Robert Arnauld d\' Andilly

A “courtier anchorite”

The society man

Robert Arnauld is the first of the twenty children of the lawyer Antoine Arnauld and Catherine Marion. It is thus the elder one of prestigious and many phratry, which will count among its members Jacqueline (future Angélique mother), Henri, who will be bishop of Angers, or the doctor of Sorbonne Antoine, known as “large Arnauld”. Robert will become lord of Andilly in 1624, when his/her mother, at the time of withdrawing itself in Port-Royal, yields this ground to him.

Equipped with a humanistic solid education (he was educated by the son of Denis Lambin, large scholar of the Rebirth), promised in a brilliant political career, Robert entered at sixteen years to the service of the brother of his father, the intendant of finances Isaac Arnauld. The death of Henri IV accelerated his rise, in the shade of its guard and thanks to the favor of Marie de Médicis: if it did not take the succession of his uncle with died of this last, in 1617, it became nevertheless to advise of State in 1618, then first clerk of new the superintendent of finances, Mr. de Schomberg, that it was useful with fidelity and probity. It made at twenty-four years an advantageous marriage with Catherine of Boderie, resulting from a Norman family of respected diplomats: it is by his wife that it entered in possession of the field of Pomponne, that it embellishes and where it often resided.

In 1623, it obtained the envied load of general of the house of Gaston of Orleans, brother of the conspiring king and large intendant; but three years later, Robert made the expenses of one of many and unfruitful plots imagined by this turbulent prince: Gaston, holding it for a traitor, wanted to move away it, and Richelieu reached its request. During its discredit, the elder one of Arnauld was withdrawn in its grounds of Andilly and Pomponne, where he devoted himself to the writing of Recueils of state and especially to arboriculture and the gardening. It passed main in this art: the rib stalls and cordons of its orchards were to be worth the admiration of to him Quintinie, gardener of Louis XIV.

This first retirement, if it could make him become aware of the vicissitudes of human fortunes, was not final: Robert found the alleys of the capacity in 1634, when Richelieu offered to him the intendance of the army of the Rhine. This back in favor marked the apogee of its fashionable existence: accustomed living rooms (in particular that of the duchess of Liancourt, girl of Mr. de Schomberg), bound with all the high society, it had the ear of the queen Anne of Austria, which even thought of entrusting the education of the young Dolphin to him. Elegant courtier, “generous” and burning as one knew the being under Louis XIII, universal friend”, it was one of the men more for reign. However, in the middle of the years 1640, whereas its star shone with the firmament of the political life and social, and without being, as it had been in the past, victim of any cabal, it wearied little by little records of the court and decided all to leave to withdraw itself with the “desert”: in December 1644, it bade its farewell with the queen and left food in “hermit” in trimmings a monastery located in valley of Chevreuse, the abbey of Port-Royal, for a long time expensive in its heart.

The recluse

On this date, Port-Royal-of-Fields was indeed since strong a long time in the orbit of the Arnauld family, which with high expenses had raised the abbey of the ruins where had put the wars of religion. Thanks to exemptions provided by the pope, Antoine, father of Robert, had succeeded in 1599 making name Co-adjutrice of the abbess one of his daughters, Jacqueline, then seven years old - manners of the Église were then slackened, and this type of abuse was frequent. Only, this one, become in religion mother Angelica, was let touch by the grace while arriving at adolescence: nine years later, against the opinion of her parents, she undertook to reform her monastery and to restore the rule of saint Benoît in all her rigor; in a few years, it imposed on its house the separation of the world, the community of the goods, silence, the abstinence of meat, the poor dress, manual work or the night day before. The monastery dissolu became thus a spearhead of the catholic Réforme in France, and made the admiration of Bérulle like holy Dirty François.

