While Marseille's secular elite fled the 1720 plague to country properties, the Bishop of Marseille — Henri-François-Xavier de Belsunce — stayed. Roughly how many plague victims did he personally administer last rites to during the outbreak?
Belsunce contracted plague twice and recovered both times. The Marseille municipal archive documents his ~8,000 last-rites administrations. The Catholic Church never formally canonised him (no verified miracles, no sustained Roman institutional support), but the Marseille local Catholic tradition has treated him as a *de facto* saint since the 1720s. He died of old age in 1755, aged 84; approximately 30,000 Marseillais — a third of the post-outbreak city population — attended the funeral.
Read the full story →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.
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