John Thayer

Background

Thayer was born in Boston, Massachussets. He was a descendant of Richard Thayer, an early settler of Braintree.

Education

Despite an irregular education, he received an honorary degree of A. B. from Yale College in 1779.

Career

Licensed but not ordained a Congregational minister, Thayer preached from various pulpits and served as chaplain at Castle William under John Hancock (1780 - 81) until he went to Paris, where Benjamin Franklin brusquely declined his services as a personal chaplain. As a result of theological controversies with priests in France and in Rome, and a reputed miracle of which he had first-hand knowledge, he entered the Roman Catholic Church (May 25, 1783), and studied theology at the College of Navarre and at Saint-Sulpice in Paris.

Ordained, June 2, 1787, by the archbishop of Paris, he was lionized by ecclesiastics as the first converted American divine, who had grand plans for the conversion of his fellow Puritans. In the year of his ordination there appeared The Conversion of John Thayer . Written by Himself. After two years in the London mission, Thayer set forth for Boston, where his arrival (January 4, 1790) and early activities attracted numerous notices in the New England press. On the whole "John Turncoat, " as he was called, was not badly received by native Americans, although the rather tolerant Ezra Stiles confided a harsh estimate of his guest to his Literary Diary: "Commenced his Life in Impudence, Ingratitude, Lying & Hypocrisy, irregularly took up preachg among the Congregationalists, went to France & Italy, became a Proselyte to the Romish Church, & is returned to convert America to that Chh of haughty insolent & insidious Talents".

In Boston, his tactless zeal, his uncompromising Puritan spirit, his uneasiness under ecclesiastical restraint, and his egotism prevented any degree of success. Soon in conflict with Abbé Louis de Rousselet, who was supported by the French members of the congregation, he was placed in temporary control (1791) by Bishop John Carroll. About this time he engaged in embittered disputations with two ministers, George Leslie and John Gardner, which were later reprinted (Boston, 1793; Dublin, 1809).

When in 1792 he was succeeded by Dr. Francis Anthony Matignon, he continued as a roving missionary who held Catholic services for the first time in the chief New England towns. For this courageous work he had real talents; his friend William Bentley described him as "a real Dreadnought in adventures".

In 1793 he was in Alexandria, Va. , where he held services and prepared to build a church. When his pronounced antislavery views as well as his excessive zeal destroyed his popularity, he sought an assignment to assist William O'Brien, O. P. , of St. Peter's Church, New York, but it was denied (1796). Thayer once more visited Hartford and other New England towns, and Quebec.

One of his noteworthy sermons was A Discourse, Delivered on the 9th of May 1798, a Day Recommended by the President for Humiliation and Prayer Throughout the United States (1798). A year later he was assigned to assist Stephen Theodore Badin, whose missionary field covered Kentucky. Despite conflicts over slavery, Thayer throve on the frontier until in 1803, somewhat to his ordinary's relief, he retired under a cloud to Limerick, Ireland. Apparently he was happy in Ireland. Aside from brief excursions to England and the continent (as to La Trappe in France, 1807), he remained a missionary in Limerick, where he was considered "a priest of edifying piety and ascetic life, " until his death. Thayer was not idle. He did his share in giving an impulse to emigration from the south of Ireland to America and urged Irish priests to volunteer for the missions. Determined to establish a convent in Boston, he collected several thousand dollars, vainly applied to Dublin and London convents for volunteers, and finally trained his own postulants.

Achievements

• After his death his legacy enabled several postulants to go in 1817 to Three Rivers, Quebec, and on the completion of their novitiate to establish (1819) a house in Boston, the nucleus of the famous Ursuline Convent in Charlestown which was burned by a nativist mob in 1834.