locations, going out as far as Freiburg im Breisgau, then in the Habsburg dominion.
Out of the desire to provide the faithful of the parish with means to deepen their spiritual lives, Moye began to publish some tracts, in collaboration with a younger colleague, the Abbé Louis Jobal de Pagny (1737–1766). The first, in 1762, was a pamphlet entitled Du soin extrème qu'on doit avoir du Baptême des enfants. It treated the baptism of newborn infants, especially stillborn babies. It was a development of Abrégé de l’Embryologie sacrée, a work by a Sicilian moral theologian, Francesco Cangiamiglia, which had just been published in Paris, having originally been published in Sicily in 1745 with ecclesiastical approval.
In 1764 they re-published an older work by the 17th-century spiritual writer, Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle, Élévation à Dieu sur le mystère de l’Incarnation (Being raised to God through the mystery of the Incarnation) with their commentaries on the text. Later, after the unexpected death of Jobal, Moye published a small pamphlet entitled Recueil de diverses pratiques de piété (A Collection of various pious Practices).
Moye's work with rural education and his writings provoked criticism from certain elements of the city. He was accused with recklessness for his sending young women to live in the isolated hamlets of the countryside. He was further accused of rigorism in his dealing with penitents, as well as making unfair criticisms of both the clergy and of midwives in his writings on Baptism. They prevailed on Bishop de Montmorency-Laval to take action against the two authors. As a result, in May 1762, the bishop ordered Moye to suspend the sending out of volunteers – though those already in the countryside were left in their situations. He further transferred him from Metz to serve as vicar of Dieuze. As this was his native region, Moye did not consider it a punishment, but worried about the future of his volunteers, who were coming to be called the "poor Sisters". His coworkers in the project assured him that the setback was only temporary.
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Jean-Martin Moye
Jean-Martin Moye (written later in his life as Moÿe) was a French Catholic priest who served as a missionary in China and was the founder of the Sisters of the Congregation of Divine Providence. He also organized the first expression of consecrated life among the women of China. He was beatified by the Catholic Church in 1954.
Moye was born on 27 January 1730 in the village of Cutting, then located within the Bailiwick of Dieuze, within the autonomous Duchy of Lorriane, a part of the Holy Roman Empire, now in the French Department of Moselle. He was the sixth of the thirteen children of Jean Moye and Anne Catharine Demange, part of a long-established and prosperous farming family of the region. The fervent Catholic faith of the family can be seen in the fact that, apart from Jean-Martin, a younger brother also became a priest, as well as five of his first cousins, and later two of his nephews.
Moye had an uneventful childhood, growing up on his family's extensive holdings. He received his basic education from his older brother, Jean-Jacques, a seminarian, who taught him until his untimely death in 1744 at the age of 24. Moye completed his education at the College of Pont-à-Mousson, following which he studied philosophy at the Jesuit College of Strasbourg. In the fall of 1751 he then entered the local diocesan Seminary of Saint-Simon in Metz, the same one at which his brother had studied. There one of his professors included Canon François Thiébaut, a noted Biblical scholar of the era, who would later serve as the representative of the local clergy to the Estates General.
Moye was ordained a priest on 9 March 1754 by Louis-Joseph de Montmorency-Laval, the Bishop of Metz. Upon his ordination, he was granted a benefice by King Stanislas Leszczynski, the last Duke of Lorraine, of the income generated from the Chapel of St. Andrew in the cemetery of Dieuze. This income allowed him to accept the poorly paid office of Vicar for three different parishes in Metz, one of which, the Parish of the Holy Cross (French: Sainte-Croix), had Canon Thiébaut as pastor. He then undertook a number of different ministries as part of his service, among them acting as confessor for the seminarians of Saint-Simon.
The parish extended well beyond the city limits, and Moye undertook the spiritual care of the members of the parish living in the small and isolated hamlets in the countryside. Through this service he became aware of the need of education for the girls of the region, who lacked any access to schools. He conceived of a project to remedy this situation by placing volunteer teachers in these rural locations. The first volunteer was a working class woman, Marguerite Lecomte, whom he stationed in the hamlet of Saint-Hubert on 14 January 1762. She would remain in this post without disturbance throughout the upheavals of the French Revolution. Volunteers were quickly sent out to various other locations, going out as far as Freiburg im Breisgau, then in the Habsburg dominion.
Out of the desire to provide the faithful of the parish with means to deepen their spiritual lives, Moye began to publish some tracts, in collaboration with a younger colleague, the Abbé Louis Jobal de Pagny (1737–1766). The first, in 1762, was a pamphlet entitled Du soin extrème qu'on doit avoir du Baptême des enfants. It treated the baptism of newborn infants, especially stillborn babies. It was a development of Abrégé de l’Embryologie sacrée, a work by a Sicilian moral theologian, Francesco Cangiamiglia, which had just been published in Paris, having originally been published in Sicily in 1745 with ecclesiastical approval.
In 1764 they re-published an older work by the 17th-century spiritual writer, Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle, Élévation à Dieu sur le mystère de l’Incarnation (Being raised to God through the mystery of the Incarnation) with their commentaries on the text. Later, after the unexpected death of Jobal, Moye published a small pamphlet entitled Recueil de diverses pratiques de piété (A Collection of various pious Practices).
Moye's work with rural education and his writings provoked criticism from certain elements of the city. He was accused with recklessness for his sending young women to live in the isolated hamlets of the countryside. He was further accused of rigorism in his dealing with penitents, as well as making unfair criticisms of both the clergy and of midwives in his writings on Baptism. They prevailed on Bishop de Montmorency-Laval to take action against the two authors. As a result, in May 1762, the bishop ordered Moye to suspend the sending out of volunteers – though those already in the countryside were left in their situations. He further transferred him from Metz to serve as vicar of Dieuze. As this was his native region, Moye did not consider it a punishment, but worried about the future of his volunteers, who were coming to be called the "poor Sisters". His coworkers in the project assured him that the setback was only temporary.