Modern history

Part 3: Clerical Reform

Gender, Resistance, and the Limits of Episcopal Authority: Sébastien Zamet’s Relationships with Nuns, 1615–55

Linda Lierheimer

On 10 May 1623, Sébastien Zamet, the bishop of Langres, appeared before the Parlement of Dijon, the highest court in the region. Zamet, along with many of the magistrates, was concerned about the “disorder” and “scandal” caused by the refusal of Ursuline nuns in Dijon to obey their bishop and submit to his authority regarding their choice of a new mother superior. The magistrates ordered an investigation into the matter and sent Zamet with two officers of the court to force the nuns to comply. A heated dispute broke out when some of the judges, who were relatives of the nuns, opposed the intervention of the court and argued in favor of the Ursulines.¹ The nuns, for their part, claimed that they had the right to self-governance and that their bishop had “violated the canons, councils, bulls, rules, and constitutions of the convent that they had observed up to this time, which he himself had approved.” Although they wished to be obedient, “their consciences were obliged by the taking of their original vows to observe exactly what was contained in [their statutes].”²

[148] Like other reforming bishops of his day, Zamet believed that the episcopacy should be at the forefront of the church’s efforts to restore clerical discipline, and he saw the assertion of episcopal power as essential to the spiritual revitalization of his diocese. However, as the above example (which will be discussed at length later in this paper) indicates, his attempts to do so often met with resistance from nuns and monks who claimed traditional rights and exemptions from episcopal control, and from local elites who resented what they saw as incursions on their own authority.

Zamet’s complicated relationships with nuns, which one biographer has called the greatest “stumbling-block of his life,”³ must be understood in the context of these larger struggles over authority and over the process of Catholic reform in early seventeenth-century France. Nuns had a fundamentally different relationship to authority and the church than did male religious. In France, nuns enjoyed most of the same protections, privileges, and status, or qualité, as monks due to their membership in the First Estate. Nuns had the right of ecclesiastical justice and were represented at the Estates-General, however infrequently it met. However, the Catholic Church distinguished clearly between male and female religious on matters such as whether they were permitted to have the Eucharist kept in their cloister and whether they were allowed to create self-governing national or international institutions (monks were, nuns were not).⁴ And in theory, nuns were supposed to be subject to the authority of a male superior, either a bishop or a male monastic.

Zamet embarked on an ambitious program of monastic reform that focused primarily on women’s religious orders, where he clearly hoped to leave his most lasting legacy, and he collaborated closely with devout women and nuns to develop and realize his vision. However, he also became embroiled in numerous conflicts with nuns over issues of authority and convent autonomy. This essay examines three of these conflicts: Zamet’s efforts to reform the Benedictine abbey of Puits d’Orbe, and the resistance of the abbess, Rose Bourgeois; his ongoing conflict with the Ursuline nuns in his diocese; and the reform of the Cistercian abbey of Tart and Zamet’s plan to unify the abbeys of Tart and Port-Royal. Although each of these cases deserves a far more extensive treatment than can be addressed within the limits of this article, the focus here will be on what these cases can contribute to our understanding of the expansion of and limits on episcopal power in early seventeenth-century France. The collaboration of [149] religious women was essential to the success of a reforming bishop, and conflicts between nuns and bishops allowed the former to claim a certain degree of autonomy that in turn restricted the de facto ability of the bishop to assert his will. It is important, though, to keep in mind that these conflicts were not just over who should have authority, but involved issues of spiritual autonomy and differing ideals of religious life. This fact would become abundantly clear during the Jansenist controversy, the beginnings of which contributed to Zamet’s greatest defeat, his failed attempt to create a new religious order for women, the Institut du Saint-Sacrement.

Bishops and Nuns in Counter-Reformation France

In his classic study of the Catholic Reformation, H. Outram Evenett stated that “the strengthening of the episcopacy may be regarded as the corner-stone of the counter-reformation Church.”⁵ The Council of Trent (1545–63) ordered bishops to reside in their dioceses, oversee the churches and monastic houses in their dioceses, reform the morals of the clergy, convoke yearly diocesan synods, and visit their dioceses regularly.⁶ The century that followed saw an expansion of episcopal power and the development of a new model of the ideal bishop.⁷

In France, the implementation of the program of episcopal reform was delayed by the refusal of the Parlement of Paris, the highest law court in the land, to register the Tridentine decrees and thus give them the force of law. In addition, unlike in other Catholic countries, the French Crown had the right to appoint bishops. The traditional independence of the French church from Rome, known as Gallicanism, shaped the philosophy and self-perception of French bishops. As Alison Forrestal has pointed out, the Council of Trent failed to resolve the fundamental question of whether bishops received their power from the pope or directly from God by “divine right.” Most French bishops adhered to the latter view, in which a bishop’s relationship to his diocese mirrored that of an absolute monarch with his state. This meant that the French episcopacy tended to regard itself as having jurisdiction independent of Rome and resisted any attempts of the papacy to interfere with its activities, which helps to explain the otherwise [150] surprising alliances between monastic orders and Rome in disputes over episcopal jurisdiction in seventeenth-century France.⁸

Recent studies have greatly enriched our understanding of the French episcopacy, but have largely ignored bishops’ relationships with women and nuns. This is significant because the reform and creation of women’s religious orders was central to the success of Catholic reform in France, as Barbara Diefendorf has shown.⁹ The support and patronage of bishops was likewise vital to what one historian has called the “conventual invasion”¹⁰ of the first half of the seventeenth century in France, in which women experimented with new forms of religious life and joined convents in unprecedented numbers.

