Louis (Pierre) Auguste Jalla

Translation from Dizionario Biografico Dei Protestanti in Italia

Louis Auguste Jalla

Louis (Pierre) Auguste Jalla (November 28, 1809 - December 25, 1883) Waldensian pastor.

Biography

Born in Torre Pellice, was the son of the Rev. Jean Jacques Daniel, then rector of the Latin School , and Marie Anne Mathilde Brez, and the fifth of seven children. In 1813, at the age of four years, orphaned of his mother, he spent his childhood in the village of handle, in the Val Germanasca, whose father had accepted the pastoral care, but he soon returned to Torre Pellice to attend the School Latin America, the first of his secondary education at the Académie of Lausanne, where he was to board the historic origin of the Waldensian Antoine Monastier with other fellow students, and those in the theological faculty of Strasbourg and Montauban (1831-1832), where he was ordained to the pastoral ministry in 1833. He returned to the Waldensian valleys was assigned to the church then vacant Solid, where he remained four years.

On 27 July 1837 he married Adèle in Turin, daughter of Samuel Biolley , a Swiss native of Neuchatel, rich owner of a foundry in the capital of Piedmont.

The July 15, 1837 Louis, succeeding his father, he was appointed pastor of the parish of handle, where the children were born Giulio Jalla in 1838 and Adèle in 1840, which were raised after the death of his mother Adele, which occurred July 23, 1841 when he was twenty-four years, her aunt Betsy.

During the years of his ministry to handle managed to raise the money for the rebuilding of the temple, which collapsed in 1838 under the weight of snow, on a journey of raising funds in the canton of Neuchâtel: the new building was opened in September 1841.

Louis, after seven years of widowhood, married July 7, 1848 in Turin with his brother's wife Aline Biolley (1824-1895), with whom he had ten more children: Augustine (1850-1850), Emile (1851-1852), Léon (1853-1857), Edward Jalla (1856-1938), pastor and director of the publishing Claudiana, Léon (1858-1862), Emile (1862-1862), Louis Jalla (1860-1942) and Adolfo Jalla (1864-1946 ), pastors and missionaries in Africa, Theophilus (1866-1931), an agronomist and finally John Jalla (1868-1935), historian and teacher.

Following the family tradition, often hosted British travelers passing in the Waldensian Valleys, they described in their accounts of family life and the pastoral work of Jalla. In 1849 he was appointed pastor in Villasecca, going on to Alexandre Rostaing. and remained there until all'emeritazione in 1872. It was a very large parish, which includes the villages of Traverse, San Martino and Bovile, the Riclaretto populous valley, the valley of Faetto and townships of the two sides of the valley up to the borders of Fenestrelle and from the plains up to Pomaretto; also the pastor had the care of some families Waldensian inhabitants in the Catholic country of Perranporth.

Awarded the board, Louis moved with his family in the house Jalla placed in the center of Torre Pellice, who had it restored and zoom in previous years. In 1876, following a fall took place during a visit to his former parishioners in Val Germanasca almost completely lost the use of his legs. Stricken with paralysis, died at Torre Pellice on Christmas Day of 1883.

Archival sources

Archive of the Waldensian Studies Society (ATV), Fund Family Cards Jalla.

Bibliography

JPP, M. Louis Pasteur Emeritus Jalla, in "The Témoin", no. 1, 4 January 1884.