Leopold Zerr
| Leopold Zerr | |
|---|---|
| Born | Alphonse Zerr 1879 Vernouillet, Eure-et-Loir, France. |
| 💀Died | 1956 Farnborough, Hampshire, England1956 |
| 🏳️ Nationality | French |
| 💼 Occupation | Benedictine monk |
| Known for | Career as a musician, choirmaster and organist |
Leopold Zerr (1879-1956) was a French Benedictine monk born in France, but who from 1901 spent the greater part of his life as a monk and musician at Benedictine monasteries in England, where he died in 1956.
Life[edit]
Early Years[edit]
Zerr (1879-1956) was born Alphonse Zerr in Vernouillet, a commune in the Eure-et-Loir department in northern France, some 35 kilometres distant from Chartres, the main city in the area. He was born into a family which had its roots in the historical region of Alsace in Eastern France, near Germany and Switzerland. They had moved away after the annexation of their home area as the “Reichsland Elsaß-Lothringen” (“Imperial Land of Alsace-Lorraine”) to the newly created German Empire following France's 1870 defeat at the hands of a coalition of German states led by Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War.
The young Zerr studied at the choir-school of Chartres Cathedral, and subsequently entered the minor seminary of the diocese of Paris and later began his major seminary studies, choosing the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice. He spent a relatively short time there, since he felt called to the life of a Benedictine monk and in 1899 entered the great Abbey of Solesmes | Solesmes Abbey]], seat of the nineteenth-century revival Gregorian Chant. ,[1] There he took the monastic name Leopold and was clothed as a postulant, beginning the usual course of training and studies as a monk.[2] All went as normal until not long after Zerr's solemn monastic profession a crisis broke for the Abbey.
Exile[edit]
In a move that had been foreshadowed for two decades, the French government introduced from 1900 a series of measures which radically changed the legal status of the Catholic Church in France, and seriously affected monasteries such as Solesmes.[3] As a result, in order to stay together and continue with their way of life, the large Solesmes community decided to go into exile in England and set off on their journey in the late summer of 1901. Their chosen destination was the Isle of Wight, off the Hampshire coast of the south of England, and near to the British naval port of Portsmouth.
In France they had made their original foundation at the site of a medieval monastery that had been despoiled in the French Revolution, and many of Solesmes’ daughter houses had followed this pattern. One factor in Solesmes' interest in England as a refuge in exile was the fact that in many parts of England, including Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, there were similarly numerous ruins of monasteries destroyed during the reign of King Henry VIII.
The French Benedictines dependent upon Solesmes already had a monastery in England, in the county of Hampshire, having in 1896 taken up the invitation of the former Empress Eugénie, widow of Napoleon III, to establish a priory at the monastic house of Farnborough Abbey, which she had some years earlier built to sheltered the tomb of her husband.[4] While this property was far too small to accommodate the large Solesmes community, it did provide a base for a monk live while searching for a suitable home for them.
This search identified a semi-abandoned grand house on the island, Appuldurcombe House near Wroxall, and the greater part of the Solesmes community of monks took up residence there by late September 1901. It was there that the young Dom Leopold Zerr completed his studies and in 1906 was ordained a priest. .[5]
The following year the abbot was able to acquire a large house known as Quarr Abbey House, located on an estate that also contained the ruins of a monastery, not Benedictine but Cistercian, the medieval Quarr Abbey which had met its end in 1536 at the hands of King Henry VIII and his henchmen.[6] The community began settling at the house from Appuldurcombe in 1907 and started adapting the property as a monastery. Encouraged by the fact that the community included Paul Bellot, a young monk who had trained as an architect, it was decided to build on the site a new church and conventual buildings. All this was completed by the autumn of 1912 and the life of the Solesmes community settled down to the traditional routine in its new home. After the cataclysmic events of the First World War, which changed much in France and elsewhere, it became possible in 1922 to reoccupy the buildings at Solesmes. To this end, a large proportion of the monks living at Quarr headed back to France, but leaving behind the nucleus of a new community, which in 1937 became an independent abbey within the Solesmes congregation.
A Permanent Home[edit]
In the midst of the war, Dom Zerr had been sent to become a member of the other Solesmes monastery in England, St Michael's Abbey, Farnborough.[7] This was a house which had established a character of its own, a character sometimes criticized. In particular, it was heavily marked by attention to scholarly work, an emphasis established under Abbot Fernand Cabrol, who when Dom Leopold arrived in 1916 had already been at the head of the community since 1903 and was to remain at the helm till his death in 1937.[8] In the midst of changing times, Leopold would remain at Farnborough for the rest of his life, serving the community above all as a musician, in particular as an accomplished [organist].
With the ending of the Second World War, it seemed an appropriate moment for the Solesmes Congregation to take stock of its commitments. It had two communities in England, one at Quarr and the other at Farnborough. A small number of English recruits had entered both, but perhaps not enough to constitute a strong recruiting base for the future. Whatever the reasoning, in 1947 it was decided to consolidate Quarr and to hand over Farnborough to others. According, several monks from Farnborough moved to become members of the Quarr community, while at Farnborough a transition began whereby the community was reinforced by a small contingent of Benedictine monks from Prinknash Abbey, a community located in Gloucestershire that belonged not to the Solesmes Congregation, but to the Subiaco Cassinese Congregation. Dom Zerr, however, stayed on and doubtless the small community was more than relieved to have a competent organist on call. After 40 years at Farnborough, he died at the age of 77 in 1956.[9]
References[edit]
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- ↑ Theodor Klauser, Henri Leclercq 1869-1945: Vom Autodidakten zum Kompilator grossen Stils, Aschendorff, Münster, 1977 (= Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum: Ergänzungsband 5), pp. 21-27.
- ↑ http://archive-uat.catholicherald.co.uk/article/14th-december-1956/7/obituary [Retrieved 24 November 2020].
- ↑ Cf. J. Napier Brodhead, The Religious Persecution in France 1900-1906, Kegan Paul, Trench & Trübner, London, 1907.
- ↑ T. Klauser, Henri Leclercq 1869-1945, pp. 28-33.
- ↑ http://archive-uat.catholicherald.co.uk/article/14th-december-1956/7/obituary Retrieved 24 November 2020.
- ↑ Frederick Hockey, Quarr Abbey and its Lands, 1132-1631, Leicester University Press, 1970.
- ↑ http://archive-uat.catholicherald.co.uk/article/14th-december-1956/7/obituary [Retrieved 24 November 2020].
- ↑ T. Klauser, Henri Leclercq 1869-1945, pp. 34-49.
- ↑ http://archive-uat.catholicherald.co.uk/article/14th-december-1956/7/obituary [Retrieved 24 November 2020].
