Angélique Arnauld

French abbess, religious reformer, and Jansenist leader

• Born: 1591
• Birthplace: Unknown
• Died: August 6, 1661
• Place of death: Port-Royal, Paris, France

Appointed abbess of the Cistercian convent of Port Royal at age eleven, Arnauld reformed the convent according to the principles first of the Catholic reform movement and then of Jansenism. Through her actions and writings, she served as a leader of the Jansenist movement, as well as becoming the spiritual matriarch of her prominent family.

Early Life

Born the fourth of twenty children to Antoine Arnauld and Catherine Arnauld, possibly in Tours, France, Angélique Arnauld (ahn-zhay-leek ahr-noh) had a less than idyllic childhood. The number of her siblings (nine of whom survived to adulthood), the rise to prominence of her family, and her mother’s favoritism toward her younger brother meant that Angélique received little maternal affection. In her writings, she complained bitterly of a beating she had received for inappropriate behavior on a religious holiday. Arnauld spent increasing time with her maternal grandfather, Simon Marion, the attorney general of the parlement of Paris. Her feeling of disconnectedness from her nuclear family can be seen in her decision to call herself “Jacqueline Marion” when she stayed with her grandfather. Headstrong from an early age, Arnauld discouraged visits from her brothers and sisters in order to keep her more demonstrative grandfather to herself. From her earliest years, Arnauld exhibited a strong sense of self that often set her at odds with her family.

Life’s Work

The ascendance of the Arnauld family as members of the nobility of the robe and the large number of Arnauld children destined all but one of the girls for convent life. In consultation with the abbot of Cîteaux, Simon Marion sought to place his favorite granddaughter in the post of abbess of Port-Royal-des-Champs upon the death of then-abbess Jeanne de Boulehart. Although both the abbess and King Henry IV agreed to the arrangement, the pope required that Arnauld first become a nun. The eight-year-old Arnauld thus entered the convent of Saint-Antoine before being sent to Maubuisson as a novice under Angélique d’Estrées, sister of the king’s mistress, Gabrielle d’Estrées, duchesse de Beaufort. During the novitiate, Marion had his granddaughter’s name changed to Angélique. In 1601, at the age of ten, Arnauld received approval to become the next abbess of Port-Royal; Marion had indicated her age as seventeen on the application to the pope. After the death of Boulehart in July, 1602, the young Arnauld assumed her new post.

Arnauld was ambivalent about convent life. Although pleased that she was in a position of power, she felt no calling. At the time, social status and political loyalties counted for more in the appointment of abbesses than piety. Although Arnauld continued to enjoy nature and read novels and Roman histories, she missed her grandfather and the life she had led. Angered when her eldest sister, Catherine, the most pious of the Arnauld girls, was married to a lawyer, Angélique considered running away.

Fate intervened during Lent of 1608, when the sermon of a friar inspired Arnauld. She began to reflect on the gifts God had given her and was saddened that she had not responded properly. So profound was the change that she considered resigning as abbess for a life of inward devotion. Wrestling with her feelings of pride, Arnauld began to channel her ideas toward reform. She began by fasting and imposing rigorous self-discipline, then turned to the convent in her charge. Both her parents and the families of other nuns at Port-Royal opposed the reforms that Arnauld began instituting.

During the Feast of All Saints in 1608, Arnauld received inspiration from another sermon. The preacher took his theme from the Beatitudes in Matthew 5: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” To the seventeen-year-old Arnauld, the message was clear. She reimposed strict enclosure, as well as fasting, penitence, prayer, and silence, as the basis of convent life.

The turning point for Angélique and the entire Arnauld family occurred on September 25, 1609, remembered as the journée du guichet (Day of the Grille). When her parents and two of her siblings visited Port-Royal, Arnauld met them at the window and refused admittance. The abbess did not want her reforms endangered by her family. Heated words were exchanged for several hours before her parents left, her mother threatening she would never again speak to Arnauld. For the young abbess, it was a pivotal moment in her resolve for reform and against hypocrisy. She had not been given a choice about becoming a nun, but now that she had power, she intended to exercise it. Arnauld’s declaration of independence gave her the freedom she needed to further her program. In the process, she became one of the leading figures in the Catholic reform movement. During the next two decades, all of Arnauld’s sisters and even her widowed mother would become nuns at Port-Royal. The abbess became the spiritual leader not only of a convent, but of her family as well. Soon her brothers too would be drawn to her reformed spirituality.

In the years that followed her conversion, Arnauld insisted that only novices with a vocation be admitted to Port-Royal; nuns with no calling were asked to leave. She also succeeded in making the office of abbess elective. In 1618, the head of the Cistercian Order invited her to implement her reforms at the convent of Maubuisson. The battles that followed between the ousted abbess and her soldiers and those of Arnauld and her followers seem almost comical in retrospect. The fight for control of Maubuisson typified the conflict between those who sought to protect aristocratic privilege and others who wanted real reform.

Arnauld became increasingly dissatisfied with what she viewed as the laxity of the Cistercians and considered joining the new Visitandine order of Saint Francis de Sales, briefly her confessor. Seeing her gifts as lying elsewhere, however, the future saint discouraged the change. In the meantime, Arnauld moved her nuns from Port-Royal-des-Champs’s marshy site near Versailles to Paris in 1624. The community flourished, attracting increasing numbers of bourgeois women.

