Women of Modern France

by Hugo P. Thieme

The entire religious agitation of the seventeenth century was due to women. Port-Royal was the centre from which issued all contention—the centre where all subjects were discussed, where the most important books were written or inspired, where the genius of that great century centred; and it was to Port-Royal that the greatest women of France went, either to find repose for their souls or to visit the noble members of their sex who had consecrated their lives to God—Mère Angélique, Jacqueline Pascal. Never in the history of the world had a religious sect or party gathered within its fold such an array of great minds, such a number of fearless and determined heroines and esprits d'élite. A short account of this famous convent must precede any story of its members.

The original convent, Port-Royal des Champs, near Versailles, was founded as early as 1204, by Mathieu of Montmorency and his wife, for the Cistercian nuns who had the privileges of electing their abbess and of receiving into their community ladies who, tired of the social world, wished to retire to a religious asylum, without, however, being bound by any religious vows. Later on, the sisters were permitted to receive, also, young ladies of the nobility.

These privileges were used to such advantage that the institution acquired great wealth; and through its boarders, some of whom belonged to the most important families of France, it became influential to an almost incalculable degree. For four centuries this convent had been developing liberal tendencies and gradually falling away from its primitive austerity, when, in 1605, Sister Angélique Arnauld became abbess and undertook a thorough reform. So great was her success in this direction that, after having effected similar changes at the Convent of Maubuisson and then returned to Port-Royal des Champs, the latter became so crowded that new and more commodious quarters had to be obtained.

The immense and beautiful Hôtel de Cluny, at Paris, was procured, and a portion of the community moved thither, establishing an institution which became the best known and most popular of those French convents which were patronized by women of distinction. The old abbey buildings near Versailles were later occupied by a community of learned and pious men who were, for the most part, pupils of the celebrated Abbé of Saint-Cyran, who, with Jansenius, was living at Paris at the time that Mère Angélique was perfecting her reforms; she, attracted by the ascetic life led by the abbé, fell under his influence, and the whole Arnauld family, numbering about thirty, followed her example.

Soon "the nuns at Paris, with their numerous and powerful connections, and the recluses at Port-Royal des Champs, together with their pupils and the noble or wealthy families to which the latter belonged, were imbued with the new doctrines of which they became apostles." The primary aim was to live up to a common ideal of Christian perfection, and to react against the general corruption by establishing thoroughly moral schools and publishing works denouncing, in strong terms, the glaring errors of the time, the source of which was considered, by both the Abbé of Saint-Cyran and Jansenius, to lie in the Jesuit Colleges and their theology. Thus was evolved a system of education in every way antagonistic to that of the Jesuits.

At this time the convent at Paris became so crowded that Mère Angélique withdrew to the abbey near Versailles, the occupants of which retired to a neighboring farm, Les Granges; there was opened a seminary for females, which soon attracted the daughters of the nobility. An astounding literary and agricultural activity resulted, both at the abode of the recluses and at the seminary: by the recluses were written the famous Greek and Latin grammars, and by the nuns, the famous Memoirs of the History of Port-Royal and the Image of the Perfect and Imperfect Sister; a model farm was cultivated, and here the peasants were taught improved methods of tillage. During the time of the civil wars the convent became a resort where charity and hospitality were extended to the poor peasants.

"The mode of life at Port-Royal was distinguished for austerity. The inmates rose at three o'clock in the morning, and, after the common prayer, kissed the ground as a sign of their self-humiliation before God. Then, kneeling, they read a chapter from the Gospels and one from the Epistles, concluding with another prayer. Two hours in the morning and a like number in the afternoon were devoted to manual labor in the gardens adjoining the convent; they observed, with great strictness, the season of Lent." Their theories and practices, and especially their sympathy with Jansenius, whose work Mars Gallicus attacked the French government and people, aroused the suspicions of Richelieu. When in 1640 the Port-Royalists openly and enthusiastically received the famous work, Augustinus, of Jansenius, the government became the declared opponent of the convent. Saint-Cyran had been imprisoned in 1638, and not until after the death of Richelieu, in 1642, was he liberated. After the appearance, in 1643, of Arnauld's De la Fréquente Communion, in which he attacked the Jesuits for admitting the people to the Lord's Supper without due preparation, two parties formed—the Jesuits, supported by the Sorbonne and the government, and the Port-Royalists, supported by Parliament and illustrious persons, such as Mme. de Longueville.

In 1644, the nuns were dispersed by order of Louis XIV., against whose despotic caprices two Jansenist bishops had fought in support of the rights of the pope. The Paris convent remained closed until 1669, when it and the one at Chevreuse, near Versailles were made independent of each other, a proceeding which resulted in the two institutions becoming opponents. In 1708 the Convent of Port-Royal des Champs was suppressed, and, a year later, the beautiful and once prosperous community was destroyed, the buildings being levelled to the ground. In 1780 the Paris convent was abolished; five years later the structure was converted into a hospital, and in 1814 it became the lying-in asylum of La Maternité.