Anne de Xainctonge

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Anne de Xaintconge on a painting from the 17th / 18th centuries. Century, until 2006 in Dole , since then in Brig

Anne de Xainctonge (born November 21, 1567 in Dijon , then capital of the French Duchy of Burgundy ; † June 8, 1621 in Dole , then capital of the Free County of Burgundy , which was part of Spain ) was the founder of a religious community in the Roman Catholic Church . The community is now called the Society of St. Ursula by Anne de Xainctonge .

origin

Anne came from a respected family. Her father, Jean de Xainctonge, was a lawyer and member of the parliament of the Duchy of Burgundy, her mother, Marguerite Colard, the daughter of a Dijon councilor. Anne had a stepsister, Nicole de Ligeras († 1594), from her mother's first marriage, a younger sister, Françoise (1578–1639), and a younger brother, Pierre, a lawyer like his father. Nicole, Anne and Françoise were closely connected in their spiritual endeavors.

Catholic reform

In the spirit of optimism of the Counter Reformation , especially since the foundation of the Jesuit order by St. Ignatius of Loyola (1534) and the Council of Trent, women were also enthusiastic about the renewal of the Catholic Church. In the beginning there was St. Angela Merici , around whom women have gathered in Brescia since 1516 who consecrate themselves to God and spiritually turn away from the world, but still want to live in it and do works of charity there. They did not want to live in monastic seclusion, but with their relatives or in the houses in which they were employed. They wanted to follow the evangelical counsels - poverty, celibate chastity and obedience - but without religious vows and with emphasis on poverty before God ( Mt 5 : 3  EU ), purity of spirit and obedience to the Holy Spirit. In 1536 the rule of this Compagnia di Santa Orsola was approved by the Vicar General of the Diocese of Brescia .

Criticism from outside as well as from inside led Angela Merici during her lifetime and, as it spread, first to Milan and then to France, to adapt the way of life to the old orders - with cloister , solemn vows and a habit and the aversion of Angela Merici's ideas .

Anne de Xaintconge was one of the women who wanted to get involved in the original spirit of the founder. Her house in Dijon was right next to the Jesuit college, whose school operations fascinated her. In the words of her first biography, des Récit , written by her co-sister Catherine de Saint-Mauris shortly after her death: “Le désir d'ayder au salut des âmes croissoit en elle de jour à autre et de commencé une congrégation ou compagnie de filles , lesquelle, après avoir vaquer à leur propre perfection, s'emploiasse, celon la condission du sexce, ayder au salut des âmes par leur prières, bonne édification et instruction de la ieunesse de leur sexce, à l'imitation de st. Ignace, fondateur de la Compagnie de Jésus. ”“ Day by day, the desire to help the souls and to found a congregation or society of women grew in her . These should first strive for their own sanctification in order to use themselves for the salvation of souls - within the framework of the possibilities of women - through prayer, good life and education of female youth, following the example of St. Ignatius, founder of the Society of Jesus. ”Anne sought for women what the Jesuits did for men. At first she taught girls at home. Their efforts were directed towards an independent group with a Jesuit way of life, legally and financially independent, without religious attire, without a cloister .

La Compagnie de Sainte-Ursule

The realization faced difficulties. Political differences arose during the skepticism of the time - also among its Jesuit advisors - about the life of religious women outside of a protected area. The parents and brother were followers of Henry of Navarre, who converted to Catholicism in 1593 and was crowned King of France as Henry IV in 1594 . Anne and her sister Françoise, on the other hand, like the Jesuits, were close to the Holy League , which acted against Henry. When the Jesuits were expelled from France in 1594 and the Dijon Fathers relocated to Dole in the neighboring Spanish Free County, Anne secretly left home in 1596 and followed them. The Jesuits and some women in Dole with similar goals greeted them kindly; the most important was Claudine de Boisset, daughter of a professor at Dole University, later first superior of the community. But it took another ten years to be founded. This was mainly due to the parents, who tried by all means, including pressure on the Jesuits, to persuade Anne to return to Dijon. Eventually they gave in.

Last but not least, the Jesuits helped strategically (from the French of a second early biography, 1636, by the Jesuit Étienne Binet): “The Jesuits advised that they should not think of a completely new congregation, but rather choose one that had already been approved, in order to make their goal all the more certain to reach. She, who loved good advice and even more obedience, submitted to this opinion and decided to take over the rule of the Ursulines and to entrust herself to the intercession of Our Lady, her good and beloved Lady, and then St. Ursula and her blessed companions. Thereupon they asked Avignon for the rule of the local Ursulines. ”This rule, which had come from Brescia via Milan to Avignon, had the inestimable advantage that, through a briefing from Pope Gregory XIII. to be authorized by 1582. Anne and Claudine de Boisset attached the rule in January 1606 to the request to the Archbishop of Besançon to admit their community, of which they emphasized, “qu'elles ne seront pas pourtant obligées de demeurer et estre tenues en clôture perpétuelle… qu'elles montreront aux filles la manière de lire, escrire, coudre et autres instructions permises aux femmes, d'enseigner à celles de leur sexe, et ce sans prétendre aucune salaire en terre "-" they should not be obliged to live in permanent retreat and to be included ... they would teach girls reading, writing, sewing, and other skills acceptable to women, without any earthly reward. ”That same year, both the Archbishop and the Dole Magistrate agreed to the request.

