Maur de l'Enfant-Jésus

Maur de l'Enfant-Jésus (c. 1617 – 19 April 1690), born Jean Man and also known as Le Man or Le Mans, was a French Carmelite friar, spiritual director, mystical theologian, and representative of the Touraine Reform of the Carmelite Order. A disciple of the spiritual lineage of John of St. Samson, he became known for a doctrine of interior annihilation, abandonment to God, the kingdom of Christ in the soul, and the transformation of the human person by divine operation.

Maur was active in the spread of the Touraine Reform in the province of Gascogne and served in several senior offices of his order. His writings include L'Entrée à la divine Sagesse, Le Royaume intérieur de Jésus-Christ dans les âmes, Le Sacré Berceau de l'Enfant Jésus, letters of spiritual direction, and treatises on the interior and mystical life. Later mystical circles associated with Madame Guyon preserved some of his letters and read him as part of the wider tradition of passive prayer and pure love, though modern scholarship generally distinguishes his teaching from the condemned forms of Quietism.^[1][2][3]

Biography

Early life and formation

Jean Man was born in 1617 or 1618 at Château-du-Loir, near Le Mans, in France.^[1] Little is known about his family or youth. Marjolaine Chevallier states that he studied with the Jesuits at La Flèche before entering the Carmel of Rennes.^[3] He entered the Carmelite novitiate at Rennes on 21 February 1633 and made profession there on 22 February 1634 under the religious name Maur de l'Enfant-Jésus.^[1]

The Rennes convent was the original centre of the Touraine Reform, begun in 1604 under Philippe Thibault. The reform arose from efforts to restore regular observance among the Carmelites of the Ancient Observance after the disorder and material weakness caused by the French Wars of Religion.^[4] Maur was formed in the second generation of the reform, in the milieu shaped by John of St. Samson, the blind Carmelite mystic who became its principal interior master. His companions and predecessors in this circle included Marc de la Nativité de la Vierge, Bernard de Sainte-Magdeleine, and Dominique de Saint-Albert.^[2] Dominique and Murielle Tronc describe Maur as the chief successor to John of Saint Samson's interior work after the premature death of Dominique de Saint-Albert.^[5]

In 1647, the provincial chapter of Poitiers appointed Maur to assist Marc de la Nativité de la Vierge in composing a new directory for novices. In 1648 he was sent to Bordeaux to help establish the reform in the Carmelite province of Gascogne, where it had been introduced in 1632. In 1650 he accompanied the commissary general presiding over the provincial chapter of Gascogne and was appointed novice master at Bordeaux. He became prior there in 1651.^[1]

Offices and reforming activity

Maur held several important offices in the reformed Carmelite province. In 1653, he served as commissary general and president of the provincial chapter, at which he was re-elected prior of Bordeaux. In 1655, the commissary general Mathias de Saint-Jean chose him as provincial in order to restore order to a province troubled by disputes surrounding the so-called Cheron affair. Maur was appointed assistant to the provincial in 1661 and 1664, became affiliated with the province of Gascogne in 1664, and later served as provincial in 1675, first definitor in 1682, and provincial again in 1685.^[1]

His role was not merely administrative. He participated in the transmission of the Touraine Reform's interior doctrine beyond Rennes and into Gascogne. The Tronc edition of Entrée à la divine Sagesse presents the work as a continuation and deepening of the Traité de la conduite spirituelle des novices, which had been composed for the reformed Carmelite convents and in whose final redaction Maur had participated.^[5] An official overview of Carmelite spirituality by the Order of Carmelites places Maur among the important writers of the Touraine tradition, alongside figures such as Dominique de Saint-Albert, Léon de Saint-Jean, and Daniel de la Vierge-Marie.^[6]

Spiritual networks and Lormont

Maur occupied a significant place in the spiritual networks of seventeenth-century Bordeaux, Rennes, Paris, and Loudun. He was associated with the Jesuit mystic Jean-Joseph Surin, who was involved in the aftermath of the Loudun possessions. Surin referred to Maur as a trusted friend and servant of God, and the two men were later grouped by modern editors among the mystics opposed to the anti-mystical tendency represented by Jean Cheron.^[2]

