3 stories mention Henri-François-Xavier de Belsunce on DeadlyCurious.
Henri-François-Xavier de Belsunce was Bishop of Marseille from 1709 to 1755. He refused to leave the city during the 1720 plague, administered last rites at street corners, organised parish-by-parish burial details, and substantially defined the visible Catholic authority during the worst summer months. The French Catholic tradition substantially canonised him in popular memory.
Read the story →The Chevalier Nicolas Roze organised the clearing of approximately 1,200 plague corpses from the Esplanade de la Tourette at Marseille in September 1720. He used condemned galley convicts as labour, promising their freedom if they survived. Eight of his hundred labourers did.
Read the story →The *Grand Saint-Antoine* arrived at Marseille on 25 May 1720 with a hold full of Levantine silk and several already-dead crew members. The harbour authorities knew the ship was infected. They cleared it anyway. The resulting outbreak killed about half of Marseille and approximately 100,000 people across Provence over two years.
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