The adoption of the Avignon Ursuline rule was a strategy to be able to start at all, "un moyen de commencer: se dire Ursulines". Angela Merici does not mention the Doler founding documents - it was a community of "Ursulines mais non mériciennes". Shortly before her death, Anne, with the help of the Jesuit father Étienne Guyon, wrote her own rule based on the Jesuit statutes, in which the rule of the Avignon Ursulines hardly played a role. This Institution de la Compagnie de s. Ursule & des Onze Milles Vierges was confirmed by the Archbishop of Besançon in 1623 and by Pope Innocent X in 1648 . The sisters promised in the form of simple vows from which the bishop could withdraw, not the solemn vows of the old orders, poverty, celibate chastity and obedience. They also promised Stabilitas to live in the community and according to their rules until death. The constitutions of the community could be changed if necessary, except for two that Anne considered constitutive: not to live in the cloister and to teach girls. - No closed doors and girls' classes.

During Anne's lifetime, five daughter communities emerged in Burgundy, namely in Vesoul , Besançon , Arbois , Saint-Hippolyte (Doubs) and Porrentruy .

Founding history

Anne's sister Françoise was a soul mate. She also left home, but stayed in Dijon and founded a small school there. Her group later merged into the Ursulines of Angela Merici. Maria Ward (1585-1645), who was almost twenty years her junior, was even closer to her . She came from a noble Catholic family in Yorkshire and as a child experienced the persecution of Catholics in Elizabeth I's England . As a refugee in Saint-Omer , which was part of the Spanish Netherlands , she learned to appreciate the Jesuits and, after several other attempts, decided to pursue her life's work to found an institute for women similar to the Jesuits with the aim of supporting the Jesuits and teaching girls. Many conflicts arose from this. Anne was imprisoned as a heretic in a Munich monastery for two months in 1631 until Pope Urban VIII acquitted her. Only in the 20th century was she rehabilitated by the church and recognized as the founder of the Congregatio Jesu ("English Misses").

Out of their spiritual calling, Angela Merici, Anne de Xainctonge and Mary Ward called for the recognition of equality between women and men in spiritual terms. According to Braun, the commitment of the sisters' congregations "for all possible ambivalence should be seen as an expression of the gradual emancipation of women in modern society."

Adoration

The Society of the Sisters of Saint Ursula of the Blessed Virgin today (2015), among other offices in Dole and Tours in France, Brig , Friborg and Sion in Switzerland and Freiburg in Germany. They have been united in a federation since 1965. Soon after Anne's death there was an effort to canonize her . Proceedings were opened in 1900 and resumed in 1972. In 1900 Anne was made Venerable Servant of God . On the occasion of the canonization process, the sources were comprehensively processed and published scientifically.

literature

Individual references and comments

  1. ^ Lexicon for Theology and the Church, 3rd edition. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1993-2001.
  2. ↑ Bernard Arens SJ: Anna von Xainctonge. Founder of the Ursulines of Dôle. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1903.
  3. ^ Anne Conrad: The Xainctonge sisters In: Ute Küppers-Braun and Thomas Schilp: Catholic-Lutheran-Calvinist. Women's convents in the age of denominationalization. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8375-0436-1 , pp. 179-197.
  4. ^ A b Anne Conrad: Between monastery and world. Ursulines and Jesuits in the Catholic reform movement of the 16./17. Century. Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1991, ISBN 3-8053-1249-0 .
  5. ↑ a b c d e Marie-Amélie Le Bourgeois: Les Ursulines d'Anne de Xainctonge (1606). Publications de l'Université de Saint-Etienne, 2003, ISBN 2-86272-265-0 . The Récit and other founding documents are printed in full in the book.
  6. ^ German translation of the Récit from the Society House in Brig .
  7. ↑ Patrick Braun: Religious men and women congregations of the 16th to 18th centuries. In: Patrick Braun (Ed.): Helvetica Sacra . Department VIII Volume 1, Helbing & Lichtenhahn, Basel / Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-7190-1367-7 , pp. 19-68.
  8. ↑ A branch in Villingen was closed on July 31, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Xainctonge, Anne de
SHORT DESCRIPTION Foundress of the Order of the Ursulines of Dole
DATE OF BIRTH November 21, 1567
PLACE OF BIRTH Dijon
DATE OF DEATH June 8, 1621
PLACE OF DEATH Dole