Father Maurus Carnot (26 January 1865 – 2 January 1935) was a Swiss monk who became revered and loved as a teacher. For almost fifty years he taught at the Disentis monastery school. He also attracted plaudits through his welfare work. During the First World War, both through his weekly local weekly newspaper column and through more direct contacts, he tirelessly begged for and collected money which he then distributed to those in the greatest material need in Switzerland, Austria and Germany. Carnot came to wider prominence as a patriotic writer of poetry, novellas and stage plays, using both German and in a (relatively) mainstream dialect of Romansch.
Life
Provenance Maurus Carnot was born at Laret, a mountain village a fifteen-minute walk out of Samnaun. Then as now, the Samnaun valley was a semi-detached part Switzerland in administrative terms. The most reliable road access came, and still comes, not from Switzerland but from Landeck in Austria. One result of the topography was that when Protestantism had conquered most Switzerland more than two centuries earlier, the enclave defined by the Samnaun valley had, like the Austrian crown lands to the north and east and the Italian provinces to the south, remained true to Catholicism. Carnot was the second of his parents' seven children. Vincenz Carnot, his father, was a religious man, committed to the care of his family and the running of the small farm from which the family lived. Having been born on 26 January 1865, he was baptised on 27 January 1865, as "Johannes Carnot". (He acquired the name "Maurus" when he became a trainee priest, 23 years later.)
Early years Johannes Carnot was a delicate child, prone to illness. His attendance at the village school was correspondingly infrequent, and much of his early childhood was spent at home with his mother and siblings. After he grew up and left home he would become a regular and "lively" letter writer, and from his correspondence with his parents - especially with his mother, born Paulina Jenal - and siblings, it appears that he was devoted to both his parents. Despite staying at home so much, he suffered no educational deprivation. His uncle Heinrich was a Catholic priest, who was a regular visitor to the family home, took a hand in his education. By the time he was able to move on to secondary school the boy had acquired a solid grounding in, among other subjects, basic Latin. It was on the recommendation of Father Büchel of the nearby parish of Compatsch, who had also been involved in providing the boy's early classical education, that when he was old enough to be enrolled at a secondary school, Johannes Carnot was sent away to study at the Maria Hilf Kollegium (as the Jesuit secondary school was known before 1972) in Schwyz, some 200 km / 125 miles to the west and beyond several substantial mountain ranges. His father accompanied him to Schwyz at the start of his first term. Decades later, as an aging monk, Carnot would write of the acute and sustained homesickness from which he had suffered, and the recollection of which still caused him anguish so many years later. That slowly faded, however, and he remained at the boarding school in Schwyz for five years. He was then able to move on to the University of Innsbruck where he enrolled at the Theology faculty in 1882, and where for the next three years he studied Theology and Philosophy. It was while he was a student at Innsbruck that Carnot began contributing to the "Bündner Monatsblatt: Zeitschrift für Bündner Geschichte, Landeskunde und Baukultur", the monthly popular history magazine produced, at that time twelve times a year, in Chur, for the reading classes in the canton of Graubünden. Some sources describe him as the publication's "Inn valley correspondent".
Benedictine Even after he had completed his first degree course, he considered becoming a career journalist. But according to at least one source he already quietly shared his mother's unspoken wish that he should become a priest, and on 4 November 1885 he entered the Benedictine monastery at Disentis and took the Order Name of "Maurus". On 23 June 1888 he made his vows and on 8 July 1888 Maurus Carnot was ordained as a priest by Bishop Rampa of Chur. He subsequently bowed to the wishes of his abbot and, following a lengthy period of resistance, in 1894 accepted the office of dean, which he would retain for 31 years.
As a young monk Maurus made his mark, in the first instance, through his sermons. He had never been to Disentis until his vocation moved him to enter the monastery there in 1885, but very soon after arriving he wrote in a letter that "ten pairs of oxen" would not be enough to remove him from it. He received and where possible accepted frequent invitations for the cities and villages in German-speaking Switzerland to preach to people on feast days. He quickly mastered the local dialect, and would preach in either German or Romansch as appropriate. The city in which he most frequently appeared as a guest preacher over the years was the largest in German-speaking Switzerland: Zürich. An admiring sacerdotal colleague described his preaching as: "simple, heartfelt, kindly and original. Under the waves of his sheer spirituality, listeners absorbed the powerful and frightening truths included. He had the gift of dispensing consolation. His warm understanding and empathy brought gentle sunshine to troubled souls". Nor did he hold back from poetic emotion. But when he was preaching the poet in him never took over from the priest. His explanation, which he liked to share, was simple: "Religion is God's daughter. Poetry is God's granddaughter".