The Council of Trent passed two important pieces of legislation regarding nuns: it mandated that all communities of religious women be enclosed, and that convents, except those already dependent on male religious orders, must submit to the authority of their local bishop.¹¹ The insistence on cloister led to the reform of older abbeys where the nuns no longer observed their monastic rule, and to the gradual enclosure of new active women’s congregations, such as the Ursulines. The enforcement of enclosure has contributed to a view of the Counter-Reformation church as being inherently repressive of women. In practice, however, the immediate need to battle Protestantism trumped efforts to impose cloister on women’s congregations and convents in France during the decades that followed Trent. In these years, the church often made use of the grassroots spiritual revival, which was also an important characteristic of Catholic reform, and in which devout women played a central role. And while it was often bishops who initiated the move toward enclosure, many women embraced cloister as a means of pursuing a more perfect life and of preserving their spiritual autonomy.¹²

This rethinking of enclosure has given us a more complex understanding of women’s religious life during the Catholic Reformation; however, the Council of Trent’s other major decision regarding religious women—the control of bishops over women’s orders—has not received the same scholarly attention. The decrees concerning nuns must be understood both as part of a larger program of episcopal [151] reform and as part of a long history of attempts to assert episcopal authority over religious women.¹³ The fact that this issue was on the agenda at Trent is evidence of the failure of these earlier attempts, which were often vigorously resisted. In view of that history, it would be surprising if the efforts of seventeenth-century bishops had gone uncontested, especially as the council provided nuns with a powerful tool for resisting episcopal authority when it affirmed the traditional rights of nuns to self-government by enjoining them to obey their Rule and granting them the right to elect their own superiors.¹⁴ Religious women appropriated and reinterpreted cloister as a guarantee of their autonomy, and used this as a basis for resisting male incursions on their traditional rights. In this context, the enclosed space of the convent became an important site of resistance to episcopal authority.

Sébastien Zamet and the Assembly of the Clergy (1625)

Sébastien Zamet was born in 1588 to a prominent French financier family. His father, one of the wealthiest men in France, was a close confidante of Henri IV, to whom he often lent money. From a young age, Sébastien, the younger of two brothers, was destined for the church. He was raised at court and studied classics at the Jesuit Collège de la Flèche, where Descartes would later study. In 1609, he began his theological studies at the Sorbonne, where he was a brilliant student. In preparation for taking orders, Zamet placed himself under the spiritual direction of Pierre Bérulle, one of the central figures of the French Counter-Reformation and founder of the Congregation of the Oratory.¹⁵ During the early years of his career, he developed a close relationship with Richelieu, who referred to Zamet as his “intimate and perfect friend.”¹⁶

In 1614, Zamet was named bishop of Langres, one of the largest dioceses in France, comprising much of the Burgundy and Champagne regions. This position, one of the highest in the French church, came with its own title of nobility; upon his appointment Zamet was named évêque-duc de Langres, pair de France.¹⁷ [152] Unlike his predecessors, Zamet took seriously the Council of Trent’s injunction that bishops reside in their dioceses, hold regular synods and visitations, and ensure clerical discipline. He developed a four-pronged plan for reform that included inviting preachers and missionaries to visit the diocese, improving the quality and reputation of the clergy, establishing new religious orders, and introducing reforms in the older abbeys.¹⁸ As soon as he arrived in Langres, he immediately set to work revitalizing spiritual life in his diocese and cracking down on clerical abuses.¹⁹ In 1616, he approved the establishment of an Oratorian seminary in Langres for the purpose of “reestablishing ecclesiastical discipline in his diocese.”²⁰ That same year, he held the first of many synods and issued statutes that, among other things, set rules of behavior for priests and required them to live in their parishes.²¹ Non-residency had been an ongoing problem in the diocese since at least the middle of the sixteenth century, exacerbated by a special tax that allowed priests dispensation from residence.²² Zamet ordered all priests to reside in their parishes under penalty of losing their benefices:

Considering that in our diocese there are some parish priests who are so obstinate that neither natural nor divine law, nor the decrees of the holy councils, nor the synodal statutes of previous bishops could induce them to reside in their parishes: We order and command for the sake of holy obedience all priests holding benefices and having charge of souls in our diocese that within two months each must return to his benefice, and afterwards reside permanently there.²³

Zamet went on to forbid priests to “keep in their houses or visit any scandalous or suspicious women or girls, or any who had a bad reputation” and ordered them to avoid “drunkenness, loose dancing, and other debauchery and abuses.”²⁴

Zamet’s attempts to impose discipline on the clergy in his diocese met with strong resistance, especially from monastic orders.²⁵ Such conflicts had a long history in the Catholic Church, but “quarrels” between secular and regular clergy [153] intensified during this period. Alison Forrestal notes that in the seventeenth century, “so many quarrels erupted between the episcopate and the regular clergy that it would be tedious as well as repetitive to undertake detailed narratives and analyses of all of them.”²⁶ The reform of religious orders was complicated by overlapping jurisdictions that allowed regulars to challenge the authority of bishops, often with the support of Rome. French bishops reasoned that as God’s chosen representatives on earth, their law trumped the particular “rights” of religious orders,²⁷ even when those rights were recognized by Rome.

