Blessed Marie of the Incarnation
Madame Acarie, who brought the Carmel of Saint Teresa to France1566–1618
Feast · April 18, in the Diocese of Paris and among the Discalced Carmelites
- Where to pray
- Pontoise, Paris
Life
Barbe Avrillot was born in Paris on February 1, 1566. As a girl she boarded with the Poor Clares of Longchamp, from 1576 to 1579. At sixteen, in obedience to her parents, she married Pierre Acarie, a master of accounts and an ardent member of the Catholic League. They had six children, three sons and three daughters.
When Henry IV took Paris in 1594, Pierre Acarie, who had sat on the League’s Council of Forty, was banished from the capital for a time. His wife, known for her life of prayer, received in her house on the rue des Juifs, in the Marais, the devout men and women of the day, among them her cousin Pierre de Bérulle, the Capuchin Benet of Canfield, the theologian André Duval, Michel de Marillac and Saint Vincent de Paul. Saint Francis de Sales was her spiritual director for six months.
Inspired by the writings of Saint Teresa of Avila, whom she saw in visions in 1601 and 1602, she set out to bring the reformed Carmel to France. The decision was taken on July 27, 1602, Pope Clement VIII issued the bull of foundation on November 23, 1603, and in 1604 Spanish Carmelites were received in the new Carmel of the rue Saint-Jacques in Paris. With her cousin Madame de Sainte-Beuve she also brought the Ursulines to Paris to teach girls.
Pierre Acarie died in 1613. In 1614 his widow entered the Carmel of Amiens as a lay sister, taking the name Marie of the Incarnation; three of her daughters were already Carmelites, and one of them, Marguerite of the Blessed Sacrament, was subprioress at Amiens. In December 1616 her superiors sent her to the Carmel of Pontoise, founded in 1605, where she died on April 18, 1618, at fifty-two.
Cult and relics
A first life of her, La Vie admirable, appeared in 1621, and her Vrais Exercices, a book of devotion, in 1622. The first process of her cause ran from 1626 to 1633. Pope Pius VI recognized her heroic virtues on September 27, 1788, and beatified her in 1791. Her feast is kept on April 18 in the Diocese of Paris and by the Discalced Carmelites. Her body rests in the chapel of the Carmel of Pontoise, where a mausoleum was raised for her with marble given by Queen Marie de Médicis, and the room where she died was made an oratory in the 1630s.
For the four hundredth anniversary of her death, her relics were venerated at the Carmel of Pontoise on April 15, 2018, at a Mass presided over by Bishop Stanislas Lalanne of Pontoise, and a colloquium on her life met at the Institut Catholique de Paris. She is a different person from Saint Marie of the Incarnation Guyart, the Ursuline of Quebec.
In art
A painting in the church of Saint-Merry, in the fourth arrondissement of Paris, shows Madame Acarie seeing Saint Teresa of Avila, the vision that set her to work for the foundation of the Carmel in France.
Where to pray
- PontoiseThe Carmel where she died in 1618; her body rests in its chapel.
- Paris, Saint-MerryThe church in the Marais with a painting of Madame Acarie seeing Saint Teresa.
- Paris, Saint-Joseph-des-CarmesThe church of the Institut Catholique, where the Carmelites of Paris kept the four hundredth anniversary of her death on May 5, 2018.
On our ways: Pontoise.