Teacher In the Disentis monastery school Father Maurus had the opportunity to teach his favourite subjects: Latin, Greek, German and History. He founded and then led the school's "German student academy" which would produce a number of future parliamentarians, popular orators and preachers. During the 1920s an equivalent "Romansch student academy" came into being, and he eagerly accepted leadership also of this. In the context of the revival of local cultures and languages/dialects that was a feature of the early decades of the twentieth century, Carnot understood, as few others did, how to introduce Romansch literature and history into the school curriculum.
Father Carnot sought to teach through inspiration rather than through compulsion. He had taken delight in freely devoting himself to his studies during his childhood and student years, and he expected the same eagerness to learn from those whom he taught. Through his power to inspire, he was in many cases able to make that expectation self-fulfilling. But there was also a warning that he would deliver: "I am there to lead you to the water: if you do not want to drank, you damage only yourselves" ("Ich bin da, führe euch zur Tränke; wenn ihr nicht trinken wollt, ist es euer Schaden.").
Final decade In 1925, aged 60, he resigned the office of dean in order to focus his energies on his writing, the school and his preaching. His health deteriorated and he cut back on his travel, remaining at his desk or in the classrooms at Disentis through the winter months. His preaching remained a key priority, however, and he continued to travel extensively during the summers in order to attend to it. During 1934 the deterioration in his health intensified. On 16 December 1934 he undertook his last expedition from Disentis in order to deliver a sermon. On 27 December 1934 he celebrated Mass for the last time, afterwards acknowledging that doing so had "taken everything out of him".
Death By the end of 1934 Appendicitis had been diagnosed. Carnot agreed to leave the monastery in obedience to the doctors' advice, doing so without any expression from complaint, though as he walked down the corridor away from his monastery cell, supported by the abbot and the medical monk, he permitted himself a look back from which observers inferred that he did not expect to return. At the hospital in Ilanz, half an hour down the valley from the monastery, he was operated on by one of his former pupils. It was possible, briefly, to think the operation a success and that he might live on. But on 2 January 1935, slightly more than three weeks short of what would have been his seventieth birthday, Father Maurus Carnot died in the hospital.
Father Carnot the writer Maurus Carnot wrote stage plays, short stories and poems. His first dramas, "Plazidus", "Armas e Larmas en la Cadi" (based on the aftermath of the invasion of the region by French troops in 1798/99) and "Friedensengel" ("Angel of Peace") all appeared before 1900. These were followed in 1902 by "Feurige Kohlen" ("Burning coals") which became Carnot's best known work among contemporaries. Despite the inherently regional nature of his writing, it was translated into English and Polish. The English version was staged to great acclaim in America, while the German version was even staged at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna.
In his final stage work, "Die Passion", Father Carnot set aside all secular legends and adhered strictly to the corresponding Gospel narrative. The premier performance was presented on 5 March 1933 and lasted about four hours. Subsequent performances have been significantly cut back. A shortened open air performance, the text adapted for a new generation, took place at Domat/Ems in 1979. Further performances occurred, again at Domat/Ems, in 1989 and in 2013. With the exception of "Die Passion", however, Carnot's stage plays have been very largely forgotten.
Carnot's numerous historical short stories and novellas were all set in Graubünden. Early ones were "Bündnerblut" and "Steinbock und Adler". Later came "Graben und Gruben" and the Romansh language work "Monas e Minas". The best known of them, appearing in 1919 and subsequently reissued at least twice, was the 250 page novella-trilogy "Wo die Bündnertannen rauschen". He then accepted a commission from the Catholic-Conservative politician Caspar Decurtins to write the short story "Sigisbert im rätischen Tale" which told the story of the (probable) founder of the Disentis Monastery. It was used to replace a German translation of "Robinson Crusoe" (which Decurtins thought "too lightweight") as a compulsory text for school curricula in Graubünden. The substitution triggered significant political strife in the canton.Sabrina Bundi: Wie «Sigisbert en Rezia» den Abenteurer Robinson zu Fall brachte, in: Bündner Tagblatt vom 12. März 2014, p. 6. The tale was initially published in German, but a Romansch language version, "Sigisbert en Rezia", followed in 1899. It was most recently republished, in a "multilanguage" edition, in 2014. Father Maurus also gave much joy and entertainment to many with his so-called "Calendar tales", short stories published (almost) annually during his later decades. These were also important in bringing him many new readers and admirers. His final published prose work, the relatively substantial novella "Die Geschichte des Jörg Jenatsch", appeared in 1930.
Father Carnot's poetry reflects his powerful preoccupation with his homeland, with recurring themes such as the parental home in which he grew up, the monastery which was his home for most of his life, the natural landscape, the animals and plants, along with the region's historical figures. Some of his poems appeared in newspapers and magazines. In 1914, "at the insistence of his friends", a collection of his lyric poems appeared in a single volume which at the time was considered by some to be the most significant book published that year in Switzerland. A significantly reworked second version followed in 1920 and was re-issued again, in 1934, shortly before the poet's death.
Habsburg connections