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 Cîteaux. 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 Grève, a rare and frightful sacrilege which set the whole
town in an uproar. M. the Prior and Vicar-General of Saint-Germain des
Prés 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
Châteauvieux. 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-Benoît; the first permission for this foundation was given to
Mother Catherine de Bar by M. de Metz, Abbé 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 Abbé 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 Châteauvieux.
This order, as it will be seen, was not to be confounded with the
Benedictine nuns of Cîteaux. It mounted back to the Abbé of
Saint-Germain des Prés, 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
nonetheless.