René Vilatte

French naturalized American Christian leader active in France and the United States

Sokolovsky "appears to have granted him some form of recognition", according to Brandreth. Margrander wrote that Sokolovsky intervened, approved Vilatte's confession of faith and his official acts, and referred him to the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church. Harding also corresponded with Russian General Alexander Kireev. John Basil wrote, in Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique, that Kireev knew Yuri Samarin, Ivan Aksakov and Fyodor Tyutchev and shared their views on Orthodoxy. His works attacked nihilism, which he "considered to be a corrosive agent derived from West European religious decay and carried into Russia by revolutionaries" and were about "Orthodoxy in its relation with Catholicism, the internal development of the Roman Papacy, which he saw as a corrupt tyranny, and the place of the Slavs in world affairs." "It is important to be aware of Kireev's roots in the Slavophile tradition, because his views on Russian political and ecclesiastical life can be understood only in this context", according to Basil. She was his source for "information about Russian affairs, particularly in respect of the union of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Old Catholics of the West." Benjamin Disraeli scoffed her as "the MP for Russia" in England. There was, and still is, a caste system among Indian Christians. To gain group status, they engaged in mass conversion campaigns, with a goal of increased adherents with maintained caste affiliation of the converts. For example, according to Bayly, baptized low caste Christians were "hived off into separate churches of their own" and not permitted to worship together. Writing about the Syro Malankara Catholic Church prior to its regaining Catholicity, William Richards wrote, in The Indian Christians of St. Thomas, that their history shows a constant effort to obtain bishops, of Syrian descent, in communion with the Holy See. Finally, in 1896, three Roman Syrian priests were consecrated as titular bishops, and sent to Travancore and Cochin as vicars apostolic. All the Roman Syrians are under these Metrans and they use the Syriac language in their churches. label the same figure as Vilatte, who is not mentioned in Richards' 1908 book. "The picture resembles definitely Mar Abdisho Thondanat", wrote Mar Aprem, in Mar Abdisho Thondanat. While M. Kurian Thomas explains, Vilatte "never visited India and the bishop on the far left is recognized as Mar Abdisho Thondanat" also a "cross examination with the portraits available with the Arch Bishop's house of the Chaldian Syrian Church at Thrissur, Kerala, India confirms that the bishop on the far left is Mar Abdisho Thondanat." This is not the denomination that consecrated Vilatte.

The denomination that consecrated Vilatte was a part of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church that had a Latin Rite patrimony. V. Nagam Aiya wrote, in Travancore State Manual, that Alvares "describe[d] his Church as the Latin branch of the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch." The Holy See sought to consolidate two co existing jurisdictions, the Padroado jurisdiction and the Congregation for Propagation of the Faith jurisdiction. Alvares was a Roman Catholic Brahmin. Aiya wrote that Alvares, an educated man and the editor of a Catholic journal, was a priest in the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Goa. Failing to maintain amicable relations with the Patriarch of the East Indies, Alvares left the RCC (Roman Catholic Church) and joined Mar Dionysius the Metropolitan in Kottayam who consecrated Alvares as bishop. Later, he returned with title of Alvares Mar Julius Archbishop of Ceylon, Goa and the Indies, and involved about 20 parishes in the Catholic Diocese of Jaffna and in the Catholic Archdiocese of Colombo on the island in his schism. Grafton thought they were deceived by Vilatte statements as to his relation to Grafton and the extent of his work. For its part, the Episcopal Church, on March 21, 1892, having already degraded from the priesthood and excommunicated Vilatte, stated in its General Convention of the same year that it did not recognize his consecration as it took place in a Miaphysite church which does not accept the dogmas of the Council of Chalcedon. Vilatte "did not give up without a struggle" and "[n]umerous letters from him are in the archives of St. Norbert Abbey, some of them of a threatening nature, all giving indirect testimony to the fact that the early Norbertines were successful in stemming the tide of [ ] doctrines and religious practices which were disturbing the peace of the Catholic Belgians on the peninsula." The missionaries succeeded, according to Kirkfleet, by "appealing to the native Catholic instinct of the Belgians rather than by refuting the doctrines of the apostate." Vilatte was not invited. Barrows wrote, in The World's Parliament of Religions, that people sought unsuccessfully to use the parliament for propaganda. Later that year, the first convention of the American Catholic Church (1894) (ACC1894) appointed Vilatte as its ecclesiastical head "without arbitrary powers". Constantine Klukowski wrote, in History of St. Mary of the Angels Catholic Church, Green Bay, Wisconsin, 1898–1954, that the 1894 Green Bay city directory lists Vilatte's cathedral "as 'American Catholic and its officials as: Vilatte, archbishop metropolitan and primate; Anton Francis Kolaszewski [pl], vicar general; Stephen Kaminski, consultor; and, Brother Nicholas, church manager. Asa result, he did not take a solemn vow of abjuration and was not reconciled with the Church at that time. Soon, according to the September 1, 1897 Milwaukee Journal, a Milwaukee German language newspaper printed a letter from Messmer warning people that women were soliciting funds using Messmer's and Katzer's names without authorization. They were seen and reported; when police arrived, "the priest who accompanied the sisters was called before the chief and questioned and cautioned as to obtaining money by any misrepresentations", according to the Milwaukee Journal. Vilatte felt the incident may have "left some wrong impressions" as they solicited funds, for developing the of forest, near Emery, Wisconsin; as Vilatte noted, all within 1 mile (2 km) of a logging road. "These sisters were in Milwaukee last week soliciting aid for the asylum, and in some quarters were denounced as frauds", he said. Then, similar to how the Sturgeon Bay seminary scandal began in 1887, he added, "we shall begin active operations within the next month" although "plans for the buildings have not been entirely completed as yet." He envisioned, "[t]he purpose of the church is to found a monastery" as an "agricultural brotherhood of the Old Catholic Church" with a seminary, and an orphanage to bring children "up to agricultural pursuits". A real estate agent working for the Wisconsin Central Railway added that, during his negotiations with Vilatte he visited his "large and flourishing congregation" in Green Bay. The agent said they purchased "fine agricultural land" covered with hardwood forest. Less than six months later, his diocese lost possession of its foreclosed cathedral.

