ABSTRACT BUTLER, JAY. Monastic Revival In
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ABSTRACT BUTLER, JAY. Monastic Revival in France 1815-1848: The Trappistines of Notre-Dame des Gardes and the Trappists of Melleray. (Under the direction of Dr. Keith Luria). Monastic life in France arose from the ashes of the Revolution following the fall of Napoleon and the restoration of a French monarchy sympathetic to Catholicism in 1815. The Trappists led the return of contemplative monastic orders despite cultural changes that had undercut traditional monastic functions, despite the loss of monastic property and sources of income, and despite the continued refusal of the state to authorize contemplative monasticism. This thesis argues that the Trappists succeeded by adopting a new form of monasticism that valorized manual labor while emphasizing asceticism and poverty. This allowed the Trappists both to reestablish monastic life without the rents and tithe rights available to ancien régime monasteries and to prove themselves useful in a changed society that no longer valued a life dedicated solely to prayer. The geography of religion also played a role in the monastic revival. French monasteries succeeded in the first half of the nineteenth century by locating in areas where religious observance was relatively strong. The return of monasteries, this thesis goes on to argue, formed the vanguard of a religious revival in France. It cut across the grain of predominant cultural trends toward individualism and materialism. At the same time, the monastic revival fit within the current of nineteenth-century French romantic and utopian ideas displayed by other groups who also bridled against the predominant trend of materialistic individualism. This thesis explores the Trappist revival by focusing on two examples, both in western France: the women’s monastery Notre-Dame des Gardes during the Restoration (1815-1830) and the men’s monastery of Melleray during the July Monarchy (1830-1848). © Copyright 2020 by Jay Butler All Rights Reserved Monastic Revival in France 1815-1848: The Trappistines of Notre-Dame des Gardes and the Trappists of Melleray by Jay Butler A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts History Raleigh, North Carolina 2020 APPROVED BY: ________________________ ________________________ Keith Luria K. Steven Vincent Committee Chair ________________________ Mi Gyung Kim BIOGRAPHY John “Jay” Butler was born on June 1, 1957 in Arlington, Virginia. He has lived in Raleigh for the past 34 years with his wife, Grace Evans, where they raised two daughters both of whom have left for New York to attend graduate schools themselves. After primary and secondary education in the Fairfax County, Virginia public schools, Mr. Butler entered the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where he graduated summa cum laude in 1979 with a major in history and a minor in French. He then undertook a period of study and travel, predominantly in France, before entering Harvard Law School from which he graduated in 1983. After clerking for a judge on the United States Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, he started law practice in 1984 with the predecessor of Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein, a law partnership he remains in today. Throughout his years of law practice, Mr. Butler read history voraciously. He also started visiting Trappist monasteries. In 2011, he met with one of the French monks of Melleray Abbey who sparked his interest in the subject of this thesis by providing him copies of archival material concerning Melleray’s establishment in 1848 of the first Trappist monastery in America. In 2015, he began graduate studies in history on a part time basis at North Carolina State University where he has been generously supported in his continued investigation of French Trappist history. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the monks and nuns who have taken an interest in my work and spent hours helping me find and understand archival material at the monasteries of Notre-Dame des Gardes, Melleray, Cîteaux, La Trappe, and Gethsemani. I have also been encouraged by the community of scholars who attend the Cistercian and Monastic Studies Conference in Kalamzoo each year and by the editors of Cistercian Studies Quarterly. I have been graciously supported in this endeavor by the History Department at North Carolina State University, which helped me attend two Cistercian and Monastic Studies Conferences in 2018 and 2019, and the 2019 annual meeting of the Western Society for French History, in each case to present papers relating to this thesis. Most importantly, I owe a debt of gratitude to the history faculty. Ross Bassett took a supportive interest in my paper on Melleray in connection with his historical writing class, and Steven Vincent guided me through an independent study on the Trappists and French colonial affairs under the July Monarchy. My thesis advisor Keith Luria has spent hours reviewing my work and providing insightful comments that have greatly improved the final product. I thank all my thesis committee members, Dr. Luria, Dr. Vincent, and Dr. Mi Gyung Kim for taking the time to dive into this project with me. Finally, I thank the family of artists I am privileged to be part of—my wife Grace Evans and our daughters Kate and Anna—for listening to me over the years as I talked about centuries old monks and nuns and the lives they led. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... v Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1: The Context and Contours of the Monastic Revival ............................................. 9 A: Context ......................................................................................................................... 9 B: Contours .................................................................................................................... 21 Chapter 2: Notre-Dame des Gardes ......................................................................................... 33 Chapter 3: Notre-Dame de Melleray ........................................................................................ 57 A: Background and Re-establishment under the Bourbons .......................................... 57 B: Melleray under the July Monarchy ......................................................................... 62 C: Foreign Expansion ................................................................................................. 80 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 88 References ................................................................................................................................... 91 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 Trappist Monasteries ................................................................................................ 29 Figure 1.2 Map of Oath Taking ................................................................................................. 29 v INTRODUCTION This is the study of an unexpected revival—the return and growth of French contemplative monasteries following the 1815 fall of Napoleon through the 1848 Revolution.1 It focuses on two early examples of that revival: the Trappistine monastery of Notre-Dame des Gardes in the Maine and Loire and the Trappist monastery of Melleray in the neighboring department of the Loire Atlantic. The monks and nuns of early nineteenth- century France “deserve to be considered on their own terms and in the context of their own social and cultural milieu,” as Rosamond McKitterick aptly wrote.2 This requires serious consideration of the spiritual concerns that motivated their life choices as well as an understanding of the cultural and socio-political context in which they lived. It also requires an appreciation of how the tremendous political, religious, and cultural changes that shook France in the half-century preceding 1815 affected their ability to reconstitute monastic life. The monastic revival raises fundamental questions. Why did any monastic revival occur following the Revolution and Empire? What motivated it and what sustained it in the first half of the nineteenth century? How did the cultural context of early nineteenth-century France affect the form of that revival? The return of monastic orders seemed unlikely in 1815 France. The monastic properties that had accumulated over centuries had been auctioned off and most monasteries were now just ancient ruins. Monastics had largely been absent from 1By contemplative monasticism, I mean cloistered monastic orders whose primary purpose is prayer in community like the Cistercians (including the Trappists), the Benedictines, the Carthusians, the Carmelites, the Poor Claires, and the female Dominicans among others. In contrast are service orders that may have had a monastic element like the Franciscans, the Jesuits, the men’s Dominicans, and the wide variety of congregational orders, particularly for women, active in nineteenth-century France, all of which were service oriented. 2 Rosamond McKitterick, “Great Light,” Times Literary Supplement (May 22, 2009)(speaking broadly on historical inquiries) (quoted in Roger Price, Religious Renewal in France, 1789-1870: The Roman Catholic Church between Catastrophe