Antoine-Sylvestre Receiver

Antoine-Sylvestre Receiver , born in 1750, with Bonnétage, Doubs, and died in 1804, with Cercy-the-Turn, was a French priest, founder of the religious community of the Sisters of the Christian Retirement.

Named cleaned with the Fontenelles, Doubs, in 1776, Antoine-Sylvestre Receiver made there build the church of the village. It organizes also two schools.

In 1785, at the request of fourteen young girls, it installs, with the locality " Cournot" , a house of work and prayer. Soon boys join them in their ideal, around Jean-Baptiste Marchand, but this time in the farm of the Fruit-bearing ones.

The Father Receiver ends up building a house with their intention, but also to accommodate people who would like from time to time to devote a few days of reflection on their Christian life, i.e. " to make retraite".

More than 200 rooms are built in a building of four wings in square around an interior court. More than one hundred women can there slip by and weave, the men delivering to the large alteration work, of joinery, gardening.

Into full Revolution (1789), the taking possession of the buildings is not easy. In front of the opposition of people of the village, it is necessary to enter by one night cold of November. But the Christian Retirement was born.

The revolutionary upheaval all the same will catch up with the new community. In 1792, the National Guards expel the Brothers and the Sisters, who flee in Suisse, in Germany or Italy.

After the events, in 1802, the Father Receiver joined Fontenelles. But the building was demolished after having been used of prison and anteroom with the Guillotine of Maîche. The priest leaves then to Autun with some Brothers and Sisters. Called: " The Saint missionnaire" , he will die in 1804, with Cercy-the-Turn. Its body will be brought back into 1948 to the Fontenelles.

After having left the Italy where they had taken refuge, since 1803, of the Brothers and the Sisters establishments in midday of the France found initially, in the Paris region, in Lorraine, with Boulogne-sur-Mer, Dôle. They there open schools and accommodate retirements.

In 1836, the house of the Fontenelles is rebuilt, in a style different from the origin. Brothers will live there until 1940, of the Sisters always live there.

The buildings shelter also today, an elementary school, a college and a vocational school.

The current community counts several houses in France (Fontenelles, Chusclan, Abondance), in Suisse (Montbarry), in Belgium, England, Scotland and Ireland. Sisters of the Christian Retirement also live with Kandi and Banikoara, with the Bénin.

Bond:

School and Saint-Joseph College of Fontenelles http://ecole.wanadoo.fr/stjo.fontenelles/

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