Vilatte's "unilateral arrogation of status as an Old Catholic prelate did not, [ ] reflect objective fact", according to Laurence Orzell, in Polish American Studies. The "European Old Catholics neither sanctioned his consecration nor approved of his attempt to spread Old Catholicism to America." After successive annual conferences of the priests and delegates from parishes, a proposal to elect a Polish suffragan bishop was approved, and in 1897 the convention chose Kaminski from Buffalo, New York. According to Wacław Kruszka in Historya Polska w Ameryce, Kaminski did not attend any college, but learned how to play the organ from a local organist. He was organist at the independent Sweetest Heart of Mary Church in Detroit, Michigan (which Vilatte consecrated in 1893 The dedication ceremonies were marred by a riot, caused by protesters in the streets, that included a stabbing and shooting. In 1895, Kaminski and a faction of his adherents occupied the Polish parish church of St. Paul, a Catholic church of the Diocese of Omaha in South Omaha, Nebraska, where he conducted devotion "in his own way". It was rumored he started the fire that burned the church, at the end of that month, to a pile of rubble and ashes; Kaminski's faction damaged fire hydrants so there was no way to extinguish the fire. Kaminski was arrested. "As long as the conflict continued, the parish most often divorced itself from the jurisdiction of the accused bishop and stood independent of him, which did not mean that the parish did not consider itself belonging to the Catholic Church symbolized by the Pope. In the division with the bishops, the parish kept very strictly to the rules of the norm of religious life, finding in it a further support for the rightness of their cause." Return to the previous state of affairs, exist in isolation and then vanish, or create "a self determined religious movement" are the three alternative results, according to Kubiak. According to Kruszka, Kaminski once counted under his jurisdiction a parish in Buffalo, a parish in Chicopee, Massachusetts, and a parish in Baltimore, Maryland. Kaminski failed to persuade Gul to raise him to the episcopate. Vilatte demanded money for the consecration but Kaminski did not have enough to give. the basis for Polish discord, to facilitate the Russification of the Catholic Church. From 1898 to 1911 he edited and published a weekly Polish newspaper Warta, an organ of his independent church. He died in Buffalo on September 19, 1911.

