Louise-Adélaïde de Bourbon-Condé

Mademoiselle de Condé, painted by Franque

Louise Adélaïde de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Condé (born October 5, 1757 in Chantilly , † March 10, 1824 in Paris ) was a French princess and founder of the Benedictine monastery.

life and work

Origin and relationship

Louise de Condé from the House of Bourbon-Condé , a branch of the French royal family, was the daughter of Louis V Joseph de Bourbon, prince de Condé , Grand Master of France , and Charlotte de Rohan (1737–1760), daughter of Charles de Rohan , Prince of Soubise . On her father's side she was the granddaughter of Louis IV. Henri de Bourbon, prince de Condé and Caroline Charlotte von Hessen-Rheinfels-Rotenburg (1714–1741), sister-in-law (through her sister) of Karl Emanuel III. (Savoy) . She was the sister of Louis VI. Henri Joseph de Bourbon, prince de Condé , the sister-in-law of Bathilde d'Orléans , and the aunt of Louis Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Enghien . So she was a quarter German.

Childhood, Adolescence, and Early Years until 1789

Louise lost her mother at the age of two. She therefore grew up from 1762 to 1769 with her great-aunt Henriette-Louise de Bourbon (1703–1772), who was the abbess of the Benedictine monastery of Beaumont-lès-Tours near Tours and whom she will venerate as a saintly woman throughout her life. At their solemn baptism in 1769, the future King Louis XVI. and the later Carmelite Louise Marie de Bourbon , daughter of King Louis XV, godparents. From 1770 to 1782 she lived in the Penthemont Abbey in Paris, but the little monastic life there was too glamorous for her. Her best friends were Marie Clothilde of France , sister of Louis XVI, later Queen of the Kingdom of Sardinia and Venerable Servant of God , and Bathilde d'Orléans. At the same time and in addition, she served her widowed father in Chantilly Castle as the hostess of high-ranking guests, namely in 1782 of the later Tsar Paul I and his wife. From 1782 she lived in a house built especially for her on Rue Monsieur in Paris. In June 1786 she fell in love with the young Marquis Nicolas Magon de La Gervaisais (1765-1838) during a spa stay in Bourbon-l'Archambault , to whom she wrote around 100 letters by January 1787, only to force her to resign. In the meantime, the king had appointed her abbess of the Benedictine Abbey of Remiremont , a noble women's monastery, but here, too, monastery life seemed to her to be entirely sophisticated and far from her personal ideal of piety, which is why she stayed there only a few weeks.

Louise Adélaïde de Bourbon, painted by Simon-Bernard Lenoir

Expelled by the Revolution (Turin, Worms and Villingen)

On July 17, 1789, Louise fled to Brussels, accompanied by her father, brother and nephew, and from there via Aachen, Cologne, Koblenz, Mainz, Mannheim, Stuttgart, Innsbruck, Brenner Pass, Verona and Milan to Turin to visit her friend Clothilde. She stayed in Turin until January 1791, where she served as a secretary to her father, who from the start endeavored to set up an army of emigrants . Then she followed her father via Chambéry , Evian , Lausanne , Friborg , Tübingen, Stuttgart, Karlsruhe to Worms (arrival March 2, 1791), where they could stay until January 1792. They separated and Louise moved via Höchst, Hanau, Fulda, Würzburg, Meiningen , Bamberg to Nuremberg, from where her father ordered her to his winter quarters in Villingen . There she served him again until he went to war again with his army in March 1793.

Capuchin in Turin

In April 1793, Louise received a residence permit from the canton of Friborg , where there were already 3,000 emigrants, which she used until September 1795 (with the exception of a visit to her father in Rottenburg am Neckar in 1794 ). The most important contact person was her confessor and spiritual advisor there, Louis Armand Le Juge, marquis de Bouzonville (called "abbé de Bouzonville"), knight in the Ordre royal et militaire de Saint-Louis , widower with one year of Trappist experience , a man of great ability. With him she discussed her ardent desire to enter a monastery, a difficult undertaking as she was only used to French monasteries, also knew how seldom there was really monastic life in the monastery and, because of her status, in a natural contradiction to that of their self-aspired virtues poverty, humility and obedience. After a long probing of her heart for the authenticity of the vocation, Bouzonville allowed her to enter a monastery. She traveled to Turin via Einsiedeln, Chur, San Bernardino and Bellinzona and became a postulant there on November 29, 1795 with the Capuchin Sisters of Perpetual Adoration . The inner rejoicing lasted two months. Then came the disillusionment. This monastery also did not meet their spiritual requirements. She resigned at the end of March.

Private vow in Vienna - Trappist in Sembrancher

Louise had heard that the Trappist abbot Augustin de Lestrange was planning a convent in Sembrancher in the canton of Valais , and traveled there via the Great Saint Bernard , but the building was not finished, and Bouzonville also opposed this plan, because he had the reform of Lestrange experienced firsthand in its severity and told Louise bluntly that she would not survive it. In the meantime she traveled with a vague monastery project inspired by Bouzonville in September 1796 via Augsburg and Passau to Vienna and stayed for a year with the Salesian Sisters in the Order of the Visitation of Mary . There, on November 21 (on the advice of Bouzonville), she privately and secretly made a monastic pledge (poverty, chastity and obedience). The longing for religious life remained, Bouzonville finally gave in, she traveled back and was back in Sembrancher in September 1797. On October 1, she was dressed as a novice under the name of Sister Marie-Joseph de la Miséricorde.

