Margaret of the Blessed Sacrament

Carmelite nun, b. in Paris, 6 March, 1590; d. there 24 May, 1660. She was the second daughter of the celebrated Madame Acarie, otherwise known as Blessed Marie de l'Incarnation, who introduced the Reformed Carmelites into France. Carefully reared by her mother and directed by M. de Bérulle, she took the religious habit at the first Carmelite convent, Rue St. Jacques, Paris, 15 September, 1605. On 21 November, 1606, she made her vows privately, and on 18 March, 1607, she made them solemnly, under the care of Mother Anne de Saint-Barthélemi. In 1615 she was made sub-prioress, and in 1618, prioress of the convent of Tours. In these offices she showed such ability that she was sent in 1620 to restore harmony in the convent at Bordeaux. Shortly after this she was ordered to the convent of Saintes, where she remained eighteen months, and in 1624 was recalled to Paris, to replace as prioress Mother Madeleine de Saint-Joseph in the convent situated in the Rue Chapon. After having been several times prioress of the convent of the Rue Chapon, where she edified the community by a zeal for bodily mortification that her superiors had sometimes to moderate, she was attacked by dropsy, to which she succumbed. Her heart was taken to the monastery of Pontoise, where her saintly mother had been buried, and her body remained in the convent of the Rue Chapon, where it was kept until 1792.

See bibliography of article MARIE DE L'INCARNATION and BOUCHER, Hist. de la Bienheureuse Marie de l'Incarnation, II, (Paris, 1854), 168-80.

LÉON CLUGNET