Marie of the Incarnation (Carmelite)

Marie of the Incarnation, OCD, also known as Madame Acarie (1 February 1566–18 April 1618), was the foundress of the Discalced Carmel in France and later became an extern sister of the order.

Biography

" La bell'Acarie" ("the beautiful Acarie"), as she was known in Paris, was born Barbara Avrillot in Paris. Her family belonged to the higher bourgeois society; her father, Nicholas Avrillot, was accountant general in the Chamber of Paris, and chancellor of Marguerite of Navarre, the first wife of Henry IV of France; while her mother, Marie Lhuillier, was a descendant of Etienne Marcel, the famous chief municipal magistrate. Avrillot was placed with the Poor Clares of the Abbey of Longchamp, where she had a maternal aunt, for her education, and acquired there a vocation for the cloister. In 1584, through obedience she married Pierre Acarie, viscount of Villemor, a wealthy young man of high standing, who was a fervent Catholic, to whom she bore seven children. Pierre Acarie disapproved of Barbe's reading romance novels and with clerical advice removed the books and substituted books of a more pious and spiritual bent.

Pierre Acarie was one of the staunchest members of the Catholic League, which, after the death of Henry III of France, opposed the succession of the Huguenot prince, Henry of Navarre, to the French throne. He was one of the sixteen who organized the resistance in Paris and partly responsible for the subsequent famine which resulted from the siege of Paris (1590). Barbara Acarie was so wise in her almsgiving that during a famine the wealthy persons who desired to help the poor caused their alms to pass through her hands, and she was widely respected. After the dissolution of the League, brought about by the abjuration of Henry IV, Acarie was exiled from Paris and his wife had to remain behind to contend with creditors and businessmen for her children's fortune, which had been compromised by her husband's want of foresight and prudence.