St Peter Fourier

The 16th/17th century priest and educator Peter Fourier is remembered on 9th December.

Peter Fourier was born in Lorraine (now part of eastern France) in 1565. He attended the Jesuit university at Pont à Mousson and became a member of the Regular Canons of St Augustine at Chamousey.

He later became the parish priest at Mattaincourt, a village in the Vosges region, where he would stay for the next 30 years. Spiritual life was in poor shape, but Fourier transformed it by making dramatic changes not only to what happened in church but to the life of the village.

One of his innovations was to open a community bank that did not charge interest on loans. Another was to open schools that charged no fees for poor children. He found that nuns made excellent teachers and he found a worthy partner in this work in Alix Le Clerc. Together they opened a number of schools in the area, although these were all for girls as the boys’ school that Fourier founded failed to thrive.