The Conversion of Alphonse Ratisbonne
Alphonse Ratisbonne was the son and heir of a wealthy, aristocratic family of Jewish bankers in Strasbourg, France. When Alphonse was still a child his older brother, Theodor, converted to the Catholic faith and became a priest. The family reacted with hostility and horror. Alphonse resolved never to communicate again with his older brother, and developed a violent antipathy to the Catholic faith and to all things Catholic. Although Alphonse was entirely atheist in his beliefs, and non-practicing as a Jew, he felt a great love and loyalty for his fellow Jews, and devoted much of his effort and wealth to better their social condition. At the time of his conversion, Alphonse was 27 years old, and engaged to marry his uncle's beautiful daughter and to take his place as a partner in his uncle's bank. During his engagement Ratisbonne noticed a subtle change in his religious feelings; he wrote:
I must note a certain change that came about in my religious thinking during my engagement. As I said, I did not believe in anything; in this absolute nihilism, in my denial of any faith, I felt myself to be in harmony with my Catholic and Protestant friends; the sight of my fiancee awakened in me a sentiment of human dignity. I began to believe in the immortality of the soul; instinctively I began to pray to God; I thanked him for my good fortune, but nevertheless I still remained unhappy...I could not account for my sentiments;...I often told her [my fiancee] that, and truly, the thought of her raised my heart to the God, that I did not know, to whom I had not prayed, whom I had not invoked.
Because his fiancee was only sixteen it was thought appropriate to delay the wedding, and to pass the time Alphonse decided to take an extended prenuptial tourist trip. An early stop was Naples; there he found himself alone on New Years Day, 1847. In Ratisbonne's own description:
It was a sad day for me. I was alone in Naples, I was not greeted by anybody, I had nobody to embrace...I wept and the joy of the Neapolitans increased my sadness. I went for a walk following mechanically the flow of the crowd. I reached the piazza di Palazzo and found myself, I do not know why, at the door of a church. I entered. The Mass, I believe, was being celebrated. How did it come about, I do not know, but I stopped for a moment leaning against a column, and my heart seemed to open and breathe a known atmosphere. I prayed in my own way, without analyzing what was happening to me. I prayed for my fiancee, my uncle, my dead father, my dear mother who left me as an orphan when I was young, all my close friends, and I asked God for inspiration that could guide me in my projects of improving the lot of the Jews -- an idea which I had always cherished. My sadness left me, as a dark cloud that is blown away by the wind; in my whole interior, inundated with an ineffable calm, I experienced a consolation as if a voice had told me: 'Your prayer has been granted.' Oh yes, my prayer has been heard one hundred per cent and beyond all expectation, because on the last day of that same month, I solemnly received the sacrament of baptism in a church in Rome!
After Naples Ratisbonne went on to Rome. While there he called on the Baron de Bussieres, who was the brother of one of his best friends. The Baron was a devout Catholic and dared Ratisbonne to wear a Miraculous Medal and to recite a short daily prayer to Mary as a way of proving that there was nothing to such 'detestable superstitions.' (The Miraculous Medal is a medal of Mary which was widely propagated following her apparition to a young nun, later St. Catherine Laboure, in her convent chapel in Paris). On January 20, the last day of his planned stay in Rome, Ratisbonne bumped into the Baron riding in his carriage, who invited him to join him for a ride. When the Baron stopped at a nearby church to conduct some business with the priest, Ratisbonne went into the empty church to wait. Let us continue with the Baron's account of what he found when he went into the church to get his friend:
I caught sight of him on his knees, in the chapel of St. Michael the Archangel . I went up to him and touched him. I had to do this three or four times before he became aware of my presence. Finally he turned towards me, face bathed in tears...with an expression no words can describe...he took hold of his Miraculous Medal and kissed it with passionate emotion. He broke into tears at the thought of all the heretics and unbelievers....Gradually this delirious emotion subsided and he grew calmer, and now his face was radiant, almost transfigured. He begged me to take him to a priest and asked when he could receive holy Baptism, for now he was sure he could not live without it. I took him at once to the Gesu to see Father de Villefort, who invited him to explain what had happened. Ratisbonne drew out his medal, kissed it, and showed it me, saying, 'I saw
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