1870 - Marie-Aimée Tillet

June 21, 1870

Tianjin

Born at Loiret, France, in 1836, Marie-Aimée Tillet[1] took her vows and commenced her life as a Catholic nun in 1861, when she was 25-years-old. She worked as a nurse in the Angers hospital, but had such a burning desire to serve God as a foreign missionary that she begged her superiors for an opportunity to do so. After six years they finally consented and Marie-Aimée embarked on the long journey to China in 1866.

Like many missionaries before and since, Marie-Aimée went to China with a romantic notion of what it was like. When the harsh reality of her new environment set in, it left her devastated and depressed. One account says,

“To please Him she had left all; and hardly had she arrived at the mission when she felt nothing but disgust and repulsion. She could not face without great repugnance the habits, the manners and especially the horrible dirt of those poor infidels, for whose salvation she had been called by her vocation.”[2]

The 1860s was an era when missionaries went to their field for life, often never laying eyes on their homeland again. The option of leaving was not available for Marie-Aimée, even though on several occasions she went to the Mother Superior and begged, “Make me start very soon for France. Oh! go and see quickly if there be a boat, for I cannot stay here!”[3] The disillusioned young missionary was gently told she had to stay and adjust, and after the initial shock wore off, her faith in Christ helped her overcome and in time became an effective worker in God’s harvest. Her main area of service was to help the abandoned children in the Tianjin orphanage. Marie-Aimée’s tender heart was often crushed when one of the children died. In contrast to her earlier desire to return to France, she later told the Mother Superior, “I feel the devil is furious at my being here, and that he is determined, if possible, to drag me away by force.”[4]

By early 1870, Marie-Aimée had gained perfect peace in her heart about being in China. She looked forward to a long and prosperous life of service, but the loving Heavenly Father had other plans. He longed to bring her into his eternal presence.

On June 21, 1870, Marie-Aimée Tillet was numbered among those killed by the angry mob in Tianjin. She and Sister Pavillion had taken refuge in the crypt, and were “inhumanly tortured when their hiding-place was discovered. A fire was made and they were roasted, the men holding their arms and legs.”[5] She was just 34-years-old.

1. Some sources give her name as Marie-Anne Noemi Tillet.
2. Herbert, The First Martyrs of the Holy Childhood, 30-31.
3. Herbert, The First Martyrs of the Holy Childhood, 31.
4. Herbert, The First Martyrs of the Holy Childhood, 31.
5. Herbert, The First Martyrs of the Holy Childhood, 330.