The matter came to a head at the Assembly of the Clergy in 1625, where the central issues on the table were the power of bishops over the French church, recent challenges to their authority by the pope, and the problem of the regular clergy.²⁸ The assembly, which met every five years to decide upon the clergy’s financial contribution to the state, was the primary mouthpiece of the clergy in France. The assembly was an elective body with representatives from ecclesiastical provinces throughout France, but only bishops and priests could serve as deputies, and the president of the assembly was always a bishop.²⁹ Thus, the assembly tended to represent the interests of bishops and usually defended episcopal power.³⁰ Zamet, who was at the time embroiled in a jurisdictional dispute with the Jesuits in his diocese, raised the issue of the privileges of the regular clergy.³¹ The parish priests of the town of Chaumont had complained to Zamet that their parishioners were abandoning the town church to attend services at the Jesuit chapel. After Zamet ordered the parishioners to attend services at the town church, the Jesuits appealed to Rome and, in September 1624, won their case against Zamet.

The bishops at the assembly supported Zamet in this matter and took the position that this decision had “clearly violated their rights.”³² The resulting discussion led to the production and eventual publication in 1645 of the Déclaration sur les réguliers that clarified the issue of episcopal jurisdiction over regular clergy [154] in their dioceses.³³ The Déclaration condemned the behavior of some monastic houses that used claims of exemption to deny the bishop the right to enter their monasteries and churches:

Over time, a certain abuse has slipped into some religious houses . . . that is highly contemptuous of the office of the bishop, whom in some towns they refuse entry, claiming to be exempt, which is nothing less than to establish a new diocese within a diocese. To stop this abuse, it is ordered that all monastics and others who claim exemption receive the diocesan bishop in their towns, monasteries, and churches with the honor and reverence to which he is due, whatever exemptions may be claimed to the contrary.³⁴ [emphasis added]

The Déclaration affirmed the jurisdiction of bishops over all new religious communities in their dioceses as well as their right to visit religious communities in their dioceses at any time (in contrast to Trent, which had specified that visits were to take place annually), to examine monastic accounts, and to oversee the election of superiors.³⁵ While the Déclaration by no means resolved the “quarrel” between bishops and regular clergy, it was adopted as a rule for episcopal conduct in France throughout the remainder of the century.³⁶

Rose Bourgeois and the Reform of the Benedictine Abbey of Puits d’Orbe (1621–45)

Although the Déclaration did not refer specifically to nuns, Zamet must certainly have had in mind two recent incidents in which he had been denied entrance by nuns who refused to open the convent doors. The first of these occurred in 1621, when the abbess Rose Bourgeois refused to allow him to enter the Benedictine abbey of Puits d’Orbe. Two years later during his dispute with the Ursulines of Dijon, Zamet had to resort to the secular authorities to force the nuns to let him enter. Both of these examples show how nuns used Trent’s insistence on enclosure and their family connections to local elites as the basis for resistance to episcopal authority, as well as the ways that this resistance was complicated by their dual status as both monastics and women.

[155] The reform of the ancient abbeys in his diocese was a central component of Zamet’s program of episcopal reform. In this, Zamet was participating in a larger project of the Counter-Reformation church. To restore monastic discipline, the Council of Trent ordered that “all regulars, men as well as women, adjust and regulate their life in accordance with the requirements of the rule which they have professed,” and “all kings, princes, governments and magistrates to deign to lend . . . their help and influence in support of . . . bishops, generals, and other superiors in the execution of the reform.”³⁷

By the time of the Reformation, many French convents had fallen into disorder and disrepair, and the nuns no longer followed their monastic rule or observed cloister. Attempts at reform often met with resistance from powerful abbesses determined to preserve their traditional privileges, as well as from nuns, many of whom had no religious vocation and were reluctant to adopt a more austere, ascetic lifestyle.³⁸ Reform also met with opposition from nuns’ families, who expected to maintain close ties with their daughters and sisters after they entered the convent. Attempts at monastic reform often caused division within convents, especially between older and younger nuns, with the latter more likely to be receptive to change. Emotions could run high—at the Benedictine abbey of Montmartre, the nuns tried to poison their reforming abbess!³⁹

Zamet faced an uphill battle, not only because many nuns did not embrace reform, but also because these abbeys had traditionally been exempt from episcopal authority. The male leaders of the Benedictines and Cistercians had jurisdiction over the female houses of their orders, and these rights had been recognized at Trent. In the case of royal abbeys, the ultimate authority resided with the French king, who had the right to appoint the abbess. In some cases, the abuses were so serious that the Crown itself took the lead in initiating reform, as was the case with the Benedictine abbey of Rougemont and its notorious abbess, Lucrèce de Rochefort, who was charged with criminal offenses.⁴⁰ The abbess was deposed in January 1621; however she ignored the order and continued to exercise her charge until 1645 when she was arrested by lettre de cachet and removed to the Madelonnettes convent in Paris, where she remained for two years. (Surprisingly, she was then allowed to return to Rougemont, where she attempted to resume her abbatial duties). Zamet worked with the Benedictine prior who had jurisdiction over [156] Rougemont to resolve the situation, but he seems not to have taken an active role, deferring to the prior and involving himself only at the request of the queen mother in the 1650s.⁴¹

Zamet did become actively involved in the reform of the Benedictine abbey of Puits d’Orbe.⁴² The abbey had been founded in the twelfth century but, like many monastic houses, had fallen into decline in the late medieval period. However, Zamet’s ability to institute reform was limited by the fact that the abbey was under the jurisdiction of the prior of Moutier-Saint-Jean, a male Benedictine house, and by the French king’s right to appoint the abbess.⁴³ Thus, Zamet’s strategy had to involve not only the nuns, but also their male Benedictine superiors and ultimately the Crown itself.

