#pierredeberulle — Public Fediverse posts

Pierre de Bérulle: Cardenal, Fundador del Oratorio Francés y Arquitecto de un Renacimiento Espiritual

## Introducción
En el aniversario de su muerte, Pierre de Bérulle es recordado como el sacerdote francés cuya visión reformó el clero católico de su época. Fundó la escuela francesa de espiritualidad y estableció el Oratorio de Jesús, una…

#Akerix #IA #PierreDeBerulle #OratorioDeJesus #OratorioFrances
https://akerix.com/es/on-this-day/10-02-pierre-de-berulle-1629
📷 Wikimedia Commons

St. Vincent de Paul

Author’s Note: This post contains mentions of slavery. If this triggers you, you may go to the next post. We understand.

Vincent de Paul (April 24, 1581-September 27, 1660; 79 years old at the time of his passing) was a French Catholic priest who dedicated himself to serving the poor & is best known for founding the Congregation of the Mission & Daughters of Charity.

After being ordained a priest in 1600, de Paul was kidnapped/adult-napped (he was 19 years old at the time) & enslaved for 2 years in Tunis (This was a semi-autonomous territory of the Ottoman Empire; it’s in modern-day Tunisia). He returned to Europe after escaping in 1607 (26 years old at the time).

He then served as a parish priest & in the French royal court before dedicating himself to the poor, founding the Ladies of Charity in 1617 (36 years old at the time). In 1622, de Paul was appointed as chaplain to the galley slaves in Paris.

De Paul founded the Congregation of the Mission (a.k.a. the Vincentians or Lazarists) in 1625 (44 years old). Having vowed poverty, chastity, obedience, & stability, they were to devote themselves entirely to people in smaller towns/villages.

He was a pioneer in seminary education & also founded the Daughters of Charity in 1633 (52 years old). He’s the namesake of the Vincentian Family of organizations, which includes the religious order he founded, among others.

He was renowned for his compassion, humility, & generosity. He was canonized in 1737. He was venerated as a saint in both the Catholic Church & the Anglican Communion.

Vincent de Paul was born on April 24, 1581, in the village of Pouy, in the province of Guyenne & Gascony, Kingdom of France, to peasant farmers. His dad was Jean de Paul & his mom was Bertrande de Moras. He wrote the name on 1 word, Depaul, but none of his correspondents did so.

He had 3 brothers & 2 sisters. He was the 3rd child & demonstrated a talent for literacy early in life. He worked as a child, herding his family’s livestock. At age 15, his dad sent him to a seminary. He paid for this by selling the family’s oxen.

For 3 years, he studied at a college in Dax, Aquitaine. It adjoined a monastery of the Friars Minor (a.k.a. the Franciscans), where he resided. In 1597, he enrolled in theology at the University of Toulouse. The atmosphere at the university was rough. Fights broke out between various factions of students, which escalated into armed battles. An official was murdered by 2 students. Vincent continued his studies, financing them by tutoring others.

Vincent was ordained subdeacon & deacon at Tarbes Cathedral in the French Great South-West, near Périgueux. This was against the regulations established by the Council of Trent, which required a minimum of 24 years old for ordination. So when he was appointed parish priest in Tilh. An appeal against the appointment was made to the Roman Curia.

Rather than respond to a lawsuit in which he would probably not have prevailed, he resigned from the position & continued his studies. On October 12, 1604, he received his Bachelor of Theology from the University of Toulouse. Later, he received a Licentiate in Canon Law from the University of Paris.

Vincent wrote a letter in July 1607 & a postscript in February 1608 that described his experience of abduction & slavery. In 1605, he sailed from Marseille on his way back from Castres, where he had gone to sell property he’d inherited from a wealthy patron in Toulouse. He was taken captive by Barbary pirates, who took him to Tunis. Vincent was auctioned off as a slave, & spent 2 years in bondage.

His 1st “master” was a fisherman. But this wasn’t the life for Vincent because he got seasick. He soon was sold. His next “master” was a spagyric physician (this is a modern medical movement based on the theories & therapies of Paracelsus), alchemist, & inventor. Vincent became fascinated by his art & was taught how to prepare the attention of men who summoned him to Istanbul.