Although Maur was frequently called to travel and serve as a spiritual director, he sought solitude. He founded the hermitage of the Basses-Loges at Fontainebleau for the province of Touraine and, from 1668, resided at the hermitage of Sainte-Catherine de Lormont, near Bordeaux.^[1] The Lormont hermitage became the setting of his later life. Its restoration began in 1671, and Maur asked to live there "in the desert", in keeping with the Carmelite tradition of retreat and solitude.^[2] Chevallier states that Maur spent the last twenty years of his life with a few companions in a hermitage near Bordeaux, where he died in 1690.^[3]

His desire for solitude did not spare him conflict. Several of his elections, especially those of 1679 and 1685, were contested. He also faced difficulties connected with the reconstruction of Lormont between 1663 and 1679, and with the return of the former provincial Jean Cheron, who had been held captive for two years by Barbary corsairs.^[1] Cheron later became a severe critic of mystical theology, and his polemics formed part of a broader anti-mystical current in seventeenth-century France.^[1]

Maur died at Bordeaux on 19 April 1690.^[1]

Works

Early writings and L'Entrée à la divine Sagesse

Maur appears to have had only a secondary role in the composition of the four-volume Traité de la conduite spirituelle des novices, published for the reformed Carmelite convents in 1650–1651.^[1] His first major independent work was Théologie chrestienne et mystique, ou conduite spirituelle pour arriver bientost au souverain degré de la perfection, published at Bordeaux in 1651. This text was later incorporated into L'Entrée à la divine Sagesse, first published in 1652.^[5]

L'Entrée à la divine Sagesse gathered several short treatises on mystical theology and the spiritual path, including Les trois portes du Palais de la divine Sapience, Montée spirituelle, Exposition des communications divines, Sanctuaire de la divine Sapience, and Théologie chrestienne et mystique. Later editions also included the Traité de la fidélité de l'âme à son Dieu.^[5] A review in the Nouvelle revue théologique describes the first and longest text, Théologie chrétienne et mystique, as a spiritual itinerary from renunciation of self to consummation in God, and notes that the volume as edited by Dominique and Murielle Tronc gathered six early writings from 1652.^[7]

The work circulated widely in the seventeenth century. After the first edition of 1652, Paris editions appeared in 1655, 1669, 1678, and 1692; Dutch translations were published at Ghent in 1679 and 1698 and at Antwerp in 1706.^[5] A 1692 Paris edition, described as a revised and corrected final edition, was published by Antoine Warin and included the Traité de la fidélité de l'âme à son Dieu.^[8] Dominique and Murielle Tronc interpret the early writings as unusually direct and confident witnesses to the mystical elan of the Touraine Reform before later anti-mystical controversies imposed greater caution on spiritual writers.^[5]

Mature writings

Maur's mature works include Le Royaume intérieur de Jésus-Christ dans les âmes, first published in Paris in 1664, and Le Sacré Berceau de l'Enfant Jésus, ou les entretiens spirituels sur tous les mystères de l'Enfance de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, published in 1682.^[1] Le Royaume intérieur is a more architecturally ordered work than the earlier Entrée. Dominique Tronc suggests that it responded to the needs of a community including novices, which helps explain the ascetical emphasis of its opening sections.^[2] The Order of Carmelites also lists L'Entrée à la divine Sagesse, Théologie chrestienne et mystique, and Le Royaume intérieur de Jésus-Christ dans les âmes among Maur's principal contributions to the spiritual literature of the Touraine tradition.^[6]

Maur also left two manuscript treatises dated 5 May 1673 under the title Traité de la vie intérieure et mystique. They were later published in the fourth volume of Le Directeur mystique, a collection associated with Jacques Bertot and the circle of Madame Guyon.^[1] Dominique Tronc identifies the two treatises as probably addressed to a disciple, the abbé de Brion.^[2] Raymond Darricau's study of Brion places him in relation to the eremitical milieu of Lormont, where he eventually moved from the court of Louis XIV to a life of retreat.^[9]