The abbess of Puits d’Orbe, Rose Bourgeois, had been appointed in 1601. As the daughter of a prominent magistrate in the Parlement of Dijon, Rose owed her position to political connections rather than to a religious vocation.⁴⁴ Rose showed little inclination for the religious life, and as in many convents of the time, there was little to distinguish the relaxed lifestyle in the convent from that of the outside world. The nuns did not follow a monastic rule, had their own possessions and apartments, and were free to leave the convent to visit friends and relatives. In 1604, while undergoing painful treatment for a diseased leg that would leave her crippled for life, Rose was inspired to reform her life and her abbey after hearing François de Sales preach the Lenten sermons. The two entered into a correspondence, and de Sales made an attempt to initiate reform at Puits d’Orbe, but the abbess found excuses to put him off. ⁴⁵

In 1618, Rose Bourgeois requested the transfer of her abbey from the country to the town (such transfers were common during these years as a first step [157] toward monastic reform).⁴⁶ Hoping that the move would facilitate the reform of the abbey, Zamet gave his permission, and in December 1619, the abbey was moved to Châtillon-sur-Seine.⁴⁷ Unfortunately, the move did not have the desired effect and “the monastery remained a place of licence, having neither Rule, nor walls, nor grills.”⁴⁸ The nuns who favored reform complained about the scandalous behavior of the abbess who, they claimed:

under pretext of piety, lived most licentiously, along with some of the nuns, and allowed all kinds of people into the abbey, entertaining them and holding dances, and she gave these people the keys to the convent so that they could enter at night . . . , and there was a trap door in her room through which they could enter without being seen . . . ; and when these men did not come to visit her, she went to them, and took her supper to their houses.⁴⁹

The abbess, they continued, racked up huge debts, while the nuns themselves often went hungry.⁵⁰

In 1621, the bishop was forced to intervene, but when he arrived at the convent to exercise his right of visitation, the abbess insulted him and refused him entrance. Zamet placed the convent under interdict, declaring that this would last as long as the abbess refused to recognize the authority of her male superior (the prior of the Benedictine monastery of Moutier-Saint-Jean) and follow the rules he had given them. Zamet was true to his word. The interdict remained in force for seventeen years, during which time the nuns who wished to receive the sacraments were forced to “attend daily mass in the churches of the city.” At the insistence of her relatives, the abbess made a show of changing her life and even put in convent grills to show that she was ready to accept cloister. However, she, along with some of the older nuns, continued to “ride around the countryside in [158] her carriage,” and the grills were taken down after six or seven months.⁵¹ Finally, in 1638, the families of those nuns who opposed the abbess, including two prominent magistrates in the Parlement of Dijon, asked Zamet to step in and restore discipline in the abbey once and for all. Zamet and the prior of Moutier-Saint-Jean decided to pursue a legal case against the abbess. Faced with the threat of legal action and fearing that she would be deposed, Rose Bourgeois finally agreed to recognize the authority of her male superiors and accept the reform of the abbey, and the interdict was lifted.⁵²

However, the abbess’s submission was short-lived, and she continued to resist reform. The house was split into two factions: the nuns who accepted reform, and the older nuns who joined the abbess in resisting it. In 1641, after the abbess tried to appoint her own confessor and gave him permission to give the habit to a novice, the reformed nuns rebelled and appealed to the French Crown. The king’s Conseil d’Etat issued an arrêt ordering the abbess to comply with the reforms to which she had previously agreed. The abbess, after consulting a legal counselor in Châtillon, refused to submit, and instead removed the newly elected convent officers from their charges, took away their keys, chased away the confessor appointed by the bishop, and placed the furnishings and revenues of the convent under the control of her chosen superior.⁵³

The abbess appealed the council’s sentence, arguing that the abbey was independent and not under the jurisdiction of Moutier-Saint-Jean, and that she would only recognize the authority of God and the pope. When it was proved that the abbey was dependent on Moutier-Saint-Jean, she claimed that the prior did not have jurisdiction over her and that she would only obey his superior, the cardinal de La Rochefoucauld.⁵⁴ The cardinal promptly handed over jurisdiction in this case to the prior.⁵⁵ Finally, in July 1642, the prior of Moutier-Saint-Jean, supported by Zamet, drew up articles that stripped the abbess of all authority [159] and ordered her virtual imprisonment. She was commanded to give the keys to the abbey to the reformed nuns and to relinquish her apartment and personal belongings. A wall was to be constructed to segregate her and the others who did not wish to accept reform from the other nuns.⁵⁶ Zamet arranged with the queen mother, Anne of Austria, to bring three nuns from the Val-de-Grâce convent in Paris to establish reform at Puits d’Orbe.⁵⁷ The king granted Rose Bourgeois an annual pension of eight-hundred livres and gave the community the right to elect their own abbess after her death.⁵⁸ Bourgeois died in 1657, without ever accepting reform herself.