During the passage, the old man died & Vincent was sold once again. His new “master” was a former Catholic priest & Franciscan from Nice, Guillaume Gautier. Gautier had converted to Islam to gain his freedom from slavery & was living in the mountains with 3 wives.

The 2nd wife, a Muslim by birth, was drawn to & visited Vincent in the fields to question him about his faith. She became convinced that his faith was true & admonished her husband for renouncing his Christianity. Her husband became remorseful & decided to escape back to France with his slave.

They had to wait 10 months. But finally they secretly boarded a small boat & crossed the Mediterranean, landing in Aigues-Mortes on June 29, 1607. After returning to France, Vincent went to Rome. There he continued his studies until 1609, when he was sent back to France on a mission to King Henry IV.

Once in France, he made the acquaintance of Pierre de Berulle, whom he took as his spiritual advisor. Andre Duval, of the Sorbonne, introduced him to Canfield’s Rule of Perfection.

In 1612, he was sent as a parish priest to the Church of Saint-Medard in Clichy. In less than a year, Berulle recalled him to Paris to serve as a chaplain & tutor to the Gondi family. The Gondi family was a prominent Florentine banking family and a financial partner of the Medici family.

Although Vincent had initially begun his priesthood with the intention of securing a life of leisure for himself, he underwent a change of heart after hearing the confession of a dying peasant. It was the Countess de Gondi who persuaded her husband to endow & support a group of able & zealous missionaries who would work among poor tenant farmers & country people in general.

On May 23, 1643, after King Louis XIII had passed away, Queen Anne had her husband’s will annulled by the Parlement de Paul (a judicial body composed mostly of nobles & high clergymen), thereby making her the sole Regent. Anne appointed Vincent de Paul as her spiritual advisor.

He helped her deal with religious policy & the Jansenist issue. Jansenism is/was a 17th-18th century Christian theological movement within the Catholic Church, rooted in the writings of Dutch bishop Cornelius Jansen.

Vincent is the patron of all works of charity. Several organizations inspired by his work & teaching & which claim Vincent as their founder or patron saint are grouped in a loose federation known as the Vincentian Family.

Vincent died in Paris on September 27, 1660. Vincent’s body was exhumed in 1712, 53 years after his death. The written account of an eyewitness states that “the eyes & nose alone showed some decay.” However, when the body was exhumed again during the canonization in 1737, it was found to have decomposed due to an underground flood.

According to the custom of the time, his bones were encased in a waxen figure, which is displayed in a glass reliquary in the chapel of the mother house of the Vincentian fathers in Paris (the St. Vincent de Paul Chapel). His heart is still incorrupt & is displayed separately in a reliquary in the chapel of the mother house of the Daughters of Charity.

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Quote of the day, 9 January: The Carmel of Morlaix

The Carmelite friars were therefore fully justified in judging that Father de Bérulle exceeded his authority when, in 1620, he suddenly produced for the first time his Brief of 1614—whose existence he had until then concealed even from his two co-superiors—and attempted to invoke it in order to subject the Carmel of Morlaix to his jurisdiction.

Albert du Saint-Sauveur, O.C.D.

The story of the Carmel of Morlaix belongs to the unsettled early years of the Teresian Carmel in France. In 1619, at the request of the King and by mandate of the Holy See, a small community of Discalced Carmelite nuns came from Flanders to establish a new foundation at Morlaix. Morlaix is a port town in northern Brittany, in western France, situated between the dioceses of Tréguier and Saint-Pol-de-Léon—a location that would later prove decisive in the community’s fate. From the outset, the understanding was clear: the nuns were to live under the governance of the Discalced Carmelite friars. They came on those terms and with that expectation.

Before long, however, this arrangement was challenged. Pierre de Bérulle, Superior General of the Oratorians, asserted authority over the new foundation by appealing to an earlier papal brief. The difficulty was that this earlier document had already been set aside for Morlaix by a later papal act. What followed was not a disagreement about faith or religious observance, but a prolonged struggle over governance—one that placed a heavy burden on a young and vulnerable community of nuns.

