Jacqueline-Marie-Angélique Arnauld, called La Mère Angélique 1591 – 1661, one of twenty children and five sisters, was given to the worldly convent of Port-Royal des Champs near Paris against her wishes, by her parents because they couldn’t afford her dowry. Abbess Johanna von Boulehart chose Angélique as her successor at the age of seven and Angélique raged that life as a nun was ‘an unbearable yoke’, and demanded to be allowed to marry like other girls. She changed her mind after hearing an inspiring sermon and months before her twelfth birthday, in 1602, Angélique became Abbess of Port-Royal. ‘Mére Angélique’, as she was called, turned rebelliousness to determination to purify the corrupt French Church, imposing her will in the strict discipline she enforced, protecting the right of her nuns to read and write, accepting girls without dowries like her. She succeeded in reforming other convents, influenced members of her powerful family to pursue the spiritual life, but struggled with her own desire to renounce the world and seek personal perfection even as she rose to power. She instigated the great crisis between Jansenism, an effort to cleanse the French Church that called into question the absolute rule of French King Louis XIV and the Catholic hierarchy that continued into the next generation. In later life she wrote a history of her struggles which provides a unique view on women, politics, and the right to private judgment.
Tags: Abbesses, Age of Discovery, Baroque, Europe, Nuns
