ACARIE, Mme, (1566–1618), ‘Mary of the Incarnation’, one of the founders of the Reformed Carmelites in France. Barbe Jeanne Avrillot was educated by the Poor Clares at Longchamps, outside Paris; she wanted to enter the community, but, in obedience to her parents, in 1584 at 16 she married the viscount of Villemor, Pierre Acarie, a distant relation. A devoted mother of six children, three boys and three girls, Mme. Acarie, characterized as La Belle Acarie, was popular and respected in society at the French capital. However, her husband was exiled by the king for his part in La Ligue and his property was temporarily confiscated. Their house (the hôtel Acarie) became a centre of charitable works and intense spirituality. In her life of prayer she experienced visions and ecstasies, but her spiritual directors, Benet of Canfield and the Carthusian Richard Beaucousin, advised her to hold them at bay as inimical to a truly contemplative life.

Reading F. de Ribera’s 1601 translation of the Life of St Teresa of Ávila, she felt called to introduce the Reformed Carmelites into France; she was helped by Mlle de Longueville and P. de Bérulle (a relation of her husband), and the first house was founded in 1604.

    She also assisted Mme de Sainte-Beuve in bringing the Ursulines to Paris and supported Bérulle in the foundation of the Oratory in 1611. Her three daughters entered the Reformed Carmel; upon the death of her husband in 1613, she herself took the habit of St. Teresa of Ávila as a lay sister in the convent of Amiens, taking the name ‘Marie de l’Incarnation’. Shortly afterward she was transferred to the new foundation of Pontoise, and died there with a reputation for holiness. After her husband’s death  she entered the Carmelite house in Amiens as a lay sister,  In 1616 she transferred to Pontoise. She died there in 1618, having spent some thirty years as a married woman and some four as a Carmelite. She was beatified in 1791.

    Her influence in that period of French Catholicism, which H. Bremond calls "L'invasion mystique" of the Teresian Reform in France, was enormous, because of her social position, her personality and spirituality, and her connections with the élite of French spirituality: St. francis de sales, Jean Duval, Cardinal pierre bÉrulle, Brétigny, and others. She was frequently called upon to give spiritual guidance, but only Les Vrays Exercises de la Bienheureuse Sæur Marie de l’Incarnation … Très propres à toutes Ames qui désirent ensuyvre sa bonne vie (1622) was posthumously published from her papers.

Pope Pius VI signed the decree of the heroicity of her virtues (Sept. 27, 1788), and she was beatified in 1794. Her cause has recently been resumed.

Feast: April 18 (Discalced Carmelites).

A. Duval, La Vie admirable de Sæur Marie de l’Incarnation (1621; repr. 1893). J.-B.-A. Boucher, Vie de la Bienheureuse Sæur Marie de l’Incarnation (1800); Bruno de J[ésus] M[arie], OCD, La Belle Acarie [1942], incl. text of her Exercises, pp. 727–50, and bibl. Other Lives by E. de Broglie (‘Les Saints’, 1903) and L. C. Sheppard (London, 1953), Barbe Acarie, Wife and Mystic (New York 1953). Gabriel de Jesús, La Beata María de la Encarnación (Madrid 1923).. E. Dubois, ‘The hôtel Acarie: a meeting place for European currents of spirituality in early seventeenth-century France’, Durham University Journal, 71 (1979), pp. 187–96. Bremond, 2 (1916), pp. 193–262; Eng. tr., 2 (1930), pp. 145–94.

Add here Biography by Deville

Madame Acarie
R. Deville, The French School of Spirituality, pp. 218-220

Like Jeanne de Chantal (1572-1641), Madame Acarie is a good example of what a Christian woman, living in the seventeenth century as a wife, a widow, and a religious, could bring to the Church of her day. In a very particular way, her relationship with Bérulle and with Carmel, as it came into France, invites us to know her better as a woman who represents the French School of spirituality.

Unfortunately, Madame Acarie wrote little, so it is through the witness of her life that we know her. Barbe Avrillot was born in Paris on 1 February 1556. She be-longed to a well-to-do family and enjoyed a good education, studying with the Poor Clares of Longchamp. On 24August 1582, she married Pierre Acarie, a master account-ant. He was a devout man with a trying personality, who had pledged allegiance to the League of Catholics united against the Huguenots. Madame Acarie raised their six children amidst her constant worries about the political positions taken by her husband. He was exiled and despoiled of a portion of his possessions in 1594, because of his membership in the League. In 1599, Madame Acarie obtained his liberation.

Long before then, as early as 1588, Madame Acarie had experienced mystical graces, spiritual insight and intu­ition, accompanied both by ecstasy and suffering. With the encouragement of the Capuchin, Benoît de Canfeld, she assembled a group of spiritual persons, both clergy and laity. In addition to Benoît de Canfeld, there was an-other Capuchin, Archange de Pembrocke_; the Jesuits, Pierre Coton and Etienne Binet_; and André Duval, doctor at the Sorbonne, professor of Bérulle, friend of Vincent de Paul and Olier, biographer of Madame Acarie. Others in the group were Jacques Gallement, her cousin, the pastor of Aumale_; Michel de Marillac and Francis de Sales, when he was in Paris. Richard Beaucousin, the Carthu-sian, directed the group and suggested what they ought to read: the Rheno-Flemish mystics, and, beginning in 1601, the writings of Teresa of Jesus.

This spiritual group was also a heart of apostolic ser­vice, and a center of preparation for renewal of the Chris­tian life among the laity and in religious orders. Madame Acarie herself contributed either to the reform or the foundation of monasteries for women: Montmartre and Soissons, for the Benedictines_; and, in 1610, with her cousin, Madame de Saint-Beuve, for the Ursulines, in Paris.

However, Madame Acarie's greatest claim to glory was her contribution to efforts to bring to France the Carmelite nuns of the reform of St. Teresa. She herself gathered together and formed the first candidates for Carmel. She obtained all the necessary permissions from the king in 1602; from Pope Clement VDI in 1603_; and from the Spanish Carmelite friars. In 1604, despite many difficulties, six Spanish Carmelite nuns were brought to Paris by Pierre de Bérulle. Madame Acarie also worked to found several other Carmels. After the death of her hus-band in 1613, she herself entered the Carmel at Amiens. Later, she joined the monastery at Pontoise, where three of her daughters had preceded her. She died on 18 April 1618 and was beatified on 5 June 1791.

Aside from a few letters and a small booklet, Madame Acarie — in Carmel, Marie de l'Incarnation — left no spir­itual writings. She is still to be counted among the great spiritual leaders of seventeenth century France. Henri Bremond dedicated nearly 70 pages to her in volume two of his literary history, under the title "mystical inva­sion." His praise of her is unqualified, and he compares her to Francis de Sales: he, the great mystical doctor of the age_; she, "the great innovator and perfect model."'

If it is true to say that Bérulle was the dominant character of the age, it is also true to say that Madame Acarie prepared the way for the French School. Her devotion to the person of Christ, nourished by the doctrine of St. Teresa, had only to be taken up and developed theologi-cally by Bérulle, Condren, Olier and John Eudes.

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