Marie de l'Incarnation

French mystic and educator

• Born: October 28, 1599
• Birthplace: Tours, France
• Died: April 30, 1672
• Place of death: Quebec, New France (now in Canada)

After her conversion at age twenty-one, Marie de l’Incarnation embarked for Canada, where she founded an Ursuline teaching convent. She wrote an autobiography, letters, treatises, and Indian-French dictionaries, all of which contain aspects of social history neglected by her male counterparts. Her stature in the colony was so high that she could negotiate power with Jesuits and bishops and achieve a freedom of activity unknown to most women of the time.

Early Life

Marie de l’Incarnation (mah-ree deh lahn-kahr-nah-syohn), the fourth of eight children born to a master baker and his wife, was given the name Marie Guyart at birth. She was educated in a school for artisans’ children. Marie experienced her first vision at age seven and asked her parents to allow her to enter the Benedictine order at age fourteen, but her mother felt she was unsuited for the cloister.

At age seventeen, she was married to silk-weaver Claude Martin. The marriage was ill-fated, for Martin was involved in a love affair with another woman. Upon Martin’s death two years later, litigation forced his business into bankruptcy. At nineteen, Marie was left penniless with a young son, also named Claude. From a small room atop her father’s house, she embroidered to earn money. She refused remarriage, saying later how grateful she had been that she was free, with only God in her heart.

On the Feast of the Incarnation, March 24, 1620, Marie had a life-changing experience. Walking through the streets of Tours, she lost consciousness and experienced a vision of the Precious Blood of Jesus. When she regained consciousness in the convent of the Feuillants, she explained that she had seen herself bathed in the blood of Jesus. She found her first spiritual directors at the convent, who encouraged and guided her in reading works by Saint Teresa of Ávila and Francis de Sales. Her eucharistic devotion was matched only by austerities such as fasting and mortification. In the next decade of her life, Marie received further visions. She traced her mission to Canada to these early revelations.

When, in 1625, her sister and brother-in-law asked for help running their business, Marie became its manager, using talents she had learned earlier. Her practical skills, ranging from bookkeeping to horse grooming to carpentry would later benefit the fledgling Ursuline convent in Quebec.

Life’s Work

In the years following, Marie’s piety intensified until, in January of 1631, she joined the Ursuline order of Tours, leaving her eleven-year-old son in her father’s care. Adopting the name Marie de l’Incarnation because of her devotion to the Word Incarnate, she served as assistant mistress of novices and later mistress of the boarders. In 1634, she took formal vows in the presence of her still-unforgiving son Claude.

Jesuits were frequent preachers at the convent. Marie learned about the mission in Canada by reading Jesuit Relations. In a vision, she saw herself walking in a “strange and difficult land,” which both she and her spiritual director recognized as Canada. From 1635, her goal was to teach and evangelize the indigenous peoples of New France. Two years later, she and another Ursuline left for Paris, where preparations for the voyage began. In 1639, Marie made the acquaintance of the noblewoman Madame de la Peltrie, who offered herself as well as her wealth for the mission. In May, 1639, Marie sailed from Dieppe with a group of Jesuit monks and nuns. Not without misgivings, the Jesuit fathers recognized the need both for lay and religious women in the colony, understanding that in the education of girls, more indigenous peoples would be converted to the faith.

The colony in which they landed in August of 1639 contained fewer than three hundred inhabitants. After she disembarked and kissed the earth, Marie and the others were led to the church of Nôtre-Dame de Recouvrance, where a Te Deum of praise was sung. While their convent was being constructed, Marie and the nuns were given tours of Quebec as well as the Jesuits’ Algonquian mission upstream at Sillery. Marie described their temporary lodgings as a contrast to the cloister that would soon be imposed: “the house never emptied out.” By August 7, their convent, consisting of an attic, two rooms, and a cellar, was completed with the help of the nuns who had fetched stones, pushed wheelbarrows, and laid bricks. Only then was cloister imposed. As the convent’s first Mother Superior, Marie used the skills learned early in life for building, hauling lumber, painting, and cooking, as well as taking care of personnel and financial matters. By 1645, the Jesuit Jerôme Lalemant drew up a constitution governing the Ursulines, which allowed them independence of the mother house in Tours and freedom to adapt to local necessities.

Even as they began teaching, other challenges confronted the Ursulines, including epidemics of smallpox, Iroquois attacks, and fire. The great fire that destroyed the Ursuline convent in 1650 provided another opportunity to break free of the constraints placed on sisters in the Old World. Although the house was rebuilt with amazing speed, Marie and the nuns took the opportunity to tour the Jesuit house, the parish church, and the fortress.

