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ORIGIN OF THE PERPETUAL ADORATION
However, this almost sepulchral parlor, of which we have sought
to convey an idea, is a purely local trait which is not reproduced
with the same severity in other convents.
At the convent of the Rue du Temple, in particular, which
belonged, in truth, to another order, the black shutters were
replaced by brown curtains, and the parlor itself was a salon
with a polished wood floor, whose windows were draped in white
muslin curtains and whose walls admitted all sorts of frames,
a portrait of a Benedictine nun with unveiled face, painted bouquets,
and even the head of a Turk.
It is in that garden of the Temple convent, that stood that
famous chestnut-tree which was renowned as the finest and the
largest in France, and which bore the reputation among the good
people of the eighteenth century of being the father of all the
chestnut trees of the realm.
As we have said, this convent of the Temple was occupied by
Benedictines of the Perpetual Adoration, Benedictines quite different
from those who depended on Citeaux.
This order of the Perpetual Adoration is not very ancient
and does not go back more than two hundred years. In 1649 the
holy sacrament was profaned on two occasions a few days apart,
in two churches in Paris, at Saint-Sulpice and at Saint-Jean en
Greve, a rare and frightful sacrilege which set the whole town
in an uproar.
M. the Prior and Vicar-General of Saint-Germain des Pres ordered
a solemn procession of all his clergy, in which the Pope's Nuncio
officiated.
But this expiation did not satisfy two sainted women, Madame
Courtin, Marquise de Boucs, and the Comtesse de Chateauvieux.
This outrage committed on "the most holy sacrament of
the altar," though but temporary, would not depart from these
holy souls, and it seemed to them that it could only be extenuated
by a "Perpetual Adoration" in some female monastery.
Both of them, one in 1652, the other in 1653, made donations of
notable sums to Mother Catherine de Bar, called of the Holy Sacrament,
a Benedictine nun, for the purpose of founding, to this pious
end, a monastery of the order of Saint-Benoit; the first permission
for this foundation was given to Mother Catherine de Bar by M.
de Metz, Abbe of Saint-Germain, "on condition that no woman
could be received unless she contributed three hundred livres
income, which amounts to six thousand livres, to the principal."
After the Abbe of Saint-Germain, the king accorded letters-patent;
and all the rest, abbatial charter, and royal letters, was confirmed
in 1654 by the Chamber of Accounts and the Parliament.
Such is the origin of the legal consecration of the establishment
of the Benedictines of the Perpetual Adoration of the Holy Sacrament
at Paris.
Their first convent was "a new building" in the
Rue Cassette, out of the contributions of Mesdames de Boucs and
de Chateauvieux.
This order, as it will be seen, was not to be confounded with
the Benedictine nuns of Citeaux.
It mounted back to the Abbe of Saint-Germain des Pres, in
the same manner that the ladies of the Sacred Heart go back to
the general of the Jesuits, and the sisters of charity to the
general of the Lazarists.
It was also totally different from the Bernardines of the
Petit-Picpus, whose interior we have just shown.
In 1657, Pope Alexander VII. had authorized, by a special
brief, the Bernardines of the Rue Petit-Picpus, to practise the
Perpetual Adoration like the Benedictine nuns of the Holy Sacrament.
But the two orders remained distinct none the less.
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