Croix des missionnaires de Provence

Like many municipalities in the department, Marignane has kept track of the missions initiated by Eugene de Mazenod at the very beginning of the Restoration Born into a family of Provençal nobility exiled to Nice during the Revolution, he entered the orders, first in Paris, notably at Saint-Sulpice, before returning to Provence in 1813, after the Concordat. Settled in Aix, before his late appointment in 1837 as head of the bishopric of Marseille, he conceived an apostolate turned towards a re-evangelization of the rural, poor, and young populations, relying on the Provençal language. Joined by a few vicars, he created the work of the Missionaries of Provence, gathering nine founding members. It was renamed the Oblates of Mary Immaculate in 1826, following a foundation in Nîmes in Languedoc Their first mission took place in Grans on February 24, 1816, followed by the one in Marignane. This mission covered the period from November 17 to December 15, 1816, and is recounted in detail in the Journal de Mazenod published only in 1995 by the Oblates It was carried out by four of Mazenod's companions, Fathers Deblieu, Mie, Maunier and Tempier, who were welcomed by the parishioners in the chapel of Saint-Nicolas. They made many visits to Marignane and met a population that was largely described as dechristianized, with several anecdotes focusing on situations of cohabitation, separation, or disabilities left to their own devices. Preaching, sermons from the pulpit and conferences in the church, confessions, women's assembly in the chapel of the penitents, will thus follow one another. On November 24, 1816, a spectacular procession, barefoot and with a rope around the neck, took up the tradition of the penitents, whose large cross the missionaries borrowed It is quite natural that the commemoration of this mission will be marked by the planting of a cross, first and apparently, on the old mall known as Cours Saint-Nicolas (current avenue Jean-Jaurès) near the chapel of the penitents. It appears on the Napoleonic cadastre of 1818 and is cited in the Statistique du préfet de Villeneuve in 1824 (without ever being identified as the one of the 1816 mission). During the Restoration, it would have marked this end of the tree-lined promenade on which the parish church would finally open in 1826. A whole part of its history has disappeared with the archives of this period. It seems that a replacement for the original cross, perhaps made of wood, is dated by the 1846 date on the cartel stamped on the one we see today. It is very likely that the penitents, reconstituted in 1843, were the instigators. Wooden cross (?)... Iron cross, this one comes from a delicately serrated iron work, surmounting a truncated pyramidal pedestal of fine limestone animated by some dentils The set was the object of a first displacement in Guynemer street, before finding, in 2021, its supposed original place, thanks to the association of the Friends of Marignane and Provence, in partnership with the City of Marignane Source Patrick Varrot, art historian - February 2021