In the following year, Arnauld withdrew Port-Royal from the Cistercian Order and placed it under the guidance of Bishop Sébastien Zamet’s new Institute of the Holy Sacrament. Trouble followed when a short treatise written by Arnauld’s sister, Jeanne-Catherine-Agnès Arnauld, was declared heretical by the Sorbonne. The abbess later claimed that she and her nuns had been treated like witches. Zamet came under increasing scrutiny, and when he left to reside in his diocese of Langres (Lingones) from 1633 to 1635, he appointed Jean du Vergier de Hauranne, abbot of Saint-Cyran, as spiritual director of Port-Royal.

Friendly for many years with the Arnauld family, Saint-Cyran’s influence now increased, and under his inspiration, several of the Arnauld men withdrew to a community of hermits near Port-Royal. Mother Angélique found that Saint-Cyran fulfilled her desire for a more authentic spiritual experience, but her reliance on Saint-Cyran put her on a collision course with Zamet, who returned in 1635. Recognizing Zamet’s ambitious nature, Arnauld rejected his attempt to impose a new head of novices on the convent. By contrast, Saint-Cyran’s penitential theology, belief in absolute predestination, and emphasis on God’s grace (based on the beliefs of Cornelius Otto Jansen, bishop of Ypres) gave focus to Arnauld’s religious journey.

Saint-Cyran was arrested by Cardinal de Richelieu in May of 1638 and imprisoned until the minister’s death in 1642. He died of a stroke a year after his release. Mother Angéliques’s Jansenist sympathies, now espoused by the entire Arnauld family, only intensified in the years that followed. She exchanged letters with supporters and wrote strong denunciations of those who “persecuted” her and others of like mind. Arnauld’s steadfast beliefs and encouragement of her brothers placed her family in the forefront of opposition to royal and papal policy.

During the Wars of the Fronde (1648-1652), matters worsened, as the Jansenists became associated with sedition. The number of nuns at Port-Royal began to drop off precipitously. In 1661, in the last months of Arnauld’s life, the community suffered increasing persecution from French king Louis XIV . The nuns were ordered to sign a formulary condemning Jansenist beliefs. Although she died before having to make a decision whether to sign, Arnauld was torn between belief that the formulary was wrong and unease that refusal was prideful. Announcing her willingness to suffer for the truth, and without a confessor, Arnauld looked inward, relying on what she knew to be the core of her faith.

Arnauld’s work was taken up by her niece, Angélique Arnauld d’Andilly (also known as Mother Angélique de Saint-Jean), who urged her aunt to write a chronicle of her life, believing the story to be essential for the future of Port-Royal. Arnauld composed her memoirs, the Relation écrite par la Mère Angélique sur Port-Royal (1949; treatise written by Mother Angélique about Port-Royal), from self-imposed isolation in a small cell at the convent. Although the text contains little about her life in the period after Saint-Cyran’s death, it remains an invaluable source for the history of Port-Royal, the Arnauld family, and Jansenism. Ill for many years, Arnauld died in August, 1661. Compromise and controversy involving those at Port-Royal marked the final decades of Louis XIV’s reign. Port-Royal was destroyed in 1711.

Significance

Mother Angélique Arnauld is not listed alongside other women in the Catholic reform movement such as Angela Merici or Teresa of Avila, because she was on the “wrong side” as defined by royal and papal authorities. Her impact, however, first on her influential and ambitious family and through them on the religious life of a great many women and men in seventeenth century France, was no less than those of her more famous contemporaries. She ultimately inspired even those in her family who had originally been against her. Armed with her belief in the value of inner reflection and the strength of the individual relationship with God, Arnauld fought to the end, upholding these views and supporting her community of nuns. Her life and her writings, including letters and an autobiography, exemplify female spirituality in early modern Catholicism.

Bibliography

Baxter, Carol, “Repression or Liberation? Notions of the Body Among the Nuns of Port-Royal.” In Women in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe, edited by Christine Meek. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000. Using Foucault’s view of the body as a social construct, Baxter examines how the austerity of Port-Royal reflected prevailing notions of behavior while at the same time it allowed the sisters to be in the vanguard of the reforming movement.

Bugnion-Secretan, Perle. La Mère Angélique Arnauld, 1591-1661, d’après ses écrits: Abbesse et réformatrice de Port-Royal. Paris: Cerf, 1991. French edition of autobiographical excerpts and letters of Mère Angélique.

Sedgwick, Alexander, “The Nuns of Port-Royal: A Study of Female Spirituality in Seventeenth-Century France.” In That Gentle Strength: Historical Perspectives on Women in Christianity, edited by Lynda L. Coon, Katherine J. Haldane, and Elisabeth W. Sommer. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990. A short study by the leading authority on the Arnauld family that examines the impact of Arnauld and her female relatives on the reform of convent life at Port-Royal and Jansenist spirituality.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Travails of Conscience: The Arnauld Family and the Ancien Régime. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998. The single most authoritative study of the Arnauld family, their conversion to Jansenism, and its effects on political history and family life.