Father Albert du Saint-Sauveur, OCD, writing in the 19th century, notes that later accounts often blurred these events, especially in ways unfavorable to the Carmelite Order. In these pages, he draws not only on the Carmelite annals of Father Louis de Sainte-Thérèse, OCD, but also on 17th-century historians, manuscript acts of the Assembly of the Clergy of France, archival letters preserved in Paris, and contemporary correspondence surrounding Pierre de Bérulle. Albert du Saint-Sauveur further observes that even long after the fact, details of the Morlaix foundation continued to be reused and reshaped to support particular narratives:

“Even in our own day, people have returned to exploiting all the details of this foundation, by distorting them.”

Unable to establish themselves in the part of Morlaix belonging to the diocese of Tréguier, the nuns found support in the neighboring diocese of Saint-Pol-de-Léon. There, Bishop René de Rieux authorized their foundation and offered them protection. Meanwhile, other Carmelite communities in France were pursuing their own appeals in Rome. These cases were separate, though they were often confused in later retellings.

In 1622, after the Morlaix nuns appealed directly to the King, a papal Bull was issued in their favor. Soon afterward, the Discalced Carmelite friars met in Provincial Chapter and made a notable decision: they formally renounced any claim to governing Carmelite nuns in France. Their intention was to remove even the appearance of self-interest. As Father Albert du Saint-Sauveur records:

“They declared themselves to renounce not only any such claim, but even to refuse the charge, should it be offered to them.”

Ironically, this renunciation was later used as an argument against the Morlaix community. A new papal brief placed the nuns under a different form of governance. During the uncertainty that followed, Bishop de Rieux continued to shelter the nuns, at one point even welcoming them into his own episcopal residence.

The conflict reached a painful climax when the Dean of Nantes, acting as a delegated official, imposed excommunications and interdicts not only on the nuns, but on the bishop’s residence and the cathedral itself. This provoked a strong reaction from the French bishops, gathered in the General Assembly of the Clergy, who denounced these actions as abusive. Their language was unusually blunt:

“Never has presumption been carried so far.”

Rome later annulled the Assembly’s declaration, and with the accession of a new Pope, the balance shifted decisively in Bérulle’s favor. Conferences were held, compromises proposed, and the immediate crisis gradually subsided.

In the end, the Discalced Carmelite nuns of Morlaix returned to Flanders. Father Albert du Saint-Sauveur is careful to note that this was not a punishment imposed upon them, but a concession to their steadfast refusal to accept a form of governance contrary to the terms under which they had come:

“Their departure was less an order imposed than a satisfaction granted to their refusal.”

The story of the Carmel of Morlaix is not an easy one, but it sheds light on the fragile beginnings of the Teresian Carmel in France. It reminds us how exposed early foundations could be, how much cloistered nuns could suffer from conflicts beyond their control, and how fidelity to their Teresian charism was sometimes preserved only at great cost.

Albert du Saint-Sauveur, O.C.D.

Annals of the Discalced Carmelites in France, 1608–1665
Adapted and translated by Carmelite Quotes

Note: The Carmelite nuns who came to Morlaix from Brussels and Tournai stood in the spiritual lineage of Blessed Anne of Jesus, who left France for Brussels in 1604 and died there in 1621, and Blessed Anne of Saint Bartholomew, who withdrew from France to Spanish Flanders in 1612. Both chose departure over prolonged conflict when disputes over governance threatened the peace of the Teresian Carmel. The stance of the Morlaix nuns reflects that same discernment—not resistance for its own sake, but fidelity to Saint Teresa’s charism when peace could no longer be preserved.

Readers who wish to explore the full historical account may consult the complete English translation (pp. 250–260) in the linked document.

Louis de Sainte-Thérèse OCD & du Saint-Sauveur A OCD 1891, Annales des Carmes-Déchaussés de France: de 1608 à 1665, nouvelle édn, vol. I, Chailland, imprimeur-libraire de l’Évêché, Chailland, France, pp. 250–260.

Translation from the French text is the blogger’s own work product and may not be reproduced without permission.

