Elisabeth Piette

Marie-Elisabeth Piette , née Amélie Gertrude Piette (born May 28, 1785 in Liège , † September 15, 1852 in Laval ) was a Trappist , prioress, abbess and founder of a monastery in Germany and France.

life and work

Amélie Gertrude Piette, daughter of a lawyer, entered the Trappist convent Notre Dame de la Miséricorde in Darfeld in Westphalia in 1806 and took the religious name Marie-Elisabeth . She made her solemn profession in 1808 and became subprioress under Prioress Hélène Van den Broeck (1767-1826). When Napoleon banned the Cistercian order in 1811 , Piette led the French-speaking Trappist women as superior to the castle-like Borsut farm (also: Borsu) in Verlaine near Liège, where they lived underground with the spiritual assistance of François-Marie Van Langendonck .

In 1816 the group moved to the Abbot de Eugène Laprade got Monastery Sainte Catherine in the north of Laval, where Piette was elected prioress in 1819 and 1827 as abbess. The monastery visiting was initially Port-du-Salut monastery , which, also coming from Darfeld, had opened shortly before south of Laval. Among the first newcomers to Sainte Catherine in 1816 was the abbess's sister, Marie Gertrude Piette (1792-1881).

During Piette's term of office: 1822 the establishment of a girls' school, 1824 the sending of sisters to the Abbey of Flines (Peugniez p. 234) for the (failed) reform in the sense of the stricter observance, 1837 the sending to monastery Mondaye and from there to monastery Cour-Pétral , in 1841 the dispatch to Ubexy monastery and in 1849 the (failed) dispatch to Vannes . After her death in 1859, the community left the place in favor of a new building in the monastery of La Coudre .

literature

• Immo Eberl, The Cistercians. History of a European Order , Ostfildern, Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2007.
• Josiane Ferrari-Clément, Fous de Dieu. Récit d'une odyssée trappiste 1793–1815 , Paris, Cerf, 1998.
• Marie de la Trinité Kervingant, Des moniales face à la Révolution française. Aux origines des Cisterciennes-Trappistines , Paris, Beauchesne, 1989.
• Wilhelm Knoll, 30 years of Trappist settlement in Darfeld 1795–1825. A contribution to the church history in the Coesfeld district , Bernardus-Verlag, Mainz 2012 (pages 179 and 301 to be added to the sv Piette directory)
• Augustin-Hervé Laffay (* 1965), Dom Augustin de Lestrange et l'avenir du monachisme: 1754–1827 , Paris, Cerf, 1998; Diss. Lyon 3, 1994 (passim).