Women of Modern France (Illustrated): Woman: In all ages and in all countries Vol. 7 (of 10)Thieme, Hugo P. (Hugo Paul)
History
Women of Modern France (Illustrated): Woman: In all ages and in all countries Vol. 7 (of 10)
Thieme, Hugo P. (Hugo Paul)
France -- Social life and customs; Women -- France
The immense and beautiful Hôtel de Cluny, at Paris, was procured, and
a portion of the community moved thither, establishing an institution
which became the best known and most popular of those French convents
which were patronized by women of distinction. The old abbey buildings
near Versailles were later occupied by a community of learned and
pious men who were, for the most part, pupils of the celebrated Abbé
of Saint-Cyran, who, with Jansenius, was living at Paris at the time
that Mère Angélique was perfecting her reforms; she, attracted by the
ascetic life led by the abbé, fell under his influence, and the whole
Arnauld family, numbering about thirty, followed her example.
Soon "the nuns at Paris, with their numerous and powerful connections,
and the recluses at Port-Royal des Champs, together with their pupils
and the noble or wealthy families to which the latter belonged, were
imbued with the new doctrines of which they became apostles." The
primary aim was to live up to a common ideal of Christian perfection,
and to react against the general corruption by establishing thoroughly
moral schools and publishing works denouncing, in strong terms, the
glaring errors of the time, the source of which was considered, by
both the Abbé of Saint-Cyran and Jansenius, to lie in the Jesuit
Colleges and their theology. Thus was evolved a system of education in
every way antagonistic to that of the Jesuits.
At this time the convent at Paris became so crowded that Mère
Angélique withdrew to the abbey near Versailles, the occupants of
which retired to a neighboring farm, Les Granges; there was opened
a seminary for females, which soon attracted the daughters of the
nobility. An astounding literary and agricultural activity resulted,
both at the abode of the recluses and at the seminary: by the recluses
were written the famous Greek and Latin grammars, and by the nuns, the
famous _Memoirs of the History of Port-Royal_ and the _Image of the
Perfect and Imperfect Sister_; a model farm was cultivated, and here
the peasants were taught improved methods of tillage. During the
time of the civil wars the convent became a resort where charity and
hospitality were extended to the poor peasants.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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