Letters of direction

Forty-three letters of spiritual direction attributed to Maur are known. Twenty-one were addressed to a young married woman, whom Dominique Tronc identifies as Jeanne-Marie Guyon, probably between about 1670 and 1675. Twenty-two others were addressed about a decade later to a Visitandine religious at Bordeaux.^[2]

Chevallier confirms that the 2007 edition reproduces the two surviving series of letters: first, responses addressed to the young married Madame Guyon, then a later series addressed to an older scrupulous religious.^[3] The letters to Guyon were preserved in Le Directeur mystique and later reprinted as part of Guyon's passive correspondence.^[2] Dominique and Murielle Tronc argue that Guyon valued them enough to include them in that collection, and they present the correspondence as one of the links by which the mystical tradition of the reformed Grands Carmes entered the later Guyon-Bertot milieu.^[10]

Spirituality

Experiential mystical theology

Maur did not construct a systematic scholastic theology. As a director of souls, he was chiefly concerned with the concrete movement of the interior life. He described mystical theology as "a theology of the heart, much more than of the understanding; more in experience than in knowledge; almost entirely of God and very little of creation".^[1]

His spirituality stands in the line of John of Saint Samson and the Rhenish-Flemish mystical tradition, especially in its emphasis on interior recollection, introversion, divine operation, and the soul's passage beyond self-appropriating activity. At the same time, his works belong to the moral and spiritual world of seventeenth-century France, with its critique of amour-propre, or self-love, as the principal obstacle to divine union.^[1] The New Catholic Encyclopedia article on the Touraine Reform describes the reform as marked by strict regular observance, mental prayer, aspirations, devotion to the Child Jesus, and a spiritual literature shaped by figures such as John of Saint Samson and Maur.^[4]

The Tronc edition of Entrée à la divine Sagesse presents Maur's early mystical doctrine as an itinerary beginning with divine initiative. God touches the soul by a singular movement of love; the soul responds by love, ascetic purification, imitation of Christ, aspirations, the loss of formed acts, obscure faith, passivity, annihilation, and finally divine life or deification.^[5] This movement is not merely negative. The renunciation of self-possession is ordered toward the positive transformation of the soul by grace. The Nouvelle revue théologique review similarly describes the work as moving from renunciation of self toward abandonment to divine action.^[7]

Annihilation and abandonment

Maur is especially associated with a mystical doctrine of annihilation. For him, Christian life is patterned on the self-emptying of Christ, beginning in the Incarnation and culminating in the Paschal mystery. Baptism is the beginning of supernatural transformation and the first entrance of Christ into the kingdom of the soul.^[1]

The path therefore requires renunciation not only of external things but also of the soul's attachment to its own operations and even to divine consolations. Maur sees renunciation as the dynamic structure of the whole mystical way: as the soul relinquishes self-love and the desire to produce its own perfection, God is able to act in it as first principle.^[1] Reviewing a twentieth-century Soignies edition of Théologie chrétienne et mystique, Edmond Vansteenberghe characterizes Maur's doctrine as an ascent by the way of renunciation and as a return to evangelical simplicity rather than artificial or over-elaborate devotional exercises.^[11]

This annihilation is not natural destruction of the person. The faculties of the soul are not abolished but suspended in their self-originating activity, so that divine operation may act through the transformed human spirit. Maur describes the highest consummation of this process as an "estate of resurrection".^[1]

The kingdom of Christ in the soul

Maur's later works give increasing prominence to the indwelling and operation of Christ. In Le Royaume intérieur, the spiritual life is described as the establishment of Christ's kingdom within the person. The Christian may have broken the cords of sin and begun to give himself to God, but the roots of sin remain, and the soul must enter paths where faith and grace, rather than natural effort alone, become the principal agents.^[2]

This Christological emphasis modifies any purely negative reading of Maur's annihilation. The destruction of self-love and self-possession is ordered toward the life of Christ in the soul. Christ, as king of the soul, renews its powers and carries its operations back toward their divine source.^[2] In this respect Maur's mature doctrine approaches themes associated with the French school of spirituality, especially the appropriation of the interior dispositions of Jesus Christ, though Hein Blommestijn notes that Maur never fully integrates the Bérullian system.^[1]