The Odyssey to Russia

Three months later, the canton of Friborg expelled all French immigrants. If Dom Augustin decided to bring all Trappists to Russia, this plan and its successful implementation was inconceivable without the presence of Princess Bourbon-Condé. Because Tsar Paul I had only just brought her father to St. Petersburg and was ready to protect his daughter, whom he knew personally, even if she had 240 companions of all ages. And when the gates of castles and monasteries opened for the Trappists on the long journey through southern Germany, Austria and Russia to Orscha in what is now Belarus, it was mainly because the closest relative of the French king was traveling here, no matter how humble she was as a novice occur. Because of them, Tsar Paul had reserved a monastery in Orsha, where they arrived in September 1798, and because of them the population supported the French Trappists, who otherwise would have been indifferent to them.

Benedictine in Warsaw

October 1, 1798 would have been the time for Louise's profession . But Lestrange canceled her novitiate because of the extraordinary circumstances, offered a profession for autumn 1799 and left for long months. Louise complained to the tsar (apparently also about her prioress), with the result that he had the metropolitan appoint her abbess of the Trappists without further ado, a revolution that the returned Lestrange refused to accept. The consequence was twofold. On August 14, 1799, Louise resigned from the monastery (with the express and brilliantly justified permission of Bouzonville). In March 1800 all Trappists were expelled by the tsar. Louise moved with her company to a former Benedictine monastery in Nyasvish , stayed there for a year and went to Warsaw in June 1801 with the permission of the Prussian king . In September 1801 she was there in the monastery of the Benedictine Sisters of the Holy Sacrament in the Church of St. Casimir in the presence of King Louis XVIII. once more dressed as a novice. On September 21, 1802, the now 44-year-old princess made her perpetual vows. But again there were conflicts. Their allies died fighting for stricter observance, and the younger generation that remained had different ideas. In addition, Louise did not want her letters to be read. On September 24, 1803, the Pope allowed her to privatize her status, that is, to dispense with all obligations in the Convention.

Ten years in England

In view of Napoleon's power in Europe and terrified by the arrest and shooting of her nephew, the Duke of Enghien , in March 1804, Louise no longer considered her stay in Warsaw safe and decided to move to England to live with her father and brother. She set out on May 13, 1805 with her retinue and arrived (after embarking in Danzig ) on July 1 in England, where she was greeted by William Pitt . She retired to the Benedictine Sisters of Montargis in Bodney Hall, south of Swaffham , Norfolk (from July 1811 in Heath Hall, Yorkshire ), but without ever entering the convent, the way of which she disliked once more than a monastery. In total, she stayed in England for ten years and watched developments on the continent with fascination, until Napoleon abdicated in 1814 and France was open to her again.

Paris - London - Paris

The Paris Benedictine Sisters of the Most Holy Sacrament on Rue Cassette (mother house of Louise's Warsaw monastery) asked her in July 1814 to become their abbess. She accepted, returned to Paris on August 25, 1814 (she lived with Bathilde) and began planning a monastery. Everything should correspond to their ideal of monastic life. Her strongest ally was the Vicar General and later Cardinal Paul-Thérèse-David d'Astros (1772-1851), who also became her spiritual advisor. The choice for the new monastery site fell on the Temple , where the royal family was imprisoned by the revolution. However, led the return of Napoleon from Elba to Louise's renewed flight to England, where she spent 14 months in Little Chelsea (now London) and from where she returned to Paris until June 14, 1816th

Prioress of Saint-Louis-du-Temple until death

On December 3, 1816, she began her life as prioress of the Saint-Louis-du-Temple priory (with d'Astros as superior). She formulated numerous principles for a holy life in the monastery and took care of the construction of a monastery church as well as the financial security of the monastery. In 1820 d'Astros (who became Bishop of Bayonne ) was followed by the Abbé Denis-Antoine-Luc de Frayssinous . Louise witnessed the death of her father (1818) and Bathilde (1822) as well as the murder of the Duc de Berry , son of the Comte d'Artois (and later King Charles X ), for whom she was once intended to be the wife of. She married her "slave" and "Douairière", who had been adopted in Poland, Eléonore Julienne Dombrowska (later Eléonore de Saint-Chamans, 1795–1874). She died at the age of 66, six months before Louis XVIII.

Later development of the foundation of the monastery

It was founded in 1850 at Rue Monsieur No. 20, where it developed into a first-rate spiritual center by 1938, which (not least because of its Gregorian chant ) attracted numerous famous people. After a provisional arrangement in Meudon , the Saint-Louis-du-Temple community, which rose to abbey in 1932, went to Limon in Vauhallan in 1950 , where Monsignor Roncalli laid the foundation stone and where she still lives today. In 1967, today's Notre-Dame-de-Fidélité Abbey was founded as the first daughter in Jouques , which in turn became a daughter of Notre-Dame de Miséricorde in Rosans in 1991 . The founder has set up a museum in Limon.

Works

• Oeuvres de son Altesse Serenissime Madame la princesse Louise-Adélaïde de Bourbon , Paris, Dufour, 1843

literature

• Claude-Alain Sarre, Louise de Condé , Paris, J.-P. Gisserot, 2005 (main source for this article).
• Souvenirs de la marquise de Saint Chamans, douairière (1797-1874) , ed. by Claude-Alain Sarre, Paris, Christian, 2006.
• Vie de son Altesse Serenissime Madame la princesse Louise-Adélaïde de Bourbon-Condé , Paris, Dufour, 1843.
• Lettres de piété ou correspondance intime de Son Altesse Sérénissime Madame La Princesse Louise-Adélaïde de Bourbon dite en religion la Révérende Mère Marie-Joseph de la Miséricorde, première supérieure et fondatrice du Monastère du Temple , Paris, Dufour, 1843.
• Correspondance de la princesse Louise de Condé, fondatrice du monastère du Temple , Paris, Retaux-Bray, 1889.

Web links

• Literature by and about Louise-Adélaïde de Bourbon-Condé in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)
• Website of the abbey founded by Louise de Bourbon (French)