This year we are celebrating the fourth centenary of the end of the earthly life of Blessed Anne of St Bartholomew, which provides us with the opportunity to reflect on this remarkable woman and the important contribution she made to the establishment of the Teresian Carmel. I first became aware of Anne some years ago when I was given a DVD of the now classic 1984 Spanish television series Teresa de Jesús, directed by Josefina Molina. The series comes to an emotional climax with the end of Teresa’s life at the monastery of Alba de Tormes. She is shown suffering considerable pain, and the priest attending her asks whether he should send for Anne, who was by then her nurse. When Anne arrives she takes Teresa lovingly and gently in her arms, and with this we see Teresa suddenly able to relax again, allowing her to pass away peacefully. There are many memorable scenes in this classic series, but one aspect that particularly stayed with me was how it chose to represent the intimacy that grew between Anne and Teresa. In this fourth centenary year we are invited to reflect on Anne and the significant role she played at a critical point in Carmelite history. It is clear that Anne gained her close understanding of the Discalced charism through the intimacy she shared with Teresa, and this was to become crucially important when in 1604 the Order was invited to France. Of significance here were the dealings she had with Pierre de Bérulle in a relationship that would not always be easy, with Anne being faced with changes that Bérulle wanted to make that she felt threatened the Teresian character of the Order. For Anne this was not just an ideology that was at stake but also a personal loyalty that had been developed through her close relationship with the Foundress.
Origins of the problem
We know that Anne came from a simple rural background where she is reported to have had supernatural experiences from an early age, which led her to develop a strong vocation. This brought her to Teresa of Avila’s recently founded convent of St Joseph’s in Avila, where she became a lay sister due to her lack of formal education. Teresa was soon to recognise her intelligence, humility and reliability, with Anne learning to write so rapidly that some said this came about through a miraculous intervention. Anne thus first became a secretary for Teresa and later, with the decline in Teresa’s health, she was also to become her nurse. A close relationship developed between them, with Teresa experiencing Anne almost as a spiritual daughter.
The understanding that developed through this intimate relationship would in due course become significant, with Anne having to protect the Teresian vision whilst the Discalced Carmel was becoming established in France. It was a responsibility that would present some considerable challenges. The first difficulty was that Anne was still a lay sister. This had not mattered in Spain, but in France she was obliged against her will to become a choir sister in order to carry out the work they wished her to do. Anne now faced a new reality: the experience she had gained through her close relationship with Teresa counted for little in the hierarchical clerical environment to which she was now subject. It would be the latter that prevailed.
depicted in a public‑domain engraving.
Pierre De Bérulle
At the centre of this was Pierre de Bérulle. Bérulle is elsewhere remembered as the founding energy behind the French School of Spirituality, but within the Order his wish to change the internal control of the French Carmels became a matter of considerable concern. Bérulle had a reputation for being authoritarian, which is understandable given his background and the role he played in founding the French Oratory. Against this we must recall that Bérulle had been instrumental in first arranging for the Spanish Carmelites to come to France, and his motivation here was certainly sound. France had just emerged from the extreme violence of the Wars of Religion that had raged between 1562 and 1598, ending with a strange compromise when the Protestant Henry of Navarre converted to Catholicism in order to gain the crown, with him being reported to have said that ‘Paris was well worth a Mass’. In the aftermath of this religious warfare Bérulle’s strategic objective was to re‑establish French Catholicism around a Christocentric spirituality, and his invitation for the Teresian Carmel to come to France formed part of this. For Bérulle and his Parisian circle the spirituality of the Teresian Carmel seemed to provide a perfect contrast to the violence that had threatened to destroy French religion over the previous forty years. Bérulle’s own spirituality had of course been forged in a very different environment from that of Anne. He had been a key member of the mystically oriented Parisian salon organised by his cousin Madame Acarie, which over time was to include the future St François de Sales and Benedict of Canfield. For them the contemplative simplicity of Teresian spirituality appeared as a potentially healing energy. Bérulle was, however, also the central figure in what would later come to be recognised as the French School of Spirituality. This envisaged a more theologically structured and clerically guided environment than the self‑governing simplicity that Teresa had established for her nuns, all of which raised an inevitable conflict of loyalty for Anne.
