A group of French people gathered around the heart of the Marquette University campus the morning of Oct. 28. They were there to take in something faithful former residents had flocked to more than 600 years ago and an ocean away.
The group hailed from Chasse-sur-Rhône, the small French city where the Joan of Arc chapel began its life as a place of worship circa 1420. It served the city’s people for hundreds of years before falling into disrepair. The Gothic chapel was eventually reconstructed at Marquette in 1964 and has become a symbol of the campus’ Catholic identity.
The French delegation’s visit was the last stop on a transatlantic tour retracing the chapel’s journey from the 7,000-person city south of Lyon to Milwaukee.
“In a way, it’s a symbolic reconstruction,” said Jennifer Vanderheyden, a Marquette associate professor of French who teaches a course on Joan of Arc and helped lead the delegation on campus. “They want to reconstruct this link (between Chasse-sur-Rhône and Milwaukee).”
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Marc Rotjman, a former president of Racine’s J.I. Case Co., and his wife, Lillian, bought the chapel in 1962 and later donated it to Marquette. They already had a connection to Marquette: They’d given a $200,000 collection of Old Masters paintings to the university in 1958.