The nature of the evidence makes it difficult to ascertain the abbess’s own perspective on the events that unfolded. The legal documents describe her as duplicitous and manipulative, characteristics typically associated with powerful women in this time period, and as presenting “an ostentatious performance of piety” that contrasted with her profane lifestyle.⁵⁹ But we can infer a few things about her motives. Her initial desire to transfer and reform the convent was most likely sincere and can be attributed to the influence of François de Sales and perhaps her more devout sister, Madame Brûlart, which, together with the physical pain she was suffering at the time (she was undergoing treatment for a diseased leg that would leave her crippled) must have had a powerful impact. However, her eventual preference for a more comfortable and familiar way of life is not surprising. Perhaps more surprising is that she was in the minority among the nuns at Puits d’Orbe in resisting reform. Five older nuns supported the abbess, while eight nuns embraced reform. It is also possible that her claims that the abbey was reformed were genuine, but that her understanding of what that meant differed from that of the church authorities and some of the other nuns in her abbey.⁶⁰ In any case, her actions and behaviors indicate that she viewed herself as the equal of her male superiors and that she had the authority, and perhaps even legitimacy, to [160] retain her position as abbess, even in the face of secular and ecclesiastical authorities’ rulings to the contrary. In an earlier era, her authority would most likely have been uncontested. Either way, her alternating strategy of refusal and feigned submission proved remarkably successful for years.

Zamet was willing to step back and let the state and the prior of Moutier-Saint-Jean do their work, yet the case demonstrates the difficulties he faced in achieving one of the central components of his diocesan reform plan: the reform of the ancient abbeys. The jurisdictional claims of the Crown and regular clergy over these abbeys meant that Zamet’s efforts required their collaboration and support, which were not always forthcoming, as will be seen in the case of the abbey of Tart. Abbesses such as Rose Bourgeois and Lucrèce de Rochefort proved adept at using numerous legal appeals and at exploiting the tensions between the various secular and religious powers to postpone the consequences of their disobedience, sometimes indefinitely. De Rochefort showed particular political savvy in appealing her case to the Parlement of Paris, which ruled in her favor in 1644, although its decision was overruled by the Queen Mother.⁶¹ Four years later, the judges would rise up in revolt to protect their own ancient privileges against royal encroachment, setting off the first phase of the civil war known as the Fronde. Zamet also had to gain the support of local elites, many of whom were family members of the nuns. Rose Bourgeois appealed her case to the Parlement of Dijon, where she and the nuns who resisted reform counted “more than twenty relatives,” including her nephew, who acted as her powerful advocate at the court.⁶² In this case and in his dispute with the Ursulines of Dijon, Zamet had to negotiate divisions within the Parlement, which mirrored the divisions between the nuns themselves, in order to obtain the support he needed to force the nuns to comply with his orders.

The Ursulines of Dijon (1621–24)

The creation of new religious orders was another important component of Zamet’s reform plan, and it was here that he had his greatest successes. While Zamet was a supporter of new male orders such as the Oratorians and Jesuits, it was the new women’s congregations of the Catholic Reformation that saw the greatest expansion during his episcopacy, with twenty new convents established in his diocese [161] under his watch.⁶³ Nonetheless, Zamet’s ongoing conflict with the Ursulines in his diocese, which began around 1621, shows that his relationship with the newly established convents was no less complicated than with the older abbeys.⁶⁴ Theoretically, his authority over the Ursulines should not have been problematic, since they had no traditional claim of exemption from episcopal jurisdiction and were not dependent on any male religious order. However, the Ursulines were able to effectively use claims of traditional rights and appeals to Rome and the Parlement of Dijon to circumvent Zamet’s efforts to intervene in matters of convent governance and organization.

The Ursulines, one of the many new women’s religious orders of the Catholic Reformation, expanded rapidly throughout France during the first decades of the seventeenth century.⁶⁵ Early Ursulines took simple vows and served God in the world through charity work. However in 1612, the Paris house adopted clausura and took on a fourth vow of teaching. By the 1630s, almost all Ursuline congregations had accepted monastic enclosure. The expansion of the order was facilitated by the support of powerful bishops, but this support often came with strings attached. There was a fine line between protection and control; bishops sometimes imposed their own rules on Ursuline congregations and often initiated monastic enclosure.⁶⁶

The Ursulines of Dijon were established in 1605 as an uncloistered congregation by Françoise de Xainctonge, the daughter of a prominent magistrate at the Parlement of Dijon. In 1615, Catherine de Montholon, a rich Parisian widow from an illustrious noble family in Burgundy, offered to provide the congregation with a solid financial base on the condition that the Dijon Ursulines accept monastic transformation. Although Françoise opposed the change, the 16,000 livres offered by Madame Montholon proved impossible to turn down, and the sisters took formal vows of religion in 1619.⁶⁷ By the end of that year, there [162] were four Ursuline convents in the diocese: at Dijon, Langres, Chaumont, and Châtillon-sur-Seine.⁶⁸ These convents, like most Ursuline houses throughout France, were only loosely affiliated. Each house had its own papal bull, letters patent from the king, and set of rules and constitutions.⁶⁹