Featured image: Jean Janvier (French cartographer, 18th century), Le Royaume de France divisé par gouvernements militaires (1762) is an engraved map of France, published in Jean Lattre’s Atlas moderne (c. 1775). Image credit: Geographicus Rare Antique Maps / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

#CarmelInFrance #CarmelOfMorlaix #controversy #history #PierreDeBérulle

For, aside from the love I bore [Saint Teresa] and that she had for me, I had another great consolation in her company: almost continually I saw Jesus Christ in her soul and the manner in which He was united to it, as if it was his heaven. This knowledge filled me with the deep reverence one should feel in the presence of God. Truly it was heavenly to serve her, and the greatest torture was to see her suffer.

I spent about fourteen years with her. Immediately, when I entered to receive the habit, she took me into her cell, and during the rest of her life I was always with her, except during her journey to Seville; for then, as has already been said, I was sick at Avila. And these fourteen years seemed to me less than one day.”

Blessed Anne of St. Bartholomew

Book III, Chapter X

Born Ana García Manzanas on 10 October 1549 in Almendral de la Cañada, Spain, Blessed Anne of St. Bartholomew was a close companion of St. Teresa of Avila and a significant figure in the Carmelite Reform. She entered the Discalced Carmelite Order as a lay sister in 1570 and made her profession on 15 August 1572.

Anne served as St. Teresa’s nurse and secretary during the last years of the saint’s life and was with her until her death on 4 October 1582. This date marked the last day of the Julian calendar in Spain, and the next day, 15 October 1582, introduced the Gregorian calendar. St. Teresa died in Anne’s arms.

After St. Teresa’s death, Anne continued her work within the Order, living in Avila, Madrid, and Ocana. In 1604, she traveled to Paris with Venerable Anne of Jesus and a group of Carmelite nuns to establish the first Discalced Carmelite monastery in France. She was later elected prioress of Pontoise and Tours.

In 1611, seeking to escape the influence of Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle, Anne moved to Flanders to be under the spiritual leadership of the Discalced Carmelite friars. In 1612, she founded the Discalced Carmelite monastery in Antwerp, where she became known as the Protectress of Antwerp.

Anne of St. Bartholomew passed away on 7 June 1626 in Antwerp. She was beatified by Pope Benedict XV on 6 May 1917. Her feast day, 7 June, gives way to the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart this year.

Listen to the full biography on our podcast above!

Additional Resources

You can find Blessed Anne’s autobiography in ePub format for download on archive.org. A magisterial biography of Blessed Anne by Sister Paqui Sellés, OCD was published in 2014 on the Spanish blog, Teresa, de la Rueca a la Pluma, edited by the Discalced Carmelite nuns of Puçol (Valencia). The Discalced Carmelite General Postulation website also has a biography published in Italian.

Join us to pray and reflect on the Liturgy of the Hours for the Optional Memorial of Blessed Anne of St. Bartholomew.

Anne of St. Bartholomew, M; Bouix, M 1917,  Autobiography of the Blessed Mother Anne of Saint Bartholomew, inseparable companion of Saint Teresa, and foundress of the Carmels of Pontoise, Tours and Antwerp, translated from the French by Michael, M A, H. S. Collins Printing Co., Saint Louis.

Translation from the Italian text is the blogger’s own work product and may not be reproduced without permission.

Featured image: Y el almendro floreció (And the almond tree blossomed) is an oil on canvas painting by Sister Isabel Guerra, O.Cist., an artist from the monastery of Santa Lucia in Zaragoza, Spain. This artwork is found in one of the chapels in the Primatial Cathedral of St. Mary of Toledo, Spain. Image credit: Discalced Carmelites

https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/06/06/7jun24-podcast/

#Antwerp #biography #BlessedAnneOfStBartholomew #CarmelOfPontoise #PierreDeBérulle #Podcast #ProtectressOfAntwerp #StTeresaOfAvila

Some years before our departure for France, M. de Bretigny made a journey to Spain. He begged most earnestly of the Superiors of the Order permission to take some Spanish Carmelites to France; but he could not then succeed in his design.

Not having been able to get the Carmelites, he took home the writings of the Saint and had them translated into French. As in these works there is so much said in favor of France, the French servants of God who had devotion to our holy Foundress loved her more and more, and took new courage.