One of the emblématiques measurements, taken from the start by the mother Angelica, was the re-establishment of the fence, which caused a known spectacular scene under the name of “Journée of the Counter”, the September 25th 1609. This day, Jacqueline refused the opening of the doors to her family, come as to accustomed visiting him. Antoine Arnauld was annoyed, but, to believe Tallemant, it of it is Robert who showed the most irritation:

“It started to even higher take it of a tone, and to say what the others did not say and what passion can suggest in these meetings with a son who believes to act with all the more of justice that it does not avenge his own insult, but that of an offended father, seemingly, by his/her own daughter. After callhaving called it a monster of ingratitude, and a parricide who would answer in front of God of dead of his father, that it would make die of regret to have raised with such an amount of love a girl who treated it kind, he started to be caught some with the nuns, to call them, to entreat them to suffer to allow only one person who they had such an amount of obligation suffered this affront at them. He sought then the support of his Agnès sister as younger sister by Robert and nun in Port-Royal as Angélique had let leave. But she also recalled to her brother the recommendations Concile of Thirty. On what he exclaimed: `Oh, really, let us hold we! In here still one which mixes to plead us the guns and the councils! ” (Tallemant of Réaux, Historiettes )

The nerves of Mother Angelica did not resist this too sharp exchange, and she disappears. Upset, of Andilly precipitated to seek help and forgot its fury at once. Returned of its impetuous transport, it was not long in being reconciled with his sister, and could not resist its charisma: it brought it, with all its family, to follow it with enthusiasm in the way of “conversion”, and it became soon one of the supports more inébranlables of the monastery. Thereafter, during all its life, it did not cease putting its credit and its many relations at the service of the abbey, of which it was like the agent in the world. It is through this entregent that it sealed, without wanting it, the destiny of the monastery: in 1624, it caused the decisive meeting between his/her sister and the abbot of Saint-Cyran, whom it had known in 1620, during the negotiations between the king and the queen mother who followed the battle of Bridge-of-C. The abbot of Saint-Cyran was not long in taking irresistible ascending on the Mother Angelica and the nuns, and was soon selected to be confessor of the abbey, which it involved in the storm where it itself was carried: successor of Bérulle but so friendly of Jansénius, shown to plot against his fatherland with the profit of the Spaniards and suspected of heresy, it attracted himself the lightnings of Richelieu which made it imprison in 1638; he was released only in spring 1643, after the death of the cardinal, to die a few months later.

The death of his wife (1637), then that of her director and friendly Saint-Cyran (1643), whom it visited each day in its prison and of which it published the correspondence, determined little by little of Andilly with déprendre seductions of the court and to choose a retirement in loneliness, far from the world and of the noise, in the shade of a expensive monastery in its heart. The house of the Fields was then uninhabited: the nuns, who succumbed to the fever of the marshes, had preferred to leave the valley of Chevreuse and resided now at Paris, in the Saint-Jacob suburb. Become in Port-Royal of the Fields “intendant of the gardens”, Robert undertook to make drain, with his expenses, the marshes and to metamorphose the “dreadful waste land” described by Thomas Of the Ditch while laughing small valley. He shared his time between the prayer, the occupations of the orchard and the professional work. In this pious thébaïde, it never broke completely with the world, where it turned over sometimes for its business; it also received, in the house which it occupied not far from the building of the Barns, many friends of the outside: Liancourt, the duchess of Chevreuse, the Large Miss and Madeleine de Scudéry for example visited him. The author of Clélie did not fail to trace his portrait in his novel, painting it under the features of Timante.

If it passed thus, in the peace of the desert, the turbid years of the Fronde, the period which followed was agitated: the Church, through the bubble Cum causes (1653), made a clear decision against the Jansénisme and required of all the members of the clergy the signature of a bearing Formulaire judgment of five proposals allotted to Jansénius. D' Andilly the USA of all its credit at the court to suspend the blows which threatened the recluses and the nuns, but in vain: he saw with pain his brother deposed Antoine of his title of doctor, the dispersed small Schools closed, Sirs, and had itself to give up during some time his retirement. The August 26th 1664, returned in haste with Paris, it unnecessarily tried to dissuade the archbishop Péréfixe to carry out the removal of twelve moniales, proscribed and exiled because they refused to sign the Form. Among those three of his/her daughters were, of which the Angélique mother of Midsummer's Day, which left these events a relation remained famous. Following this episode, it accepted the order to be withdrawn in Pomponne; it had to subject and leave once again Port-Royal of the Fields, this time for several years. Relegation was soft, in this field which he liked and where he lived surrounded by his grandchildren. The peace of the Church, in 1669, illuminated its last years: it had the joy of seeing his son Simon Arnauld de Pomponne reaching the rank of minister and Secretary of State, and found Port-Royal of the Fields in 1673, a few months before dying there, surrounded by all those which liked it, the September 27th 1674, eighty five years old.