Originally intended for indigenous girls, the convent’s instruction in basic Christianity, prayer, devotions, and French language soon were in high demand, and indigenous men also would come to the convent grille for instruction and food. Later, daughters of French settlers would be educated there as well.

Marie began writing to her son Claude soon after her arrival. Claude, who would enter the Benedictine order at Marie’s request, served as a conduit for her writings, giving them the weight of religious authority. At his request, Marie wrote her autobiography, hundreds of letters (270 of which are still extant), and some of the Jesuit Relations. She also composed catechisms, devotional works, and dictionaries in Algonquian, Huron, and Iroquois, works now lost. Her writings describe aspects of indigenous life thought irrelevant by the Jesuits. Most of the indigenous peoples would return to their native ways, but Marie rejoiced in some shining examples of conversion.

The last two decades of Marie’s life in Canada saw the slow growth of the Ursuline mission, which had twenty-three members by her death, including some of the daughters of colonists. Marie also raised funds by writing to devout women in France. While her years in France had conformed to many of the stereotypes expected of religious women during the Catholic Reformation, including obedience, mysticism, mortifications, and ill health, the conditions in New France allowed for a more assertive female spirituality that demanded physical health and active (if cloistered) involvement in colonial affairs. In 1668, she expressed her anger about rumors that her order was useless. She complained that if the Ursulines were “useless” because they received little mention in the Jesuit Relations, then so too were the Sulpicians, the Hospital Canonesses, and the Jesuits themselves, all of whom together formed the backbone of the new land. She also took on Bishop François Laval, who tried to change the constitution drawn up earlier by Father Lalement. Realizing that his changes would undermine their authority, Marie wrote to the superior in Tours that they would accept his changes only if forced to. Her will was sufficiently strong, so that in 1662, Laval officially recognized the rule and constitutions of the Ursulines of Quebec.

By her death in 1672, Marie had fulfilled her dreams of a promised land full of possibility, not only for those she helped educate but also for herself and her nuns, who were able to break free of the many restraints imposed on religious women and live an “active” spirituality. In her writings, Marie compared herself to a bird that had learned to fly.

Significance

As spiritual leader, business manager, teacher, and fund-raiser, Marie de l’Incarnation guided the Ursuline community in Quebec in spite of the harsh climate, fire, attacks by indigenous peoples, and official interference. In her authorship of sacred works and dictionaries in Iroquois, Algonquian, and Huron, she taught the indigenous peoples and aided the Jesuits. Increasingly, the Ursulines also taught the daughters of French settlers, some of whom later joined the order.

Marie’s autobiography, treatises and letters provide insights into life in early New France that are often missing from the traditional male sources, such as the Jesuit Relations. The first Mother Superior of the Ursulines of Quebec, Marie used her authority in a “new world” setting to resist the impositions increasingly placed on female religious in Europe and helped cultivate life in the colony.

Bibliography

Bruneau, Marie-Florine. Women Mystics Confront the Modern World: Marie de l’Incarnation, 1599-1672, and Madame Guyon, 1648-1717. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. Studies how Marie manipulated her gendered experiences in ways different from those expected in Catholic Reformation France. Bruneau argues that the mortification, sickness, and mysticism of Marie’s French life hindered in Canada, where strength, business acumen, and intelligence were highly valued. Includes notes and a bibliography.

Choquette, Leslie, “Ces Amazones du Grand Dieu: Women and Mission in Seventeenth-Century Canada.” French Historical Studies 17 (1992): 627-655. Examines how early French religious and lay women fought for the right to teach, catechize, and minister in Canada despite official discouragement. In the process, they created a strong presence in the early years of the colony. Includes notes.

Davis, Natalie Zemon. Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995. Davis explores how three women, removed from centers of political power and education, were able to push the boundaries normally imposed on women to reach beyond. Includes extensive notes.

Mahoney, Irene. Marie of the Incarnation: Selected Writings. New York: Paulist Press, 1989. An excellent selection of Marie’s writings. Includes an extensive bibliography and notes.

Parkman, Francis. The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century. Vol. 2 in France and England in North America. Reprint. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Vividly recounts the efforts of the Jesuits in New France.

Thwaites, Reuben Gold, ed. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. 73 vols. Cleveland, Ohio: Burrows Brothers, 1896-1901. The definitive source for documents of the Jesuit missions.