Over the next few years Vilatte, according to Joanne Pearson in Wicca and the Christian Heritage, "carried on travelling and consecrating, truly a 'wandering bishop'". Margrander explains that this third episcopal consecration, of Marsh Edwards, conferred by Vilatte is noteworthy because the bishop elect was not celibate; Vilatte's precedent was followed by Gul in consecrating Arnold Mathew several years later. appeared some time in 1921 and was used to attract blacks to the Communist movement. The AOC (African Orthodox Church) "took great pains to demonstrate his legitimacy." Natsoulas wrote that it "was important to its mission that the new church be founded on solid grounds" and quoted McGuire's words that "[t]he Negro everywhere must control his own ecclesiastical organization" yet hold the Apostolic traditions. By the end of 1923 the ABB (African Blood Brotherhood) was no longer an "independent political organization" as it merged with the Workers Party of America; was an infamous impostor with worldwide notoriety. He represented himself, at different times, as D Benedetto, Comte Benedetto Donkin, Lord , Benedict Donkin, the cousin of the Earl of Minto, the son of the Duke of Devon. "In the world's long roll of impostors a prominent place must always be found for 'the Right Rev. Edward Rufane Benedict Donkin, Bishop of Santa Croce, and Vicar Apostolic of the Independent Roman Catholic Church'", begins his obituary in Adelaide's The Chronicle, who committed "a series of frauds" resulting in several imprisonments. Vilatte ordained Donkin. Years later, in 1904, while he represented himself as an Old Catholic Church bishop, Donkin started "what [was] purported to be an Old Catholic Benedictine Oratory" in a house previously "occupied by genuine Benedictines" and "opened almost entirely on credit." By August, "the bubble burst", Warren Fisher, who guaranteed the furnishings, discovered he had been swindled. Donkin "represented that he had been appointed by the Old Catholic Conference as their bishop at Oxford at a salary of £400 a year and that he produced what purported to be the official record of his appointment." Donkin induced him "to guarantee the bill for the furnishing of the Oratory" with a forged check and Fisher was left to pay his guarantee. Fisher then wrote to Vilatte, he responded, and Fisher forwarded his letter to Truth which published it. Vilatte wrote that when Donkin came to him in 1896, "he posed as 'The Rev Fr Dominic, OSA, Church of England Missioner, St Augustine's Priory, London,' and as such he was asked by the Protestant Episcopal clergy of Milwaukee to preach in their cathedral." And, as Vilatte wrote, "I was completely blinded and did ordain him to the priesthood" but "[a]bout eighteen months afterwards his true character was discovered, and I deposed and degraded him". Vilatte explained that a member of his clergy, who he noted was also "humbugged and swindled", introduced him to the impostor, the alias Lord Cortenay, son of the Duke of Devon; that "he 'took in' the clergy of Milwaukee"; that "Donkin never belonged to any 'community' in our Church"; but, Vilatte did not explain why he ordained Donkin, who he thought was a CoE (Church of England) cleric. Vilatte wrote that later Donkin "posed as a Bishop in Cleveland." Years earlier, in 1890–1891, while Lyne was on his tour of North America raising funds for his work in England,

Pearson argues that "concern with ancient, indigenous religions emerging and operating independently of the Church of Rome characterises the heterodox Christian churches of the episcopi vagantes in England, Wales and France" and "was a theme that was to influence the development of Druidry and Wicca." In 1909, after Lyne's death, two surviving Anglican monks, Asaph Harris and Gildas Taylor, were ordained, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, where Vilatte was staying during a visit of his missions in that part of North America. Charles Wood, 2nd Viscount Halifax, wanted Grafton to install Carlyle as abbot of the monastic community living as guests on Halifax's estate in Painsthorpe. Anson wrote, in The American Benedictine Review, that after Parrish left, it "appears that his followers were replaced or displaced by a group of young men who had been formed into a Benedictine brotherhood" by Brothers in Waukegan, Illinois, located outside Grafton's Diocese of Fond du Lac. A "rented house was named St. Dunstan's Abbey" with Grafton self appointed as "their absentee Abbot"; Anson thought "it may have been Kozlowski." Brothers was consecrated by Bishop Rudolph de Landas Berghes in 1916 and later deposed by him, for what "appears to have been" to Brandreth, "on the grounds that at the time of the consecration he had not, in fact, received the Orders of deacon and priest." The report includes part of an 1898 letter from Grafton, about Vilatte's character, published in Diocese of Fond du Lac, a newspaper. Grafton warned about Basil in that letter:
blockquote|Another co worker whom he ordained priest under the title of Father Basil, is a renegade from England, having formerly been connected with the Reformed Episcopal [C]hurch, and who fled to America, being accused as his bishop wrote me, of criminal conduct with boys. His name is George Reader, and the authorities of Scotland Yard wrote concerning him, that, while they did not give information to private parties, they would do so to the chief of police of any of our cities. efn|name=Grafton1898|

Louis François Girardot and Vilatte originated a pair of OCT (Order of the Crown of Thorns) groups. The two separately founded OCT (Order of the Crown of Thorns) orders had the same name but different origins and were combined, although it is not clear what that meant. The San Luigi organization says that the orders were inspired by the Ordre du Genest, founded by King Louis IX of France, and also that "it is not asserted that there is a continuous and historically verifiable link between the present day Order and these bodies." There are two separate foundation stories for the OCT (Order of the Crown of Thorns); one in 1883, the other in 1891. These foundation stories were not believed by some during Vilatte's lifetime; Guénon wrote that "dignitaries of this Church have a mania for titles of nobility as others have for fantastic decorations; thus [ Vilatte] invented the 'Order of the Crown of Thorns'."

