Antoinette of Orléans-Longueville

Antoinette von Orléans-Longueville (also: Antoinette de Gondi ) (* 1572 in Trie-Château , † April 24, 1618 in Poitiers ) was a French margravine, religious, feuillant , Benedictine and founder of the order.

life and work

Descent, Marriage, and Widowhood

Antoinette von Orléans was the daughter of Léonor d' Orléans-Longueville (1540–1573) and Marie de Bourbon Saint-Pol (1539–1601) and thus of royal blood. She grew up fatherless and became a lady-in-waiting at the court of Catherine de Medici . In 1588 she married at the behest of Queen Charles de Gondi, Marquis de Belle-Isle (* 1569), son of Albert de Gondi, duc de Retz and brother of Henri de Gondi and Jean-François de Gondi . The couple first lived in Machecoul and had two children, Henri de Gondi (1590-1659) and a second son who died in 1600. Antoinette lived for a while again as a lady-in-waiting in Nantes , because in the turmoil of the ongoing civil war, her husband took the side of Philippe-Emmanuel de Lorraine , Duke of Mercoeur, who was holding court in Nantes. Charles de Gondi was murdered on Mont-Saint-Michel in 1596 . The widow put a hired killer on the killer (the killer himself was hanged in 1606). Then she fought for high compensation for the death of her husband in the service of Mercoeur (as part of the money that Mercoeur received for his surrender of Henry IV ).

Nun in the Toulouse Feuillante convent

The widow was looking for a way to withdraw from the world in accordance with a vocation that had come to her during the marriage, encouraged by Archbishop Jean-Davy Duperron , whom she had asked for advice. Since many monasteries were defeated, the realization was difficult. The main obstacle was not the existence of underage children (which she left to the grandparents), but the high social position of the candidate, which, as befitting her rank, only allowed the very secular Fontevraud Abbey , while Antoinette envisaged a radical life of penance. Since the Paris Poor Clares did not accept widows, the advised Feuillanten monk Sans de Sainte-Catherine (1570–1629), from the circle of Madame Acarie , recommended the only existing Feuillanten monastery in Toulouse .

So she left Paris in secret in October 1599 and arrived in Toulouse on the 21st. After a few days she was dressed and took the religious name Antoinette de Sainte-Scholastique (after Scholastica of Nursia ). In order to secure her appeal against the claims of the in-laws, she wrote to Pope Clement VIII , who promised her to defend her decision. She commented on the death of her younger son (age not known, no more than 8 years), which has occurred in the meantime, with the sentence: "May the Lord be praised! It was already clear to me that my son is mortal" ( Dieu soit béni! Je n'ignorais pas que mon fils fût mortel ). Then she settled her inheritance and bequeathed a large sum to the monastery.

In the monastery she quickly rose to become novice mistress . Other women of the highest class entered: a sister-in-law of Sully , another lady who dissolved the marriage with her husband's consent, and in 1603 Montaigne's niece , Saint Joan of Lestonnac .

Against his will in Fontevraud

After Clement VIII's death (1605), his successor Pope Paul V was more amenable to the family's insistence that Antoinette be relocated to Fontevraud. Antoinette had to follow the king's orders to go to Fontevraud for at least a year in support of the aged abbess Éléonore de Bourbon (1532–1611), her and the king's aunt. There she came under the spell of a Capuchin who later became famous, the Père Joseph . According to the will of the Pope (who threatened excommunication in the event of a violation), she became coadjutor of the abbess (officially only on September 30, 1607). Antoinette, who stuck to her monastery ideal, wanted to introduce a strict reform in Fontevraud. Since she was almost alone in this, a climate developed that was difficult to bear and gave her a time of suffering.

Change to Lencloître

The abbess died in 1611. Antoinette decided to move out and realize her ideal elsewhere. In July 1611 she moved with a few faithful to the Lencloître priory , where she accompanied Père Joseph together with the Bishop of Luçon , later Cardinal Richelieu . In Lencloître, those unwilling to reform moved out. There remained a total of 12 choir sisters and 7 conversations. This was the beginning of three years of pure happiness for the new prioress, because her community became a magnet for elite vocations because of the strictness of the rules. The number of postulants grew to 100 in a short time. In addition there were 30 male postulants, for whom a new house was built, a kind of seminary of the order, which had always known double monasteries. One lived according to the strict ideas of Antoinette, inspired by the feuillantinnen, whereby the obligation of the noble nuns to physical labor amounted to a social revolution.

Foundation in Poitiers and Death

Since the reform success of the priory, which depended on the mother house unwilling to reform, threatened to break up the unity of the order, the new abbess of Fontevraud, Louise de Bourbon-Lavedan (1548–1637), stopped financial support for Lencloître, whereupon Lencloître decided to to part with Fontevraud. The Pope approved the establishment of a new monastery in Poitiers. Antoinette left Lencloître with 24 selected professions and moved into unfinished buildings in Poitiers in October 1617. What happened next was a tragedy. In Poitiers, widespread lead poisoning, historically known as colica Pictonum ( colique de Poitou , the colic of Poitiers), raged . Five nuns died from December 1617 to February 1618 and Antoinette died on April 25 at the age of 46.

Posthumous establishment of the Congregation

The battle for the spiritual inheritance between the Abbess of Fontevraud, the Feuillanten, King Louis XIII. , the Queen Mother and Père Joseph ended on October 2, 1619 through the union of Lencloître, Poitiers and the meanwhile foundation of Angers to a congregation, confirmed by a bull of the Pope on March 22, 1621. Apparently from Père Joseph the congregation (initially unofficially , not mentioned by the Pope) the name Kalvarienberg ( calvaire ), which was transferred from Poitiers to the Congregation (today: Benedictine Sisters of Our Lady of Calvary ). The name did not go back to Antoinette, who never had anything other than a Feuillantinnenkloster in mind, but was coined under the impression of the martyrdom of the six deceased nuns of Poitiers. If there was no incorporation into the Feuillanten order, which was highly regarded by the king, it was probably because the Feuillanten had little interest in the development of a female branch of the order. There have never been more than two female feuillant monasteries (Toulouse and Paris).

Development of the Congregation and Reception

The congregation grew considerably and is still represented in Bouzy-la-Forêt and Prailles today . The congregational name Filles du Calvaire is still common today due to the Paris metro station Filles du Calvaire (1991 also the romantic title of a Prix ​​Goncourt by Pierre Combescot ). The historian Micheline Cuénin has dedicated a biography to the founder. Wissam Ayach has dedicated a thesis to the early history of the congregation, which was defended at the Sorbonne in 2014 but has not yet been published: De la réforme de l'Ordre de Fontevraud à la fondation d'une nouvelle congrégation. Les Bénédictines de Notre-Dame du Calvaire (1605–1674) .

Classification in a time-bound movement

The terrible time of the Huguenot Wars (1562–1598), which lasted for decades, released an energy of Christian penance in some men (from Jean de la Barrière to Rancé ), but especially in women, into which Antoinette von Orléans was one of the first is classified. This was followed by the aforementioned Jeanne de Lestonnac, but also Louise de Ballon , Françoise de Nérestang , Jeanne de Pourlan and above all the great women of Port-Royal , all of them elite souls from the highest circles.

literature

• Micheline Cuénin: Antoinette d'Orléans (1572-1618), marquise de Belle-Isle. En religion Soeur Antoinette de Sainte-Scholastique, fondatrice de la Congrégation des Bénédictines de Notre-Dame du Calvaire. Essai biographique. Without location 2003.

Web links

• Literature by and about Antoinette von Orléans-Longueville in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)
• Title and abstract of the Thèse by Wissam Ayach , French