John Baptist Mary David

Who was John Baptist Mary David?

John Baptist Mary David, S.S., was a French-born prelate of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. He served as bishop of the Diocese of Bardstown in Kentucky from 1832 to 1833.

David was born in Couëron, in the Province of Brittany in pre-revolutionary France. At age 7 he was placed under the care of his uncle, a priest, who instructed the boy in Latin, French, and music. He entered the nearby college of the Oratorians at age 14, and later the seminary of the Diocese of Nantes, receiving the tonsure in 1778. Ordained a priest on September 24, 1785, he joined the Society of Saint-Sulpice and taught philosophy, theology, and Scripture at the Sulpician seminary in Angers from 1786 until 1790, when the French Revolution forced him to seek shelter in the private home of a Catholic family.

In 1792, seeking safety, David was part of a small group of Sulpicians who left France for the United States, under the leadership of the Abbé Benedict Joseph Flaget, S.S., landing in Baltimore, Maryland. He then served in Maryland and as a professor at both Georgetown College and St. Mary's Seminary.