Barbe Acarie

French church reformer

• Born: February 1, 1566
• Birthplace: Paris, France
• Died: April 18, 1618
• Place of death: Pontoise, France

Barbe Acarie established the Carmelite order of nuns in France. She was the central figure and host of the Acarie Circle, a group of clergy and devout laypersons concerned with the spiritual renewal and reform of Roman Catholicism and its religious orders.

Early Life

Barbe Acarie (bahrb ahk-ahr-ee) was born Barbe-Jeanne Avrillot Acarie to Nicholas Avrillot, lord of Champlâtreux, and Marie Luillers, who was from a family of French nobles. She was educated just outside Paris at Longchamp, an abbey founded in 1260 by Blessed Isabelle, the sister of King Louis IX. Her instructors were Roman Catholic nuns belonging to the Poor Clares, the religious order of Franciscan nuns. Attracted to their spiritual life and commitment to poverty, simplicity, and prayer, she wanted to join the order, to which one of her aunts already belonged.

Nevertheless, in obedience to her parents, she married her second cousin, Pierre Acarie, the vicomte of Villemor, on August 24, 1582, and moved into her mother-in-law’s spacious mansion, the Hôtel Acarie. Within ten years, by the age of twenty-seven, she was the mother of three sons and three daughters.

As her early interest in spirituality, contemplative prayer, and mysticism continued to grow, her reputation for holiness and a devout spiritual life began to draw people to her home. Her younger cousin, Pierre de Bérulle (diplomat, spiritual reformer, and future cardinal), who was equally interested in a renewal of Catholic spirituality, began to introduce other reformers to what became known as the Acarie Circle.

Life’s Work

In the sixteenth century, a wave of spiritual renewal in the Catholic Church was occurring throughout Europe in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. The shape of this renewal called the Counter-Reformation included the founding of new religious orders as well as the reformation of preexisting ones, a growing interest in spirituality on the part of both clergy and laypersons, and a desire for a return to traditional spiritual disciplines, asceticism, mysticism, and prayer. In France, the center of that renewal was the home of Barbe Acarie.

Acarie’s home became the nexus of revival for all the leading figures of renewal for that country. Her guests included theologians such as André Duval (regius professor of theology at the Sorbonne) and her counselor and future biographer; spiritual directors such as the Jesuit Pierre Coton, the king’s spiritual director; wealthy laypersons interested in charitable works, including her cousin, Madame de Sainte-Beuve; and clerics of all kinds, such as Vincent de Paul. Her circle also included international guests who shared an interest in church renewal and a radical commitment to Christian life.

Benet of Canfield, from Essex, England, the Capuchin writer of a manual for mystics, became Acarie’s spiritual director. Francis de Sales, the future bishop of Geneva, was almost a daily visitor to her home during the months he visited Paris in 1601 and 1602 and became her confessor for a period of time. All these spiritual leaders shared a common interest in a revival of monastic and contemplative life and a social concern for the poor.

In such an atmosphere, Acarie’s group had a keen interest in the reform of the Carmelite order in Spain, spearheaded by Teresa of Ávila and Saint John of the Cross . Teresa’s reforms combined practicality and common sense with contemplative prayer and mysticism. Jean de Brétigny’s French translations of Teresa’s manual for nuns and her biography appeared in 1601. That fall, Acarie reportedly received a vision of Teresa (who had died almost twenty years earlier, in 1582) in which Teresa asked her to establish the Reformed Carmelites in France.

Acarie took the lead in the discussions about setting up Carmelite convents in France. Such an undertaking required a team effort by various members of the circle. Catherine, the duchess of Longueville, obtained King Henry IV’s approval in July, 1603; Francis de Sales was the liaison to Rome for this request and received Pope Clement VIII’s approval in November, 1603. By October, 1604, de Bérulle had returned from Spain with six Carmelite nuns from Teresa’s order, headed by Anne of Jesus, and the first convent, called the monastery of the Incarnation, was established in the suburb of Saint-Jacques. Acarie oversaw the construction of that first house, and by 1618 she had helped establish several other houses in France.

Although the establishment of the Reformed Carmelites was her primary achievement, Acarie was an active participant in other significant renewal activities. She was influential in helping to establish a branch of the new Italian order of nuns, the Ursulines, who were responsible for the education of young women in Paris. She was involved in the reform of the Benedictine abbeys in Paris and was also instrumental in helping de Bérulle in the founding of his Congregation of the Oratory in 1611, a community of priests seeking deeper spiritual life through common prayer and discipline.

Widowed in 1613, she entered the Carmelite convent, joining her three daughters who were already Carmelites. At the convent in Amiens, she became a lay sister, doing menial household chores, and took the name Marie de l’Incarnation. In 1616, she moved to the convent at Pontoise, the second convent she had helped to set up, where she spent the last two years of her life.

Her holiness and devotion to God were recognized not only by the French nation but also by all of Europe. In 1622, her second son, the vicar of Rouen, asked his archbishop to begin the process of inquiry for her canonization, and, on June 5, 1791, she was beatified by Pope Pius VI, receiving the title Blessed Marie de l’Incarnation.

Significance

Acarie’s founding of the Reformed Carmelites in France continued to have an effect far beyond her lifetime: Within fifty years of the original establishment of a convent in Paris, more than sixty other Carmelite convents had been set up in all the major cities and towns of France.

Famous French Carmelite women include Louise of France (Teresa of Saint Augustine), the daughter of King Louis XV; the Martyrs of Compiègne, sixteen Carmelite nuns guillotined in 1794 during the French Revolution; and one of the most famous modern French saints, Theresa of Lisieux.

Acarie was not single-handedly responsible for any of the renewal movements in France, but her facilitation of that renewal in her spiritual salon and her personal influence on the spiritual leaders whose work affected the whole of France and beyond cannot be overestimated. She remains a role model of a dedicated Christian, and, in particular, a role model of a married woman who combined family and business duties with a deep inner spiritual life of contemplation.

Bibliography

Discalced Carmelites of Boston and Santa Clara. Carmel: Its History, Spirit, and Saints. New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1927. Standard history of the Carmelites, including reform movements. Acarie and the history of the French Carmelites are discussed in chapters 8 and 28.

Dubois, Elfrieda. “The Hôtel Acarie: A Meeting Place for European Currents of Spirituality in Early Seventeenth-Century France.” Durham University Journal 71 (1970): 187-196. Discusses the effect of Acarie’s mentors and their writings on her development. Detailed account of her last years as a Carmelite.

Hsia, R. Po-Chia. The Catholic World of Renewal, 1564-1770. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Overview of the Counter-Reformation in Europe, with discussion of French reforms.

Jones, Kathleen. Women Saints: Lives of Faith and Courage. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1999. Section 4 includes a description of Acarie’s life and spirituality.

Sheppard, Lancelot C. Barbe Acarie: Wife and Mystic. London: Burns & Oates, 1953. A full-length biography of Acarie. Includes a detailed index.

Sheppard, Lancelot C. “Madame Acarie’s Spiritual Teaching.” Downside Review 70, no. 219 (1951): 53-61. A description of the spiritual manuals that shaped Acarie’s mysticism.

Stopp, Elisabeth. A Man to Heal Differences: Essays and Talks on St. Francis de Sales. Philadephia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 1997. Discusses in the book’s introduction and in chapters 5, 6, and 8 Acarie’s influence on this contemporary spiritual reformer.

Welsh, John. The Carmelite Way: An Ancient Path for Today’s Pilgrims. New York: Paulist Press, 1996. Explanation of Carmelite traditions with “Rule of Carmel” in the appendix. Acarie’s French reform discussed in chapter 1.