In several cities they gathered together some very virtuous high-born ladies to initiate them little by little into the spirit of this new Order. These reunions once well established, they asked permission of the king to found a monastery in Paris, desiring for this purpose to have Spanish Carmelites brought there; but in case the Carmelites were not willing, their plan was to have our Constitutions brought from Spain and be taught to these young ladies whom they had gathered together, with the intention of giving them the habit and making them daughters of the Order of our Holy Mother, St. Teresa. 

This first foundation having been arranged, the servant of God whom I mentioned above, M. de Bretigny, returned to Spain, bringing with him three noble French ladies. They intended, if their enterprise was successful, to take Spanish religious with them to France. Besides, during their stay in Spain, they were to learn the language of the country.

Messrs. Rene Gauthier and de Berulle also went to Spain, not without meeting great dangers at sea, as they themselves narrated. For our Lord tried their courage in every way and on all sorts of occasions. But they were so faithful to God and so firm in their design, that nothing terrified them.

They were several months in Spain without succeeding in obtaining religious from the Order. Seeing this, M. de Berulle and the others did their utmost and labored for a whole year before obtaining from the Superiors of the Order what they asked.

The deputation sent from France had to endure much labor and many affronts; this, because it was not known what great servants of God they were; for they certainly were such—their works and the zeal they showed for the glory of God proved their great fervor.

But in order that their virtue might be more purified, God permitted that they should not be esteemed at their proper worth. Some said that they were heretics, and other things of a similar nature. They suffered with much patience and humility, and, persevering in this way, their enterprise was crowned with success.

At last our Father General, Francis of the Mother of God, came to Avila with several Fathers of the Order to arrange for our departure. We left on the morning of the Feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist. [1604] Our Father General accompanied us a great part of the day. When he was obliged to leave us we begged his blessing. He gave it with an emotion that was shared by all the religious. In parting, both Fathers and daughters made a great sacrifice to God.

Two friars of our Order, great servants of God, two French priests, one of whom was M. de Berulle, and the other, M. Rene Gauthier, together with three Frenchmen on horseback, and several Spaniards, accompanied us on this journey. The three French ladies were alone in one carriage and the six religious in another. We were together in the inns.

The French ladies taught us their language; it must be acknowledged we did not make great progress in it; we learned sufficient, however, to understand most of what was said to us. But we did not speak fluently; we could, with difficulty, say only a few sentences. Our Lord wished to humble us in this, and I think it was best for us, for by speaking little we did not give disedification. Every nation has its own customs.

Blessed Anne of St. Bartholomew

Third Book, Chapter 1, Deputation Sent From France

“Every nation has its own customs,” wrote Blessed Anne. Truer words were never spoken. The influence of “Monsieur de Bérulle” upon the Carmelites in France grew and expanded as his authority expanded, not only in the Church but also in government.

Considered by many as the founder of the French School of Spirituality, he collaborated with Blessed Marie of the Incarnation, better known as Madame Acarie, in the foundation of the first Discalced Carmelite monastery in Paris, the original destination of Blessed Anne of St. Bartholomew, Venerable Anne of Jesus and their traveling companions in 1604. 

As a priest, Pierre de Bérulle was passionate in his ministry. Educated by the Jesuits, he had only been ordained five years earlier when he set out on his great adventure in Spain in the year 1604. In 1611, he undertakes another great project: the foundation of an Oratory in France similar to the Oratory founded by Philip Neri in Italy.

In the space of 18 years, Bérulle founded 40 Carmels and 60 houses for his Oratorians in France.

As his fame spread in the Church in France, he naturally attracted the attention of the royal family, as well. In 1625, he became a personal chaplain to Queen Consort Henrietta Maria of France, the wife of England’s King Charles I.

In 1627, Pope Urban VIII insisted upon creating him a Cardinal. His influence in affairs of state continued to develop when he was named head of the queen’s council, then councilor of state. Through all of this, Bérulle’s influence on the French Carmelites remained firm.

