kerleuquer : location de gîtes à plobannalec lesconil, (parnaleg leskon) pays bigouden. Meublés saisonniers et gites à 500 m du port et des plages. Studio 2p, gite 4p, gîte 6p, location 11p près des ports bigoudens du Guilvinec, de Loctudy, et Saint guenole penmarch et 25 mn de Quimper.

Monseigneur Jolivet  Evêque de Natal est né à Pont l'abbé, et est l'un de mes lointains cousins.

Avec l'aide de ma cousine Delia Robertson,  descendante de sa nièce Eugénie Jolivet, et résidant toujours en Afrique du Sud.

10/01/1826 Pont L'Abbé Lieu-dit : Rue Vallou (Pays : Bigouden ) baptême ou naissance
JOLIVET Charles Constant, garçon, Enfant de François Marie Vincent, Couvreur
et de FARCY Sophie
Témoins : Sr JOLIVET Jean Corentin , couvreur , 56 ans , ayeul paternel Sr L'HELGOUARCH Sébastien , 21 ans , praticien
Notes - Né °09/01/1826

Dictionary of South African Biography

Vol II.

1972

Human Sciences Research Council

Editor-in-chief

W.J. de Kock

(until 1970)

D.W. Krüger

(Since 1971).

Page 343

Jolivet, Charles Constant (*Pont l'Abbé, Brittany, Fr., 9.1.1826 †Durban, 15.9.1903), Roman Catholic bishop, was born of humble parentage in a small port on the Brittany coast. At the age of ten J. announced his intention of becoming a priest, and later received a good private education in classics and rhetoric. He attended the Petit Seminaire and the Grand Seminaire intending to join the diocesan clergy, but, on the eve of his priesthood, he was prompted by a talk given by a pioneer oblate in Canada to join the missionary oblates of Mary Immaculate destined for Canada.

Two years before he was ordained, J. joined the oblates of Mary Immaculate, entered the novitiate and was then ordained a priest in 1849.  Liverpool was his first parish, and his first church a loft. At that place he ministered to the Irish immigrants, the poorest of the poor, who had come from Ireland in the year of the famine. Before he left Liverpool J. built a magnificent church, thus commencing his penchant for edifice building, the crowning work of his life being the Emmanuel Cathedral in Durban. As a result of this success in Liverpool, J. was selected by the general chapter of the order, made assistant general and instructed to visit missions of the order in Texas and British Columbia again with very satisfactory results. On his return to .Paris in 1874 he was appointed titular bishop of Bellina (a small Syrian town) by the Holy See, and vicar-apostolic of Natal. In Natal he was to succeed Bishop J. F. Allard.*

J. was consecrated as a bishop on 30.11.1874 and arrived in Natal in March 1875 when Catholicism in South Africa was generally at a low ebb. He found himself in charge of an area which, extending from the Kei River to the Zambezi, included the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Eventually J. persuaded Rome to subdivide this huge area. The Zambezi Mission was entrusted to the Jesuits (1879); the Transvaal became a prefecture in 1886, and Basutoland and the Diamond Fields a separate vicariate (1886). Basutoland becoming a prefecture (1894); Natal was separated from the Transvaal, but retained Zululand. J. remained for years still the spiritual partner for his church in these areas. During the latter half of the nineteenth century throughout this extensive region of Southern Africa the name of J. became virtually synonymous with Catholicism. When he commenccd his vicariate there were only six priests in this vast area, but at the end of his twenty-five years there were no fewer than 114. During the same period the members of this religious order increased from three to 284, from-eight nuns to 867, and from five churches to eighty-one. During this period of office ninety-two chapels were built as well as forty-six boarding schools.

This success was achieved as a result of twenty-five years of almost continuous travel throughout the vicariate. Much of his time was devoted to the O.F.S. and to the Diamond Fields. In Basutoland he developed the mission at Roma, founded by his predecessor in 1863. Transvaal missions were set up by J. at Pretoria where he arrived in 1877 when there were thirteen Catholics in his parish. On stands granted to him by Sir Theophilus Shepstone in Skinner Street he established church and the Loreto Convent in 1875, where the Abbess Margaret Mary [Celine Jolivet, 4 October 1846-15 January 1881], a younger sister of J., was one of the first to serve. J. was also responsible for the founding of the first Catholic churches and convents in Lydenburg, Bloemfontein, Kimberley and Barberton.

During his travels in the interior J. began to develop an appreciation of the qualities of the Boer. His keen insight and intellect brought home to him the particular significance Catholicism would have for the port of Natal and most of his work in that Colony was concentrated there, although he gave adequate attention to Pietermaritzburg and other centres. During his administration the Trappist monks came to Natal, and together with the Abbot Franz Pfanner* he developed a noteworthy institution at Mariannhill.

Throughout his vicariate J. was chiefly pre-occupied with work among the Europeans, but he found time to devote to the Zulu mission. He was a supporter of the practice of separating White and Non-Whitc religious instruction, pointing out that the wishes of those who gave the main financial support to the mission work among the Zulu and the Indians, the Europeans, were entitled to have their wishes considered. The practical need for separate language teaching led him to set up separate churches for Whites and Non-Whites. An added justification of J.’s policy was the success which it had achieved in the development of Catholicism, and the fact that Rome had never instructed him to act differently.  J. also took account of Non-White tribal law by recognizing the tribal custom of 'lobolo' as not being, in fact, the purchase of a woman.

It was J.'s indomitable courage and missionary endeavour which resulted in his success in the mission field, and his belief in his motto of ‘Thorough’. While he paid little attention to finance he laid great stress upon human relations. He became revered for his natural French courtesy, and his simplicity of mind and manner. He was not only a successful missionary but also a delightful companion as a result of his Breton humour. Short and spare in physique he was a giant in achievement, and, together with his contemporary, Bishop J. D. Ricards,* became the most outstanding Catholic ecclesiastical figure in South Africa.

He died shortly before the blessing and opening of the Emmanuel Cathedral, the ambition and climax of his missionary endeavours, which was to have taken place at Christmas 1903. His funeral was the first ceremony within the new building and he lies buried before the high altar.

J.'s diary, his personal relics and several portraits are in the archives of the Catholic history bureau at Edenvale, Transvaal. There is a portrait in the Natal Archives, Pietermaritzburg, and reproductions in the Centenary album of Pretoria (Pretoria. 1952) and (infra) in Twentieth century impressions of Natal, and in Brady.

 B.J.T.L.

[Dr B.J.T. Leverton, chief of Natal Government Archives, Pietermaritzburg]

Natal Witness, 4.2.1884: Obitiruaries: Natal Witness, 16.9.1903; Times of Natal, 16.9.1903; Catholic South Africa, 16.9.1903;  - Twentieth century impressions of Natal, Lond., 1906; - J. DU PLESSIS, A history of Christian missions in South Africa, Lond., 1911; facs. Repr., C.T., 1965; - J.E. BRADY Princes of his people, Maseru, 1951; Trekking for Souls, Cedara, Natal, 1952; - W.E. BROWN, The Catholic Church in South Africa, Lond., 1960

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