As part as his wider effort to centralize diocesan control, Zamet developed a plan to unite these convents under the authority of a single head, or provinciale. In 1620, he convened a “chapter general” composed of the prioresses of these convents. However, the nuns rejected Zamet’s plan, arguing that this innovation was contrary to their rules and constitutions, and violated the independence of each convent guaranteed in the papal bulls that had established their communities.⁷⁰ In spite of their opposition, Zamet continued to pursue his plan. In 1622, after obtaining approval from several prominent theologians at the Sorbonne, he tried to force the Ursulines of Langres into submission by depriving them of the sacraments. The nuns complained that when they asked for a priest to administer last rites to a dying nun, Zamet replied sarcastically that “if they [the nuns] were so good, they would still be in a state of grace even if they died without the sacraments.” They also claimed that a young novice had become gravely ill because of her disappointment about being unable to take her final vows. When a doctor judged that the novice was in danger of dying, they again asked for a priest, but were denied permission. Not wanting to disobey the bishop, they decided to send the novice home, where she died after receiving the sacraments.⁷¹ Despite Zamet’s heavy-handed tactics, the nuns did not give in. Instead, they took their case to Rome and won. In September 1622, a papal bull arrived affirming the independence of each convent in the diocese.⁷²

That same month, the nuns in Dijon reelected their prioress, Mère Jeanne Mazoyer, to a second term against Zamet’s wishes. Some months later, in February 1623, Zamet recalled two nuns from the Ursuline convent in Châtillon, in an attempt to establish the Dijon convent as the “mother house” of the Ursulines of [163] his diocese. The two nuns were Françoise de Xainctonge, who had left Dijon to found the Châtillon convent three years earlier, and Marguerite Le Jeune, who was then prioress of the Châtillon convent. Zamet tried to persuade the Dijon Ursulines to accept one of these nuns as their prioress; however, Mère Mazoyer, following the advice of the priest who served as director of the convent, refused to step down. Zamet responded by removing the director, and also the confessor of the convent, in effect depriving them of the sacraments.⁷³

In May 1623, Zamet tried to enter the convent to impose his will, but was turned away. He returned armed with a mandate from the Parlement of Dijon ordering the nuns to obey their bishop.⁷⁴ Once inside, Zamet took possession of the keys to the convent and, over the objections of Catherine de Montholon, who threatened to leave the convent and take her property with her, sent the prioress, Mère Mazoyer, off to Châtillon in the episcopal carriage. Zamet placed one of the nuns from Châtillon in charge and ordered the nuns to obey her until a new election could be held. When Zamet asked to examine the convent’s accounts, the nuns claimed that they had placed their records outside the convent for safekeeping and that these would be returned after they were allowed to choose a superior in a valid election.⁷⁵

The nuns then appealed to the Parlement of Dijon to uphold their right of election. Under pressure from the families of the nuns, including leading magistrates at the court,⁷⁶ the Parlement assembled the superiors of the male religious orders in the region to advise them on the matter. The clerics determined that since there had been no election, the nuns were not bound to obey Zamet’s appointee, but that as proof of their humility and submission to the bishop, they might obey her as a trustee of the office until such time as they could hold a new election. On July 22, the Ursulines of Dijon elected Sister Claude Coutier de Sainte-Agnès, who had been second in command to Mère Mazoyer. Zamet admitted defeat, and the Châtillon nuns returned to their convent, along with three other nuns who had supported them.⁷⁷ In 1637, Zamet did get the Ursuline prioresses in his diocese to agree to adopt a common set of rules that he had drawn up; however, in practice, most convents continued to observe their individual statutes that had [164] been confirmed by Rome.⁷⁸ In the end, Zamet’s plan to create a single centralized congregation of Ursulines to facilitate the effective exercise of episcopal power was unsuccessful, and each convent retained its autonomy.⁷⁹

In his efforts to assert his episcopal authority over the Ursulines in his diocese, Zamet had to contend with their powerful advocates in the Parlement of Dijon, many of whom were their family members. This was a difficult feat for an outsider who had only recently arrived in the province, had few local connections, and, because of his close ties to Richelieu and the French state, was likely viewed with suspicion. However, the fact that the Ursulines in Zamet’s diocese were divided about his plan suggests deeper divisions about religious ideals and questions of spiritual autonomy. The tensions between Françoise de Xaintonge, who had a close personal relationship with Zamet and seems to have collaborated with him on the plan for convent union, and Catherine de Montholon, who led the nuns’ resistance to Zamet, dated back to their disagreement years earlier about whether the Dijon Ursulines should take religious vows. Catherine’s conflict with Zamet involved a fundamentally different understanding of enclosure: for Zamet and other bishops, clausura was inseparable from submission to episcopal authority, while for Catherine, it meant protecting the independence and autonomy of religious women.