He is individuals whose existence is paradoxical: Arnauld d' Andilly is these. Society man and recluse, friend of François the Dirty ones and Saint-Cyran as well as of Mrs. de Rambouillet, it was, according to the prickly formula of Cecile Gazier, a “courtier anchorite”.

The poet and the translator

The elder one of “ the eloquent family”, as one qualified Arnauld, if he were minister and gardener in turn, devoted also much time to work of the spirit: its work of poet and translator made the admiration of its contemporaries. He was the friend of the most beautiful feathers of his time, which looked it like equal and a Master: Jean Lesaulnier notes thus that “Balzac and Chapelain exchanges, during years, information on the worms of Arnauld d' Andilly”; the author of the Pucelle held this last in so high think which he requested his council at the time to publish his epopee. He had been due only to him to enter to the incipient French Academy, but he declined by twice which Richelieu quoted to him. D' Andilly expressed on several occasions, at the time of parts of circumstance, its virtuosity to be versified. Accustomed hotel of Mrs. de Rambouillet, it took part in the Guirlande of Julie , for whom it composed a madrigal, “lilies”. It is at the time of its disgrace that, making profitable the otium to which forced its forced leave of the businesses of the State, he was discovered a talent for religious poetry: it made appear in 1628 fifty-eight Stances for Jesus-Christ in which it reported the life of Jesus until his Passion on the cross. Six years later, and whereas of Andilly was with strongest of its “fashionable period”, the expiry of the privilege was the occasion of a recasting of this book: reviews and increased, the Stances became the Poème on the Life of Jesus-Christ , in whom the author gets busy to tell the existence of the Saver, in a fresco of one hundred and nine ten-line stanzas of alexandrines which embrace the mysteries of the Chute, of the Incarnation and of the Rédemption. A few years later, in 1642, whereas it prepares to leave the swirl of human vanities, the elder one of Arnauld still publish Stances on various Christian truths , collection formed of two hundred thirty-three ten-line stanzas of alexandrines illustrating each one a title in the form of maxim. These stanzas, written at the instigation or at least with the support of Saint-Cyran, are like a versified spiritual direction inspired by the work and the thought of the prisoner of Vincennes, that of Andilly gets busy by there popularizing. It preaches there a dark and severe Christianity, centered on penitence, the predestination and the need for the grace, and vituperates there the moral laxism of its time. It joins together its poems in 1644, in one entitled book Christian OEuvres .

The retirement of Arnauld d' Andilly in Port-Royal of the Fields, about 1645, was also a poetic retirement: if it never gave up the writing, it held its talent with the translations, and passed quickly main in this Article One knows well his version of the Confessions of Augustin, who continues to make authority, but it also got in French the Vie of the Fathers of the Desert , works of Therese and Jean d' Avila, the holy Échelle of holy Jean Climaque, and the Histoire of the Jews of Flavius Josèphe. The “superintendent of the gardens” still left a treaty of arboriculture and Mémoires intended for his children.

In spite of this predilection for the prose which marked its retirement, of Andilly however never its past of poet disavowed: admired by all the Recluses, regularly letting republish its Christian Works by his/her friend Pierre the Small one, readily exempting councils, it put the hand at the large anthology in three volumes conceived by the Sirs at ends teaching and published during the peace of the Church. Jean of the Fountain, with which of Andilly was bound, agreed to put its name at the head this pious anthology, and, two years later, versified the life of Malc saint whom the patriarch of the Recluses had translated: it is to say in which regard was held, until the end of its days, the patriarch of the Recluses.

Random links: