Giorgio Appia

Giorgio (Georges Edouard Antoine) Appia was born on 9 January 1827, at Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where his father Paul (originally from Torre Pellice) was pastor of the French-speaking reformed church. His mother was Caroline Develay, belonging to a family of Yverdon in the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel. Giorgio was the youngest of six brothers and sisters: Pauline (1815-1889), Marie (1816-1886), Louis (1818-1898, physician and founder with Henri Dunant of the International Red Cross), Cécile (1820-1858), and Louise (1825-1904, director of the female high school of Torre Pellice.)

Appia began his secondary studies at the age of 12 at the boarding school in the town of Boeningheim, in Württemberg, continuing them in 1842 at the Nuremberg gymnasium, reputedly one of the best in Germany, from 1843 to 1845 at the Hanau high school. He then enrolled in the Facoltà di Teologia di Ginevra, the city where his brother Louis had studied medicine and where his sisters Marie (married to Jacques Claparède) and Cécile (married to the painter Gabriel de Beaumont) lived.

In 1846 Appia obtained a scholarship for the University of Bonn, where he began his theological studies: the following year he was in Halle, and then in 1848 he participated in the revolutionary uprisings of the year, going to Berlin. He then moved to Paris where his sister Pauline lived with her pastor husband Louis Vallette and where she began working as a teacher and then deputy director of the Protestant Normal School (teaching institute) of Courbevoie. At the end of this working interlude, he resumed theological studies at the Faculties of Theology at Geneva and Strasbourg, but following his father's death in 1849, he went through a serious spiritual crisis and a long period of illness, which he spent in Paris in the company of his mother.

In the summer of 1852 he stayed in the house of his childhood friend, Davide Pellegrin, in San Giovanni in the Waldensian valleys, an experience which led him to settle in his family's town of origin, Torre Pellice, preaching and assisting the local pastors. In August 1853 he defended his thesis at the University of Strasbourg and after a few weeks he was ordained at Torre Pellice.

His first assignment in the Waldensian Church was teaching at the Waldensian College, at the Normal School of Torre Pellice and in 1854, (after the arrival of his sister Louise to take over direction of the school), also at the Female High School, the Pensionnat. With his sister he founded a school for poor girls, including an internship for those left without a family also due to the period of economic crisis and crop diseases, which plunged the population into poverty.

Alongside these pedagogical and social commitments, Appia undertook evangelical preaching in religious awakening meetings both in the Valleys and in the surrounding villages, and in the Sunday Schools established for the catechesis of the young.

Back in Paris, he assisted his brother-in-law pastor Vallette in the Lutheran church of Saint Marcel for a few months between 1857 and 1858, during which he met Helen Sturge, a young Englishwoman belonging to a family of Quaker industrialists. They became engaged and were married on 12 July 1859. The couple would have eight children, of whom only three survived: these were Henry (1861-1901, pastor and professor of theology in Geneva), Louis (1863-1937, pastor in Paris), and Marie (1872-1957, who married her cousin Thomas Sturge-Moore).

Having decided to return to Italy, his first pastoral charge was Pinerolo, where (in 1860) he inaugurated the Waldensian temple. Appointed for a year as professor at the Waldensian Faculty of Theology, he was a strong supporter of the opportunity to move the headquarters from Torre Pellice to Florence. In 1861, he was appointed pastor to Palermo, where (having followed Garibaldi's Thousand), he formed a community in the local hotel, before (from 1862 to 1866) moving to Naples, the city where he founded the first Waldensian communities in the South. His work in Sicily extended to Siracusa, Messina, Trapani, Agrigento, Catania, with the help of colporteurs such as Stefano Cereghino.

Becoming involved in Garibaldi's efforts towards national reunification, in 1866 he participated in the battle of Bezzecca. The costly battle against the Austrians led him to approach Garibaldi to organize -- with his brother Louis, the English engineer William Jervis (then director of the Industrial Museum of Turin) and Giovanni De Vivo -- the first assistance service for the wounded (Garibaldi himself had descended into the battle in a carriage because he was carrying a wound from a previous engagement). It was at this time that he came into contact with Alessandro Gavazzi, Garibaldi's chaplain and future founder of the Free Christian Church.

From 1866 to 1868 Appia was recalled to the Waldensian Faculty of Theology in Florence as professor of exegetical theology, and minister of the Florentine Waldensian community. In 1867, after the death of Gioacchino Gregori due to cholera, he offered to take his place at the head of the church in Naples -- from there, he also visited Catania for some time, assisted by the pastor Mordocheo De Vita. Across this whole time, he was intensely engaged in frequent assignments for the Waldensian Synod (also of representation abroad) and in study commissions -- from 1866 to 1868 he was a member of the Evangelization Committee.

In May 1868 he went to the United States to collect money for the construction of a church in Naples, remaining there until the following year, when he accepted a call to the Lutheran Church of Paris. He thus became pastor of the main church of the Billettes and the community of popular neighborhoods, and assuming the position of chaplain of the Maison des Diaconesses at Reuilly.

In 1870 -- with the Commune and the Franco-Prussian siege -- he moved to the Lutheran parish of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. From 1874 he took over the care of the Rédemption, in the centre of Paris, without neglecting preaching in the various places of worship open for the purpose of evangelization in the city and commitments to Sunday Schools and youth associations, as well as, in collaboration with his sister Louise, anti-prostitution work. He also supported missionary work, as a committee member of the Société des Missions of Paris from 1874, of which he was vice president from 1883.

Appia was also a member of the Société des Écoles du Dimanche, president of the French section of the Alliance Évangélique, and a member of the Société d'Histoire Vaudoise from its foundation. In June 1910 he participated in the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, which he was however forced to leave due to the worsening of his health.

Transferred to Paris, he continued to spend the summer months with his family in Rorà and Torre Pellice, and it was there that he died on 19 September 1910 at his home in the “Airals Blancs”. Alongside his theological and historical writings, he was a talented artist, both writer and illiustrator of his own publications.

Chief works

Roma e la Scrittura. Dieci lettere al canonico Dom. Turano in risposta all’opera sua Il Cattolicesimo (Palermo, 1862).

Scènes illustrées de la Rentrées des Vaudois. Récits authentiques (Paris: Société des Écoles du Dimanche, 1889).

'Guillaume III et son rôle dans l’histoire de la Rentrée', in Bulletin de la Société d’Histoire Vaudoise 6, 1889: 56-84.

Souvenirs des martyrs de Chine (Paris: Société des Missions évangéliques, 1901).

Á l’aurore d’un nouveau siècle. 1800-1900, (Paris: Société des Écoles du Dimanche, 1901).

Noël à travers les âges (Torre Pellice, Tip. Alpina, 1914).

Sources

Ballesio, Gabriella, 'Giorgio Appia', Dizionario Biografico dei Protestanti in Italia, https://www.studivaldesi.org/dizionario/evan_det.php?secolo=XIX&evan_id=55.

Tourn, G., Giorgio Appia dalle Alpi alla Sicilia (Torino: Claudiana, 1964).