In defending their rights, the Dijon Ursulines represented themselves primarily as members of the regular clergy, rather than as female monastics. The male monastic leaders who supported the nuns’ right of election likewise saw the issue as pertaining to all religious, not just nuns. However, the reality was that the stakes were different for nuns than they were for monks, because autonomy and independence were not normally accorded to women. Monks who quarreled with their bishops did not risk being accused of acting unnaturally or against their sex. The requirement that nuns obey their bishop demanded a dual submission—as monastics and as women. The traditional comparison of the [165] relationship of the bishop to his diocese with the marriage between a husband and wife had very different implications for male and female monastics.⁸⁰ Nuns were much more dependent on bishops for protection and support, and bishops had the right to oversee, and in some cases even to administer, a convent’s financial affairs (though this sometimes met resistance, as when the nuns in Dijon hid their convent records from Zamet!).⁸¹ But by claiming the rights of regular clergy, nuns like the Ursulines of Dijon were able to use disputes over episcopal jurisdiction to carve out a space for themselves in which to exercise authority as female religious.

Notre-Dame de Tart and the Institut du Saint-Sacrement (1622–38)

The reform of the Cistercian abbey of Notre-Dame de Tart brought together Zamet’s dual visions of convent union and restoration of monastic discipline in the older religious orders for women in his diocese. From 1622 to 1638, Zamet worked closely with the acting abbess of Tart, Jeanne de la Tournelle, to reform the abbey, and pursued an ambitious plan to unify the abbeys of Tart and Port-Royal and create a new religious order for women, the Institut du Saint-Sacrement. In contrast to the reform of the Benedictine abbeys of Puits d’Orbe and Rougemont, Zamet collaborated with nuns who, at least initially, shared his vision, but he ran into trouble with the male leaders of the Cistercian order, who resisted his efforts to remove two abbeys (Tart and Port-Royal) from their jurisdiction.

The reform of Tart must be understood as part of a larger conflict between Zamet and the Cistercians.⁸² The mother house of the order, Cîteaux, was located in Burgundy, within the boundaries of the diocese of Langres. Cîteaux was destroyed and abandoned during the sixteenth-century religious wars; however, under the leadership of Nicolas Boucherat, who served as abbot general from 1605 to 1625, the monastery was rebuilt and regular monastic observance restored. After the death of Boucherat, the monks elected Pierre Nivelle as his successor; however the king annulled the election under pressure from the powerful Cardinal de La Rochefoucauld who supported another candidate. Zamet, a close ally of the cardinal, sided with him against the monks. The confirmation of Nivelle as abbot in January 1626 marked a setback for the advocates of reform [166] within the order and set the stage for a tense relationship between the male Cistercians and Zamet.⁸³

Jeanne de Courcelles de Pourlan, who was named abbess of Tart in 1617 at the age of twenty-six, was the niece of the Cardinal de La Rochefoucauld.⁸⁴ Jeanne had taken her original vows in a Franciscan convent and undertook a second novitiate in preparation for taking on her new position. Like many young abbesses of the time, Jeanne de Courcelles favored reform and she worked closely with Zamet to establish it.⁸⁵ However, her initial attempts to impose a stricter lifestyle on the nuns met with resistance, and reform was delayed when she fell ill from smallpox. During her illness, governance of the abbey fell to her coadjutrix, Jeanne de la Tournelle. In 1622, Zamet visited the abbey and became Madame de la Tournelle’s spiritual director. Together, they planned to reform the abbey, beginning with the transfer of the abbey to the city of Dijon.⁸⁶

Opposition came from the families of the nuns and from the Cistercian order on which Tart was dependent. One of the biggest obstacles was Madame de la Tournelle’s own father, who was hostile to reform and may have been behind a failed plan to assassinate Zamet.⁸⁷ Zamet urged Madame de la Tournelle to be strong and to resist her father’s attempts to dissuade her: “If your father finds you firm and courageous, and resolved to follow the path of greater perfection, he will bend.”⁸⁸ “Do not be frightened by your father’s speeches . . . it is passion, not reason that speaks, so you must not listen to him.”⁸⁹ In giving this advice, Zamet almost certainly had in mind the celebrated case of Angélique Arnauld, abbess of Port-Royal, over which he would soon become spiritual director. In 1609, Angélique had locked her family out of the abbey in order to reestablish cloister and follow the abbey’s original rule. Her father, angry at what she had done, pounded on the door and threatened to disown her; her brother “accused her of parricide, saying her disobedience would cause the death of their father.”⁹⁰

[167] Some months later, Madame de la Tournelle’s father finally offered his consent to the reform and transfer of the monastery in return for a payment of 8,000 livres.⁹¹ In May 1623, the reformed nuns moved into their new convent in Dijon. Those nuns who did not wish to accept reform were allowed to retire to another convent and granted an annual pension for the remainder of their lives.⁹²

The removal of Tart from Cistercian jurisdiction was central to Zamet’s ambitious plan to unify the abbeys of Tart and Port-Royal under his superiority and to create a new religious order. Zamet had met the abbess of Port-Royal, Angélique Arnauld, in 1624, and soon after became the spiritual director of the abbey. Zamet and Angélique collaborated on plans for the Institut du Saint-Sacrement. Both believed that a single male superior was necessary to maintain the unity and piety of the order. In addition to removing the abbeys of Port-Royal and Tart from the Cistercian order and placing them under Zamet’s direct jurisdiction, the project also involved establishing the principle of election in place of the royal nomination of the abbess, an exchange of nuns between the two abbeys, and the founding of a new religious house in Paris by nuns from both Tart and Port-Royal.⁹³

