Fredet, Father Pierre
1856, January 1
Date of Birth: 1801, November 16
Paris
January 19, 1856
Fathers and Very Dear in Our Lord:
No Memorial Card is Available
I have just learned of the death of one of our confreres, Father Fredet, director at the Seminary of Baltimore, and it is incumbent on me to ask for him the prayers and remembrances customary in the Society.
Father Pierre Fredet was born on November 16, 1801 at Cebazat in the Diocese of Clermont. He took up theological studies at the Seminary of Montferrand on November 1, 1820. After finishing, he came to the Solitude, after which he was assigned to the Seminary of Rodez to teach Theology. He held at the same time some classes in Church History. In 1831 he left for the Seminary of Baltimore, which he reached on September 24th. At the seminary he taught Theology, Holy Scripture and Church History; and at the college (which at that time was still in existence) he taught Ancient and Modern History, as well as French. With an excellent memory and a persevering and unflinching spirit of study, he made himself especially competent in Theology and History. With due authorization he published in English an Ancient History and a Modern History, which have had a wide distribution in America; the latter, within a relatively short time, has gone through ten editions.
Father Fredet was, at Baltimore as at Rodez, a model of regularity at all community exercises, always ready to do anything asked of him, tireless in any task which involved the service of the house and the good of religion. Jealous of his time, he scrupulously divided that time between scholarly work and the exercises of piety to which he applied himself with a great spirit of faith and an extreme delicacy of conscience.
About four years ago he began to suffer from recurring headaches whose severity kept worsening; they obliged him – a little more than a year ago – to give up work of any kind. He continued to give example of resignation and patience in the midst of terrible head pain which the doctors thought was caused by a brain tumor that gradually developed into a nearly total paralysis of the body. During the last months his intellectual faculties were thereby seriously affected; but some days before his death he completely recovered his mental health and was able to receive the Holy Viaticum with the same lively piety that he had shown during his whole life toward the Blessed Sacrament. At last he peacefully gave his soul to God on January 1st of this year.
Let us ask Our Lord that he give to us all, as to this dear confrere, a great love for regularity and a great desire to apply ourselves constantly to the fulfillment of our duties. Let us pray also that He will send us worthy workers willing to go to labor for the good of the American Church which is undergoing so happy a growth and which offers more and more so many happy hopes.
Accept, Fathers and very dear in Our Lord, the renewed assurance of my very sincere and affectionate attachment.
Your thoroughly devoted in Our Lord,
Carriere
Superior of St. Sulpice