Marie Angélique Arnauld

French Cistercian abbess
her niece

Jacqueline Marie Angélique Arnauld, S. O. Cist. or Arnault, called La Mère Angélique (8 September 1591, in Paris – 6 August 1661, in Port Royal des Champs), was Abbess of the Abbey of Port Royal, which became a center of Jansenism under her abbacy.

Arnauld was the third of the 20 children of the lawyer Antoine Arnauld, and one of six sisters of the philosopher Antoine Arnauld. From an early age, her family had determined that she should become not only a nun, but the superior of a convent. While Arnauld was being raised by Cistercian nuns in the Abbey of Port Royal des Champs, at the prompting of her maternal grandfather, Abbess Johanna von Boulehart selected her as her successor at the age of seven. The family forged her age on the documents forwarded to the Vatican. She was sent to be educated at Maubuisson Abbey, She was better known thereafter as La Mère Angélique. Her days were taken up with walks, reading novels, and visits outside the monastery. In 1608, a sermon preached by a visiting Franciscan prompted her to effect a reform in her monastery. She was instrumental in the reforms of several other monasteries. she was forced to sign a document condemning the five propositions of Jansenism. Arnauld's niece, Angélique de Saint Jean, and her nephew, Antoine Le Maistre, persuaded her to write an autobiography, which was mostly the story of her community's heroic resistance in the face of its religious tribulations. It was of Mère Agnès and her religious that De Péréfixe, Archbishop of Paris, said: "These sisters are as pure as angels, but as proud as devils". After her death in 1661, Angélique was succeeded as abbess by her sister, Agnès Arnauld.