But there was dissension. The Venerable Anne of Jesus, Blessed Anne of St. Bartholomew’s companion in making the original foundation, believed that Bérulle was leaving an imprint upon the Carmels in France that decidedly was not in keeping with the Teresian ideal. Further, she desired for the nuns to be directed by Discalced Carmelite friars. Frustrated, in 1607, she accepted an offer from the Archduke of Belgium to transfer to Flanders, where she founded Carmels in Brussels, Louvain, and Mons.

Blessed Anne of St. Bartholomew had moved from Paris to Pontoise where she was elected prioress (1605) and then assumed the same office in the Carmel of Tours (1608). But in 1611, she too was called to make the journey north. She left on 5 October, “the day following the anniversary of the death of the Saint.” She wrote that she “had no desire to go to Flanders,” but Anne of Jesus needed her in Mons, and she would go on to found the Carmel of Antwerp.

Meanwhile, in France, the spirituality of le Carmel Bérullien that so concerned Venerable Anne of Jesus continued to thrive without the Spanish foundresses. Cardinal de Bérulle died suddenly while he was celebrating Mass on 2 October 1629, making the greatest ecclesiastical figure in France seem larger than life. His legacy did not fade.

Discalced Carmelite theologian François-Marie Léthel points out that the Bérullien influence is seen in the writings of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus. For example, Christocentrism is one of the hallmarks of his French School of spirituality. Father Léthel indicates that Thérèse refers to the name of Jesus twice as much as she mentions “God”: more precisely, she writes the name of Jesus more than 1600 times, but she only makes roughly 800 references to “God” (Léthel 2011).

Antoinette Guise Castelnuovo has carefully documented the history of the Bérullien crisis in the 20th century. In response to the promulgation of the new Code of Canon Law in 1917, all religious orders were obliged to revise their constitutions, including the Discalced Carmelites.

In France, disorder reigned supreme; every Carmel’s superior was the local bishop, and none of the local superiors consulted with one another. Thus, the nuns of the Carmel of Clamart—the post-revolutionary re-foundation of the original Carmel of Paris in Faubourg Saint Jacques—undertook the task to issue a set of constitutions in 1924 that might unify the Discalced Carmelites of the so-called “French Observance”. Getting Vatican approval for their text was another matter completely. (Castelnuovo 2015)

Every other Discalced Carmelite monastery worldwide turned to the general curia of the Discalced Carmelite friars for their care and direction. In short order, the friars’ revised constitutions for the nuns were approved in 1926. In France, no word of approval had been received yet.

At this point, St. Thérèse’s own sister, Mother Agnès of Jesus—then the prioress in Lisieux—saw an opportunity to restore a true Teresian spirit in France and make Venerable Anne of Jesus’ dream a reality, that the nuns in France might once again submit to the governance of the Discalced Carmelite friars in Rome.

Although Mother Agnès herself enjoyed an office that was hardly Teresian, having been named prioress-for-life by Pope Pius XI in 1923, she had gained a level of influence, unlike no other prioress, due to her tireless efforts to make Thérèse known, loved, and canonized. She set forth to use that influence to seek the imposition of the friars’ constitutions in France.

Castelnuovo describes the conflict between Mother Agnès and the Carmel of Clamart as degenerating from a struggle for influence into an all-out fratricidal war. Letters to the apostolic nuncio, the Sacred Congregation for Religious, and even to the pope were flying fast and furious.

Mother Agnès wrote in 1925 to the nuncio, Archbishop Cerretti, that she was confident that 12 to 15 monasteries would pass to the Teresian observance with Lisieux; she said the “Bérullien Carmels” who would stick with Clamart were blind.

In 1927, Mother Agnès sent a confidential report to the new nuncio, Archbishop Maglione, outlining why this or that Carmel—although desirous to adopt the friars’ constitutions—could not do so. In every case, although the nuns were in favor of the change, the superior (either the bishop or his delegate) prevented such a transition. Nevertheless, a handful of monasteries joined Lisieux and adopted the friars’ constitutions of 1926.

Sadly, Mother Agnès learned in 1931 that the prioress of the Carmel of Agen circulated a letter among her fellow prioresses in the circle of Bérullien Carmels, accusing those who followed the 1926 Constitutions like Lisieux of being “lax” and “mitigated”.

