Marguerite Périer

Marguerite Périer

Marguerite Périer (born April 6, 1646 in Clermont-Ferrand , † April 14, 1733 ibid ) was a French nun and the niece of Blaise Pascal . She gained fame for the miraculous healing of a tumor that disfigured the face.

family

Marguerite was the daughter of Gilberte Pascal, Blaise Pascal's sister by three years older . Her father, Florin Périer , occasionally helped Pascal carry out experiments, around 1648 that of the void in the void . Marguerite's aunt Jacqueline, Pascal's younger sister, entered the Jansenist monastery at Port Royal des Champs in 1652, against her brother's wishes .

The disease

As a ten year old Marguerite had suffered from a chronic illness for several years. It is said to have been a tear fistula on the left eye. This allegedly attacked the nasal bone and perforated the palate . The area around the eye was severely swollen. Many well-known doctors and surgeons had been consulted unsuccessfully, and as a last resort it was advised to “burn out” the “tumor”.

The miracle of the holy thorn

Since 1654 Marguerite was entrusted to the Port Royal des Champs monastery for education. On March 24, 1656, the relic of a thorn from Christ's crown of thorns was brought to the Church of Port Royal. On the advice of her teacher, Marguerite touched the thorn with her sick eye. That same evening the eye was completely healed. A few days later, the doctors examined the child again and found the child perfectly healthy.

This miracle was so central to Blaise Pascal that he documented his testimony on June 8, 1656 in a legally certified transcript. It says: "Blaise Pascal, écuyer (knight), residing in this city of Paris, in the monastery of St. Médéric, about thirty-two years old, testified to the contents of this transcript of the above-mentioned event, after he had sworn to tell the truth."

Against the resistance of the Jesuits , who, as opponents of the Jansenists, insisted on a more thorough investigation, the local representatives of the church confirmed the miracle . At the following thanksgiving mass, Marguerite Périer was shown to the people in a special place and the event was then immortalized in an engraving .

Marguerite Périer lived in Clermont until old age, where she died on April 14, 1733. Her treatise on the priest and theologian Antoine Singlin , who died in 1664, was published posthumously ( Utrecht , 1740). She also wrote detailed memories of her uncle Blaise Pascal. These were part of the library of the Abbé Claude Pierre Goujet (1697–1767) and later in the possession of the Duke of Charost.

literature

• Lettres, opuscules et mémoires de madame Périer et de Jacqueline, sœurs de Pascal, et de Marguerite Périer, sa nièce / publ. sur les manuscrits originaux par MP Faugère , Paris, A. Vaton, 1845 ( digital copy )
• Hermann Reuchlin : History of Port-Royal. Until the death of Angelica Arnauld in 1661 , Volume 1 of: Ders .: History of Port-Royal: The struggle of Reformed and Jesuit Catholicism under Louis XIII and XIV , Verlag F. and A. Perthes, 1839

Individual evidence

1. ↑ A. McKenna et J. Lesaulnier (ed.), Dictionnaire de Port-Royal , Paris: H. Champion, 2004, p. 810-812. (Art. By A. McKenna, French)
2. ^ Biography of Blaise Pascal (accessed April 22, 2011)
3. ↑ cf. Périer, Marguerite . In: Tardieu, Ambroise: Grand dictionnaire biographique des personnages historiques ou dignes de mémoire nés dans le département du Puy-de-Dôme . Moulins: Desrosiers, 1878 (accessed via WBIS Online ).