Day of the Counter

The day of the Counter is an important episode of the history of Port-Royal-of-Fields and Jansénisme.

One day important in the life of Jacqueline Arnauld

The September 25th 1609, Jacqueline Arnauld, very young abbess of the monastery of Port-Royal-of-Fields, decides to show the will of reform which it is introducing into her monastery (in the line line of the Concile of Thirty) while refusing to receive her family inside the monastic Clôture.

This day is the result of a reform process which she undertook a few times earlier, and in particular since the visit of a capuchin to the monastery in 1608. The sermon of this ecclesiastic highly struck it, and it begins its monastic reform with an implementation of the respect of the Clôture. This one imposes that the interior of the monastery is interdict to the people external with the monastery. But this rule was briskly violated, the families of the nuns being often present in the monastic buildings.

The situation of Jacqueline Arnauld (in religion mother Angelica), is particular. The young woman is then old only 18 years. His/her father, the large lawyer Antoine Arnauld, is a guard of the monastery. It is him which insisted that his/her daughter becomes abbess in spite of her young age. It placed an important part of its fortune at the disposal of the monastery. He thus thinks himself above the requirements that his/her daughter imposes on the remainder families of the nuns.

However, after having restored the setting in community of the goods of the nuns, the respect of poverty and the community life, the young abbess decides to give the strict monastic fence into force.

Thus, when his/her father and his family come to visit him the September 25th 1609, she refuses to receive them. His/her father thunders, requires to return in the monastery, it refuses. She does not want to even meet it with the visiting room. Antoine Arnauld, after reflection, includes/understands the reaction of his daughter and is turned over from there.

Course of the day seen by Holy-Beuve

Charles-Augustin Holy-Beuve, in his Port-Royal , makes this day a dramatic description which strongly contributed to the mythical promotion of this day. Out of the writings emanating of the admirors Jansenists, but fascinating support on them, it is one of only to lean attentively on the course of the day.

It registers this day in a longer movement of reform of the monastery, lengthily matured by the Angélique mother:

But the great point to be gained in the reform of the monastery, it was the fence; an exact, absolute fence with regard to the world and the family, without excluding Mr. Arnauld. The Angélique mother provided herself with long hand for this capital resolution.

Holy-Beuve makes then a very theatrical description of the interview between Antoine Arnauld, who gives a strong image of this episode:

This day indicated, immediately of the dinner, from ten to eleven hours, the nuns being with the refectory, the noise of fits with body, which entered the interior court, got along. To the first noise, each one with the inside (of those which were in the secrecy) ran to its station. As of the morning, the keys had been withdrawn with the hands of extern by precaution and fear of surprise, just like in an attack. The Angélique mother, who had for some time put herself to request in the church, left, and advanced from there only towards the door of fence, against which Mr. Arnauld ran up already. She opened the counter. What occurred exactly between them in this first same moment and their words, it is known only about, because everyone of the inside had been withdrawn, letting the conference achieve itself decisive and solemn. Mr. Arnauld ordered to open: the Angélique mother first of all had to request her father to enter the small visiting room of to side, so that through the grid it could speak to him conveniently and give itself the honor to justify her resolutions to him. But Mr. Arnauld did not hear this prayer twice. He falls from naked to such an audacity in the mouth from his daughter, he carries himself and strikes more violently, redoubling his order with threat. Mrs Arnauld, who was with two steps, mixes with the reproaches, and calls her daughter ungrateful. Mr. d' Andilly, in all his fire of then, takes it still higher than the others; he exclaims have monster and with the parricidal , as would have made his father in a plea; he challenges the nuns absent, exhorts them to suffer only one man like his father, a family like theirs, with which they have so many obligations of all kinds, essuie at them such an affront.

Holy-Beuve tells then how the noise of the argument extends in the monastery. Certain nuns support their young abbess, others take the party of the Arnauld family. Antoine Arnauld, not being able to be made obey his girl, requires that its two plus young girls, Agnès and Marie-Claire, leave the monastery. Angelica makes them leave by a door behind, not to have to make open the large door of the convent. Holy-Beuve brings back words then that the young person Agnès Arnauld would have said, future coadjutrice of his/her sister:

This one (…) serious and high like Infante, stopped it (his/her father), and answered that his/her sister, after all, did only what it owed and what was prescribed to him by the Council of Thirty.

Before setting out again, Antoine Arnauld meets his daughter with the visiting room. Both, according to Holy-Beuve, are very affected by this scene. Young Angelica is badly, is helped by the nuns. His/her father then realizes of the importance of the fence for the nuns, and starts a more serene discussion with his daughter, only disturbed by the intervention of the monk who had urged the abbess to be refused to let enter his father. The things calm down, and a working arrangement is set up for the continuation:

After that, one adapted the things, and one had permission of the abbot of Cîteaux to make it enter so that it gave order to the buildings and the gardens when it would be necessary, the cloister alone except.

Holy-Beuve its account concludes by saying that “As for the day of September 25th, 1609, one solemnly baptized it in the records of Port-Royal the Day of the Counter…”

The importance symbolic system of the Day of the Counter

This episode, if it is finally anecdotic in the religious history of the 17th century in France, has however an particular importance because of the repercussion which it takes. It becomes the symbol of the rebirth of the French Catholic church in the line of the Concile of Thirty. As at the same time Jeanne de Chantal, Pierre de Bérulle or Dirty François, the Angélique mother becomes a symbol of the will to purify and restore the consecrated life.

Royer-Collard speaks thus about a “date in the history of the human spirit”.

For the Jansenists of 17th and 18th centuries, this day is an major event, which is commemorated like the beginning of the rectification of Port-Royal, and especially like a proof of the holiness of the Mother Angelica, like like a mark of the tenacity of this young woman against fashionable temptations.

The account of Holy-Beuve in fact an episode founder of the life of the mother Angelica, and like a prefiguration of the tenacity of the abbess at the time of the future conflicts with Louis XIV or the Church.

But in the posterior historical works, the Day of the Counter holds a place much more reduced. It seems more one event which signs the “semi-official” entry of the monastery in the era of the catholic Réforme, of which it would be a characteristic example.

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References and notes

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