In her historical study, Castelnuovo draws a distinct correlation at this point between the Lisieux-Clamart conflict in the 1920s and the constitutional crisis between the followers of Saint Maria Maravillas (1990 Constitutions) and the majority of the nuns who were committed to the direction of the Discalced Carmelite friars (1991 Constitutions). The similarities are striking.

To resolve the conflict in France, the Sacred Congregation for Religious issued a decree on 20 September 1936 to impose the adoption worldwide of the 1926 Constitutions revised by the Discalced Carmelite friars’ general curia in Rome.

This was an unprecedented action that proved unsuccessful; the Bérullien Carmelites refused to accept the decree of the Sacred Congregation and continued to follow their French Observance.

Divine intervention finally came with the nomination of an apostolic visitator in 1948: the vicar general of the Discalced Carmelite friars who was himself a native of France, Blessed Marie-Eugène of the Child Jesus. It was a stroke of genius. Castelnuovo notes that  Bérulle in his day had placed great importance in the role of a visitator. St. Teresa, for her part, had great recourse to the visitators to save her reform.

Marie-Eugène was known and respected by all, thanks to his preaching during the canonization of Thérèse. Now, he had 130 Carmels to visit; he began in September 1948 and completed his visits in March 1951, delivering his report at the end of the month. In the meantime, Pope Pius XII published Sponsa Christi and an Instruction concerning the cloister.

No longer was there simply a matter of constitutional conformity in France to deal with; Blessed Marie-Eugène also realized that the Carmelites needed guidance in the implementation of Sponsa Christi, as well. He set to work as an invaluable courier between the Holy See and the nuns, helping the pope to safeguard the contemplative vocation and helping the nuns to broaden their horizons.

In a final, grand effort to assure that his hard work would not be wasted and that the new-found unity of the Discalced Carmelite nuns in France might be preserved, Blessed Marie-Eugène of the Child Jesus took the bold step of assisting the nuns to organize themselves into four federations according to geographic location. Two federations in the north, conforming to the friars’ Paris Province, and two federations in the south under the care of the Province of Avignon-Aquitaine were established, and Marie-Eugène himself was the assistant to all four federations.

Anne of St. Bartholomew, M; Bouix, M 1917,  Autobiography of the Blessed Mother Anne of Saint Bartholomew, inseparable companion of Saint Teresa, and foundress of the Carmels of Pontoise, Tours and Antwerp, translated from the French by Michael, M A, H. S. Collins Printing Co., Saint Louis.

Guise Castelnuovo, A 2015, ”Femmes en réseau et centralisation romaine : le gouvernement des
carmélites de France au XXe siècle,’ Les Carnets du LARHRA, 2015, Gouverner l’Eglise au XXe
siècle, no. 28, pp.109-131, halshs-01404512, viewed 17 April 2024, <https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01404512/document>

Lethel, F 2011, La lumière du Christ dans le coeur de l’Église : Jean-Paul II et la théologie des saints : retraite de carême avec Benoît XVI, 13-19 mars 2011, Parole et Silence, Paris.

Translation from the French text is the blogger’s own work product and may not be reproduced without permission.

Featured image: This is a detailed image from a stained glass window in the 1946 series by French stained glass artist Raphaël Lardeur in the Church of Notre-Dame des Blancs-Manteaux (Our Lady of the White Mantles, the French Order of the Servants of the Blessed Virgin, founded in 1257 and suppressed in 1274). It shows Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle blessing the Discalced Carmelite nuns who were brought to Paris from Spain through the resourceful efforts of Madame Acarie. A curiosity: the artist did not depict the nuns in their white mantles, which they most certainly would have worn to receive the Cardinal’s blessing. Image credit: GFreihalter / Wikimedia Commons (Some rights reserved)

https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/04/17/acarie-customs/

#BlessedAnneOfStBartholomew #BlessedMarieEugeneOfTheChildJesus #BlessedMaryOfTheIncarnation #CarmelOfLisieux #conflict #Constitutions #DiscalcedCarmelite #federations #FrançoisMarieLéthel #France #friars #history #MadameAcarie #nuns #PaulineMartin #PierreDeBérulle #Spain #VenerableAnneOfJesus