Frs Franck Labbé and A. de Malleray tell the story of the exemplary pastor who died wearing his priestly vestments.
The blessed martyr Fr Noël Pinot (1747-1794) was a recusant priest from Anjou in Western France, guillotined during the Revolution.
The last of a weaver’s sixteenth children, he lost his father at the age of eight and entered seminary in Angers. Ordained a priest in 1770, he was first appointed curate, then acting parish priest in 1772, and then chaplain to the Hospital of the Incurables in Angers in 1781. There, his indefatigable zeal for dying patients made him an example for the clergy and a blessing for the sick and poor. In 1788, eight months before the beginning of the Revolution, he became parish priest of Le Louroux-Béconnais, the largest country parish in the diocese of Angers. Aware of the ungodly ideas spread across the country by the so-called Enlightened philosophers, Fr Pinot did his best to teach and strengthen his flock according to deep Catholic principles.
During the Revolution, he refused to take the oath of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, a civil pledge meant to separate priests from the Church. The municipality complained soon after that he was plotting “to induce the clergymen of the neighbourhood to oppose the law.” In 1791 he courageously justified his position from his Sunday pulpit. Denounced, he was arrested and sentenced to a residence ban by the district court. He then withdrew to the Incurables Hospital, later hiding in the country as the authorities hunted recusant clerics. He returned to Le Louroux in June 1793 during the Vendée war, ministering in secret to his flock as its legitimate pastor despite the presence of a State-appointed new parish priest. But he went into hiding again after the defeat of the royalist insurgents at Nantes.
He was arrested on the night of February 8, 1794 at La Milandrie farm where he was found lying in a long wooden chest in the attic. Taken to Angers, he appeared before the Revolutionary Military Commission presided by apostate priest Citizen Roussel. When reading the death sentence, Roussel suggested that Mr Pinot might be pleased to die wearing his priestly trappings. On February 21, 1794, the martyr was paraded through the streets with his amice, alb, cincture, maniple, stole chasuble and biretta on, and stepped onto the guillotine reciting the first prayer of holy Mass: “Introibo ad altare Dei―I will go up to the altar of God.” The martyr may have been inspired by the fact that the scaffold had been erected on the very spot where the altar of the collegial church of St Peter’s used to stand until the revolutionaries had pulled it down less than three years previous. Bl. Noël Pinot died on a Friday at 3pm, the day and time of the death of the Lord.
In 1864 the Bishop of Angers started the canonical inquiry into the life and virtues of Fr Pinot. He was beatified by Pope Pius XI on October 31, 1926. Ninety-nine other Catholics from Angers were also beatified by Pope John-Paul II on February 19, 1984. The feast of Bl. Noel Pinot is celebrated on February 21. A detailed account of his life is available online (in French).
A diocesan association in Angers, the Bl. Noël Pinot Oratory keeps the memory of Noël Pinot alive through pilgrimages and the small shrine of La Milandrie dedicated to prayer for priestly vocations. Everyone can participate in transmitting the memory of this martyr priest by donating, but above all by praying.
Article first published in Dowry No57, Spring 2023
Cover Image: Clandestine Mass during the Revolution, photo by Adam Jones (CC BY 2.0)