The OCT (Order of the Crown of Thorns) was reputedly founded in 1883. According to the San Luigi organization, after the French protectorate of Tunisia was established in 1881, France sought to colonize the Ottoman Empire's Fezzan province as part of the Scramble for Africa. A small group of monks settled in Ghadames in 1883. The organization says that there is no documentation about their past. Nevertheless, the monks called their monastery the Abbey Principality of San Luigi and they claimed sovereignty, as a theocracy, over the surrounding secular territory. Disease was endemic; attempts to convert the local Muslim population to Catholicism were rejected; and in less than a year, on August 2, 1884, the monastery was sacked and at least one monk was murdered. Five monks, including what the organization calls their third abbot, José Mendoza, survived and were exiled. Mendoza was somehow elected by less than the canonically required twelve monks. Without mentioning the Sahara and Sahel situated between Ghadames and the Sudd, the organization says that the monks traveled across the Sudd and arrived in the Kingdom of Bunyoro Kitara on March 15, 1885. There, the organization says, Omukama Kabarega of Bunyoro granted territory to the monks to settle and establish a monastery. The organization says that Kabarega conferred a title, Mukungu of the Chieftainship of the Ancient Abbey Principality of San Luigi, upon Mendoza. In 1888, all the monks died from an epidemic, except Mendoza, who then abandoned the monastery in Bunyoro and returned to Europe. The organization says that "legalization by a French government official established the recognition of the Abbey Principality by the French state" when Seine Port Mayor Eugène Clairet was involved in a transfer of titles from Mendoza to Girardot. On May 7, 1899,again with Clairet's involvement, Girardot transferred those Mendoza titles to Vilatte. The organization says that the monastery, of at least seven monks, "was constitutionally independent as a theocratic state" and a "colonising power" under which "the local population had no political rights whatsoever" and "were to be subjugated under the absolute rule" of the monastery. The organization believes itself to be the legitimate de jure government in exile of its former territory in the Fezzan. "The Abbey Principality aims ultimately to secure the territorial restoration of the original Abbey Principality in Libya, but is aware that political and related considerations are likely to preclude this objective for the time being". The ICOC (International Commission on Orders of Chivalry) asserts that because "none of the Eastern Orthodox Patriarchal Sees possess any type of direct Sovereignty, [ ] the decorations instituted by them may not be deemed as equivalent to those bestowed by the Roman Pontiff not only in his Spiritual Capacity but also in his temporal position as Sovereign of the Vatican City State." "Protection is an attribute of Sovereignty, which none of these Sees actually posses", according to the ICOC (International Commission on Orders of Chivalry). Documents and blank diplomas of decorations of various orders were seized which included a number of blanks printed in Arabic and others bearing what purported to be, the signatures of living and dead prominent French statesmen. Five men were placed on trial, excluding Valensi, who was judged to be not mentally competent. The investigation was begun after a client became suspicious of the authenticity of the signatures on the diploma of the Tunisian order of Nichan Iftikhar that he purchased and reported the whole affair. Vilatte responded to a Le Catholique Français article about the diploma by saying that the article discredited him by incorrectly identifying him as the signatory. He denied having any thing to do with the published diploma, Valensi, or with the OLBC (Order of the Lion and the Black Cross). He said that his OCT (Order of the Crown of Thorns) had nothing in common with the diploma from the Principality of San Luigi. Vilatte said that his religious name was Mar Timothéus I and not Marie Timothée. In 1913 La Revue critique des idées et des livres printed an article about the Valensi affair based on Maurice Pujo's Pourquoi l'on a étouffé l'affaire Valensi, which connected it to organized crime. Pujo listed another Vilatte affiliated group, the Grand Prix Humanitarian of France and the Colonies, networked with a Georges Brassard conglomerate which included the make believe Free State of Counani. According to seized documents, Valensi was Chancellor to the Consul General in Paris for the make believe state. The self styled orders are described as "originating from private initiatives and aiming at replacing the legitimate forms of chivalric awards." The statement points out that, they "take their name from" extinct Orders or "which had been planned but were never realized or, which are truly fictitious and have no historical precedent at all." While they "style themselves as autonomous", these "private initiatives" qualify their names, according to the statement, with terms to "increase the confusion of those who are not aware of the true history of Orders of Knighthood and of their juridical condition." For example, "these alleged Orders claim for themselves such titles as Chivalric, Sovereign, Nobiliary, Religious, " "Among these private initiatives, which in no way are approved of or recognized by the Holy See, one can find alleged Orders such as" The Crown of Thorns and Lion of the Black Cross. Anson wrote that "stories went around Paris", after his 1925 recantation, that the pope was "prepared to allow Vilatte's ordination to the priesthood sub conditione, but that he had refused the papal offer, being convinced that he was a bishop as well as a priest." "No formal pronouncement on the validity of his orders was ever made by the Roman authorities." According to Marx and Blied, Merry del Val's opinion was that Vilatte was a genuine bishop. But Merry del Val "maintained that throughout his episcopal career Vilatte had so 'commercialized' ordinations and consecrations, that he himself was not able to regard them [those which Vilatte conferred] as valid."

Most works by Vilatte are not readily accessible. Based on WorldCat searches, some are only a single holding at one library.