Not surprisingly, the plan met with opposition from the Cistercian order, which fought to retain authority over both Tart and Port-Royal. In 1626, the pope granted Zamet jurisdiction over Tart. Incensed by the decision, the head of the Cistercian order, Pierre Nivelle, threatened the abbess with excommunication. The abbess responded that while the Cistercian order had originally been granted authority over the abbey because of its sanctity, “as that sanctity no longer exists, she had the right to place herself under the jurisdiction of bishops, her natural superiors according to the Rule of St. Benedict.”⁹⁴ Nivelle appealed to both Rome and the Parlement of Dijon, but lost his case.⁹⁵

[168] Zamet’s claim of jurisdiction over Port-Royal, and over the new convent to be established in Paris, was more tenuous. This claim in effect challenged canon law regarding the authority of bishops over female religious houses, since neither Port-Royal nor the proposed new convent was in his diocese. Zamet justified himself in a letter to one of the clerics in charge of negotiating the affair in Rome: “It is true that it is against church law for a bishop to have permanent authority in the diocese of another, but this law would seem to be weakened by a million privileges given to diverse persons and communities.” It is strange, he continued, “that a monk, a simple priest . . . governs whole families [members of a religious order] in a diocese, to the exclusion of the bishop.” Zamet claimed that he would have no problem ceding jurisdiction over the nuns in his own diocese to another bishop; his problem was with the jurisdictional claims of regular clergy that exempted monastic institutions from episcopal authority and undermined the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.⁹⁶

A compromise was reached in 1627. Pope Urban VIII (r. 1623–44) placed Port-Royal under the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Paris and authorized the founding of the Institut du Saint-Sacrement under the joint authority of three superiors: Zamet, Jean-François de Gondi, the archbishop of Paris, and Octave de Bellegarde, the archbishop of Sens.⁹⁷ In 1629, the union of Tart and Port-Royal was accomplished. Angélique stepped down as abbess of Port-Royal to become superior of the new convent; her sister Agnès was sent to Dijon and elected abbess of Tart; and Jeanne de Saint Joseph, the former abbess of Tart, went to Port-Royal, where she served first as mistress of novices and then as prioress.⁹⁸ In 1633, the new convent of the Institut du Saint-Sacrement opened on the rue Coquillière in Paris.⁹⁹ Nonetheless, problems soon arose due to the lack of unified leadership, and Zamet’s and Angélique’s different styles and visions for the new convent. Angélique complained that Zamet seemed to care more about wealthy and noble patronage than he did for religious discipline.¹⁰⁰ The growing influence at Port-Royal of the abbé de Saint-Cyran, who was to become a major [169] figure in the Jansenist controversy, led to a final split between the two. Angélique requested that the Institute be placed in the hands of the archbishop of Paris, and Zamet was eventually banned from the convent.¹⁰¹ Their falling out marked the end of the union of Tart and Port-Royal, and in 1635, the nuns from Tart returned to Dijon from Port-Royal.¹⁰² After the arrest of Saint-Cyran in 1638, the Institut du Saint-Sacrement was suppressed, and the nuns from the new convent were removed to Port-Royal.¹⁰³ Zamet’s connection to Port-Royal meant he would primarily be remembered as a footnote in the history of the Jansenist controversy, a religious conflict that would extend through the remainder of the century and result in the dispersion of the nuns and the complete destruction of the abbey in 1709.

The suppression of the Institut du Saint-Sacrement marked the defeat of Zamet’s most ambitious project, one through which he had hoped to leave a lasting legacy. Zamet returned to Langres, where he spent the remaining seventeen years of his life focusing on his pastoral duties and continuing to encourage the expansion of women’s monastic life. Seven religious houses for women, including four more Ursuline convents, were founded in his diocese during this period of his life.¹⁰⁴ Zamet maintained close ties with the nuns of Tart throughout the remainder of his life, as evidenced in his many letters of spiritual direction. In 1653, he fell ill and retired to the bishop’s palace in the town of Mussy-l’Evesque, where he died in 1655. In his will, he left 100 livres to the newly founded Ursuline convent in Mussy.¹⁰⁵ His heart was given to the Ursulines of Châtillon, who “kept it as a precious treasure.”¹⁰⁶

Zamet’s complex relationships with nuns demonstrate that despite the Tridentine injunction that nuns be subject to their local bishop, the reality was much more complex. Bishops’ authority was tempered by monastic exemptions, overlapping jurisdictions, local politics, and the nuns’ own claims to self-governance. Some nuns employed their enclosed status to resist their bishop, using the walls of the convent as at least a temporary brake on episcopal power; others used delaying tactics, non-compliance, and legal challenges to thwart his will. As Zamet’s conflicts with Rose Bourgeois and the Ursulines of Dijon and the demise of the [170] Institut du Saint-Sacrement show, bishops had to negotiate and exercise power on a case-by-case basis. Zamet’s successes and failures at reforming and reorganizing women’s religious life in his diocese depended on his ability to collaborate closely with women who were as determined as he was to establish a higher form of spiritual life. In such collaborations, which were sometimes surprisingly egalitarian, Zamet’s authority was balanced by respect and even affection. In the end, however, Zamet’s commitment to the expansion of and subjection of nuns to episcopal authority, rooted in the Tridentine decrees, and the notion that his authority came directly from God as a “divine right” made it difficult for him to brook resistance in any form. His heavy-handed style with those who did not share his vision engendered difficult relationships, which, in the end, foiled some of his most ambitious projects.

Works Cited