Saint Peter Fourier

Peter Fourier was a French canon regular who is honored as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. Foregoing offers of high office, he served for many years as a pastor in the village of Mattaincourt in the Vosges. He was a strong proponent of free education and also helped to found a religious congregation of canonesses regular dedicated to the care of poor children, developing a new pedagogy for this. Fourier was born on 30 November 1565 in the village of Mirecourt, in what was then the Duchy of Lorraine, a part of the Holy Roman Empire (now the French department of Vosges), which was a bulwark of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. He was the eldest of the three sons of a cloth merchant and his wife, who were faithful Catholics. At the age of 15, his father enrolled him in the new Jesuit University of Pont-à-Mousson (eventually merged into the University of Lorraine). In 1585 Fourier was admitted to the novitiate of the canons regular of the Abbey of Chaumousey, where he made his profession of vows two years later. He was ordained a priest at Trier, at the age of 23, on 24 February 1589. His abbot then sent him back to the University of Pont-à-Mousson to further his studies. He became a scholastic theologian who knew the Summa Theologica by heart, and earned the great respect of both the university officials and the Count-Bishop of Metz, who offered him a high ecclesiastical post. Fourier chose, instead, to return to his abbey. After his return to his canonical community, however, he was subjected to two years of hostility and abuse by his less fervent fellow canons, including. by some accounts, attempted poisoning. He chose not to confront his abbot with the situation and accepted this persecution patiently. The care of local parishes in that region of France was routinely entrusted to the many abbeys and priories of canons.