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English Roots and French Connections: The English Benedictine Nuns in Paris

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2015

J. T. Rhodes
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Extract

Political and economic circumstances in Europe and the Civil War (1642–1660) in England so reduced the funds of the English Benedictine nuns of Cambrai that they were unable to provide for the community. Against sound advice they went ahead with a filiation in Paris in 1651. Thanks to the contacts of Dame Clementia Cary and their chaplain, Dom Serenus Cressy, community life began in rented accommodation in 1652. They moved six times before being enabled to purchase their own property in 1664. This was made possible by the messieurs of Port Royal with whom the community continued to have close ties, although they never seem to have been tainted with Jansenism. Novices were always recruited from England and their dowries and associated gifts and bequests were essential, but the survival of several account books reveals the extent and variety of the support the community enjoyed in Paris.

Type
Articles
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , October 2013 , pp. 535 - 547
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2013

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References

Notes

1 For nuns from these families see the website <whowerethenuns> and Heywood, C. & Gillow, J., ‘The Records of the Abbey of Our Lady of Consolation at Cambrai, 1620–1793’, CRS 13 (1913), pp. 1–85;Google Scholar Aveling, J. C. H., The Handle and the Axe (London, 1976), p. 141.Google Scholar

2 Thus the Stanbrook tradition; my count would put the number nearer 40.

3 Coward, B., The Stuart Age, England 1603–1714 (2nd edition, London & New York, 1994), pp. 5–6.Google Scholar These continued on into the eighteenth century, Hatton, R., Europe in the age of Louis XIV (London, 1969),Google Scholar chapter 1.

4 E.g. Gilbert, C. D., ‘The Catholics in Worcestershire 1642–1651’, Recusant History 20 no. 3 (1991), pp. 336–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Not only did the Audley and Yate families suffer sequestration, but Harvington was pillaged: Hodgetts, M., ‘The Yates of Harvington 1631–1696’, Recusant History 22, 2 (1994), 160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Gibbons, K., English Catholic Exiles in Late Sixteenth-Century Paris (Woodbridge, 2011).Google Scholar

6 Weldon, B., Chronological Notes (London, 1881), pp. 90–3;Google Scholar Chaussy, Y., Les bénédictins anglais réfugiés en France au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1967), pp. 85–93;Google Scholar Daumet, G., Notices sur les etablissements religieux anglais, ecossaise et irlandais (Paris, 1912), pp. 35–67, 133–51;Google Scholar Guilday, P., The English Catholic Refugees on the Continent 1558–1795 (London, 1914), pp. 234–36.Google Scholar

7 Smith, G., The Cavaliers in Exile 1640–1660 (Basingstoke & New York, 2003),Google Scholar chapter 8.

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11 Aveling, J. C. H., The Handle and the Axe (London, 1976), p. 193.Google Scholar For English Benedictine monks see A. Allanson's biographies on the <plantata> website.

12 Allison, A. F. & Rogers, D. M., The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English Counter-Reformation Between 1558 and 1640, 2 volumes (Aldershot, 1994), II, no: 315.Google Scholar

13 Trevor-Roper, H., Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans (London, 1989),Google Scholar chapter 4.

14 ODNB, ‘Cressy, Hugh Paulinus’, by Patricia C. Brückmann.

15 E.g. Smith, G., The Cavaliers in Exile 1640–1660 (Basingstoke & New York, 2003), pp. 112–3;Google Scholar ODNB, ‘Montagu, Walter’, by Thompson Cooper, rev. E. C. Metzger.

16 Rapley, E., The Devotes: Women and the Church in Seventeenth-Century France (Montreal, 1990), p 91;Google Scholar on the Frondes more generally and French-English relations during this period: Knachel, P. A., England and the Fronde (Ithaca, New York, 1967).Google Scholar

17 Sketch, p. 3.

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19 ODNB, ‘Smith, Richard’, by Joseph Bergin; occasionally the nuns’ confessor was a secular priest, such as Mr Price (alias John Evans) who died in 1669 and was buried in the nuns’ enclo-sure; some of the priests who said Masses for the nuns were also secular clergy.

20 Allison, A. F., art cit, pp. 466–7;Google Scholar the English Benedictine nuns at Cambrai possessed many of his publications, although none survive from Paris.

21 Sketch, p. 44; Dame Maria Cary was known to the nuns of Port Royal since she had tried her vocation there, probably before the Paris foundation, since she returned to Cambrai in 1652, History of the House, Colwich MS R1, p. 52.

22 Wood, M., The Family and Descendants of St Thomas More (Leominster, 2008), pp. 167–75.Google Scholar

23 Benedictines of Stanbrook, In a Great Tradition (London, 1956), p. 20.Google Scholar

24 Justina Gascoigne, St, Mary's Abbey (Colwich, 1990).Google Scholar

25 The Holy Practises of a Devine Lover, edited by Dom, Augustine Baker (Paris, 1657)Google Scholar and The Spiritual Exercises, edited by Francis, Gascoigne and dedicated to Dame, Bridget More (Paris, 1658).Google Scholar Augustine Baker OSB, The life and death of Dame Gertrude More, edited from all the known manuscripts by Ben, Wekking, Analecta Cartusiana 119:19 (Salzburg, 2002).Google Scholar

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28 Anstruther, G., The Seminary Priests, 4 vols (Ware and Great Wakering, 1966–1977), II, p. 126.Google Scholar

29 Downside Abbey, Baker MS 49.

30 Wolfe, letters 114, 117, 119, 123, pp. 241–2; in general see Walker, C., Gender and Politicsin Early Modern Europe (London, 2003),CrossRefGoogle Scholar chapter 4: ‘Beyond the Cloister: Patronage, Politics and Society’.