The relationship between Anne and Pierre de Bérulle remained for the most part openly respectful. Bérulle recognised Anne’s close intuition of Teresa’s thinking, and she was aware of the political support he was able to obtain for the Carmelite project. However, in time this came to be marked with underlying tensions concerning culture, authority and their differing visions for the future of Carmel in France. Anne was a person of simple origins in contrast to Bérulle, a priest whose background was the noblesse de robe, an educated cultural elite that served the French crown in judicial and administrative roles. Anne’s principal need was to preserve the Carmelite culture as Teresa had established it in Spain, and therein lay their principal difficulty. Disagreements arose over the extent to which this was to be adapted to French ecclesiastical culture, along with arguments over who had the right to define the spirituality of the new French foundations. Anne, having been formed in the relative autonomy of the Teresian Carmel, now found herself obliged to function within a male‑led ecclesiastical structure. She looked towards a Teresian simplicity along with the freedom of interior prayer, whilst Bérulle envisaged a more clerically guided environment. All was made more difficult initially in that Anne did not speak French and had to rely on interpreters. Anne wanted the nuns to remain under Spanish Carmelite control, whereas Bérulle wanted them under French clerical jurisdiction, which is what came about. As a result of this Anne moved her focus onto retaining the original Teresian spirituality.
The problem here was a difference in spiritual tone. Teresian spirituality was experiential and emphasised an intimate friendship with Christ. Bérulle, in contrast, adopted a more theological focus which promoted anéantissement, a spirituality where the soul must come to recognise its radical humility before the infinite majesty of God, brought about through adoration of the divine majesty revealed in Christ. This was not necessarily in direct opposition to Teresa and John of the Cross, but it was built around a different emphasis. To complicate matters further there were social differences in that the new French Carmels tended to attract women from the higher echelons of French society, echoing thus the privileged culture at La Encarnación that had partly prompted Teresa’s original reform. Finally, Bérulle wished to introduce confessors and superiors from his own circle and to influence appointments within the convents. Anne inevitably resisted this, as the constitutions and self‑governance for her represented a fundamental feature of the Teresian Carmelite way.
The outcome
Writing in 1621, Anne would make her position clear concerning the defence of the Teresian legacy, saying that those who wore the habit but who did not lead the authentic life were ‘deceiving the world’.[1] So to what extent did the French Carmels live the original Teresian vision? Dijon here provides us with an interesting case study, as it was one of the first convents founded by Anne which in time would be recognised as a ‘Bérullian’ Carmel. Three centuries later Dijon would also be the Carmel that formed the spirituality of Elizabeth of the Trinity. Here, in November 1904, she wrote her well‑known prayer O My God, Trinity, a prayer that has since been quoted in the 1992 Catechism.[2] In this she says:
O consuming Fire, Spirit of Love. ‘come upon me’ and create in my soul a kind of incarnation of the Word: that I may be another humanity for Him in which He can renew His whole Mystery.[3]
It is a beautiful prayer with a self‑oblation that initially might appear worthy of Bérulle himself. Aspects of Elizabeth’s spirituality do contain this Bérullian sense of personal reduction in the presence of God, but for her the process is different. Elizabeth sees the soul as being inhabited and transformed in Christ through a Trinitarian indwelling where the essential matrix is love. Here, in a Bérullian Carmel, we see Elizabeth offering herself to Christ ‘to be a bride for Your Heart’, articulating the spiritual marriage that Teresa sets out at the centre of the Interior Castle. So three centuries after Anne’s arrival in France, we find this crucial inner teaching of Teresa at the very core of Elizabeth’s prayer.
Anne had the disposition of a simple person rather than that of a political strategist and so was unable to resist the structural changes made to the governance of the French Carmels. As a result of this, in 1611 Anne made the decision to leave France and move to Flanders. However, it was in her simplicity that her real strength lay and where she made her lasting contribution. Her intimate relationship with Teresa gave her a clear understanding of the inner values of the Teresian charism which, amidst all the politics, she was able to communicate to the French Carmels through her own way of being. Three centuries later we see the evidence for this in Elizabeth of the Trinity’s spirituality of indwelling and in the relationality at the heart of Thérèse of Lisieux’s Little Way. This year we are being invited to celebrate Anne’s fourth centenary year during a time of political complexity in the wider world, where events are unfolding over which ordinary people have little control. I think it must have felt a bit like this for Anne during those difficult years in France, but her inner response was clear: she focused on living the way of life that Teresa had given her. In our present times this would seem to be secure advice for all those who love Carmel.
[1] See Anne of St Batholomew, ‘Defensa de la Herencia Teresiana’, in Bta. Ana de San Bartolomé: Obras Completas, ed. by Julian Urkiza, (Editorial Monte Carmelo: Burgos, 1998) p. 475.
[2] Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 260.
[3] Elizabeth of the Trinity, ‘O My God, Trinity Whom I Adore’ in I have Found God: Complete Works, Vol1, trans by Sister Aletheia Kane OCD, (ICS Publications, 1984) p.183.