31 Sketch, p, 49; M. Wood, op. cit., pp. 196–7.

32 CRS 9 (1911), pp. 387–90.

33 Sketch, pp. 58–9.

34 For instance, 31 August 1638 brought Barbara Constable, Catherine Gascoigne and Mary Tempest all from Yorkshire to Cambrai CRS 13 (1913), pp. 44–5.

35 He was personally known to Dom Augustine Baker and later became one of his biographers: Lunn, D., The English Benedictines 1540–1688 (London, 1980), pp. 214–6.Google Scholar

36 CRS 9 (1911), pp. 376–7.

37 Scott, G., ‘Abbot Maurus Corker [1636–1715] and Augustine Baker's Later Influence among the English Benedictines’ in Stand Up to Godwards, edited by James, Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana 204 (Salzburg, 2002), pp. 91–101;Google Scholar Benedict, Rowell, ‘Abbot Corker & the Nuns: Letters from Lamspringe’, in Lamspringe, an English Abbey in Germany, St, Laurence Papers 7 (Ampleforth Abbey, 2004), pp. 97–101.Google Scholar

38 CRS 9 (1911), p. 351.

39 Benedict Rowell, art cit.

40 Benedictines of Stanbrook, In a Great Tradition (London, 1956), pp. 22–7.Google Scholar

41 Rev Dr John Clark has already edited and published many of Dom, Augustine Baker's writings in Analecta Cartusiana 119: 7–36 Google Scholar (Salzburg, 1997–2012 ongoing).

42 Sketch, p. 29.

43 Augustine, Baker, Directions for Contemplation: Book D , edited by John, Clark, Analecta Cartusiana 119:11 (Salzburg, 1999) and CRS 9 (1911), p. 369.Google Scholar

44 Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, MS 4058, edition, Downside Review October 2012.

45 Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, 453B.

46 Lunn, D., ‘The English Cassinese 1611–1650’, Recusant History 12, 1 (1975), 64.Google Scholar

47 DPR, pp. 675–6.

48 Sketch, chapters 3–5.

49 Sketch, p. 9.

50 DPR, pp. 653–4.

51 Daumet, G., Notices sur les établissements religieux anglais, écossaise et irlandais fondés àParis avant la Révolution (Paris, 1912), p. 46;Google Scholar Turgot, M. E., Paris au XVIIIe siècle: Plan de Paris en 20 planches (Paris, 1739);Google Scholar plate numbers vary according to the copy, but there is an interesting view of Champs de L'alouette, the monastery and its environs.

52 Sketch, p. 16.

53 Abbesses, respectively, 1642–54 and 1658–61.

54 Sketch, pp. 51–5.

55 DPR, pp. 702–4; Colwich MS 24 includes a spiritual letter of M. Bernières.

56 DPR, pp. 929–30.

57 DPR, pp. 903–4.

58 DPR, p. 164.

59 Clark, R., Strangers & Sojourners at Port Royal (Cambridge, 1932), p. 78.Google Scholar

60 ODNB, ‘Goffe, Stephen’ by Thompson Cooper, revised Jerome Bertram.

61 CRS 9 (1911), p. 52; she was among the closest personal companions of Queen Marie-Therese d'Autriche: <chateauversailles-recherche.fr/curia/documents/reine 1674[1683].pdf>.

62 Françoise d'Aubigné, marquise de Maintenon 1635–1719, was known as Madame de Maintenon from about 1678; she was Louis XIV's 2nd (morganatic) wife; her brother Charles, comte d'Aubigné, might be the ‘Duke Aubigny’ who was also a supporter of the nuns. Castelot, A., Madame de Maintenon: la reine secrete (Mesnil-sur-l'Estrée, 1996).Google Scholar

63 ‘Meillerey's son was eventually to marry Hortense Mancini and to take the title of duc de Mazarin’: Salmon, J. H. M., Cardinal de Retz, the Anatomy of a Conspirator (London, 1969), p. 248.Google Scholar

64 Sketch, p. 55; the surviving accounts of the Paris nuns are included in English Convents in Exile 1600–1800, general editor, Bowden, C. (London, 2012–13),Google Scholar Part II, vol. 5, edited, J. E. Kelly.

65 Smith, G., The Cavaliers in Exile 1640–1660 (Basingstoke & New York, 2003),Google Scholar chapter 8, illustrated how living on credit was crucial to the English court exiles.

66 In a Great Tradition, p. 33; see also Walker, C., Gender and Politics in Early Modern Europe (London, 2003), pp. 96–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67 Sketch, p. 59. In the 1850s George Sand described ‘a vast laboratory for distilling eau de menthe’ at the Augustinian Canonesses, Recusant History 21, 4 (1993), 490.

68 Sketch, p. 59.

69 Sketch, p. 49.

70 G. Daumet, op. cit., pp. 52–3.

71 Corp, E., A Court in Exile: the Stuarts in France, 1689–1718 (Cambridge, 2004).Google Scholar

72 DPR, pp. 761–2.

73 Sketch, p. 13.