Prayer and passivity

Maur responded to the seventeenth-century devotional interest in the prayer of "simple regard", or simple loving attention to God. He increasingly privileged this form of prayer over the doctrine of aspirations especially associated with John of Saint Samson, though he did not reject the earlier Carmelite emphasis on aspirations.^[1]

His teaching on passivity concerns the cessation of self-directed appropriation rather than spiritual idleness. The preface to L'Entrée à la divine Sagesse rejects the notion that one becomes spiritual by remaining inactive. Grace moves the soul back toward its divine principle; the soul's repose consists in receiving divine communications in order to act more divinely through them.^[5] For this reason, modern editors distinguish Maur's doctrine from the later condemned forms of Quietism, while recognizing that his vocabulary of annihilation, abandonment, naked faith, and divine operation made him attractive to later readers associated with passive prayer.^[2]

Chevallier summarizes Maur's direction as an exhortation to abandonment through complete dispossession of self-will, especially in the letters to Madame Guyon and to the Visitandine religious.^[3]

Reception and influence

Maur's works were read in the context of the Touraine Reform and later in wider French mystical circles. The early editions and translations of L'Entrée à la divine Sagesse within roughly half a century suggest that it answered a real demand among readers sympathetic to Carmelite interior spirituality.^[5] The 1692 Paris edition of L'Entrée à la divine Sagesse gives evidence of the work's continued late seventeenth-century circulation.^[8] Later, however, his work fell into relative obscurity. Dominique Tronc attributes this partly to Maur's distance from Paris, his eremitical life at Lormont, the later disappearance of the Grands Carmes in France, and the growing suspicion of mystical inaction in the late seventeenth century.^[2]

The controversy with Jean Cheron formed part of this reception. Cheron's Examen de la théologie mystique (1657) criticized mystical theology from a rationalist and anti-mystical perspective. Although Maur was not necessarily its direct target, his friend Jean-Joseph Surin answered the anti-mystical tendency in his Guide spirituelle of 1660–1661, and Maur's later works show greater care and precision in expression.^[1]

Maur's relationship to Madame Guyon is a significant element of his later reception. Dominique Tronc identifies the young married woman addressed in twenty-one of Maur's letters as Guyon, and Dominique and Murielle Tronc state that she consulted Maur while still young and undergoing an interior desert. They further argue that Guyon's preservation of these letters in Le Directeur mystique shows the importance she attached to his direction.^[10] Chevallier's review independently identifies the first series of letters as responses to the young Madame Guyon during a period of severe trials and early mystical aspiration.^[3]

In the Justifications assembled in 1695 with the assistance of Fénelon, Guyon gave a prominent place to John of Saint Samson, Maur's spiritual master within the Touraine Reform. Dominique and Murielle Tronc therefore place Maur within a broader line of transmission running from the reformed Grands Carmes to Guyon, Bertot, Fénelon, and later European circles of interior prayer.^[10] This does not make Maur a Quietist in the later condemned sense, but it helps explain why his language and writings were received within circles devoted to abandonment, pure love, and passive contemplation.

Maur also influenced or was connected with the Lormont eremitical milieu represented by the abbé de Brion. Darricau's study of Brion describes the movement from court life to the hermitage of Lormont, and Tronc identifies Brion as a likely recipient of Maur's two treatises on the interior and mystical life.^[9][2]

Works

• Traité de la conduite spirituelle des novices, pour les couvens réformés de l'ordre de Nostre Dame du Mont-Carmel (Paris, 1650–1651)
• Théologie chrestienne et mystique, ou conduite spirituelle pour arriver bientost au souverain degré de la perfection (Bordeaux, 1651)
• L'Entrée à la divine Sagesse (Bordeaux, 1652; Paris, 1655, 1669, 1678, 1692; Dutch translations, Ghent, 1679 and 1698; Antwerp, 1706)
• Le Royaume intérieur de Jésus-Christ dans les âmes (Paris, 1664)
• Le Sacré Berceau de l'Enfant Jésus, ou les entretiens spirituels sur tous les mystères de l'Enfance de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (Paris, 1682)
• Traité de la vie intérieure et mystique, in Jacques Bertot, Le Directeur mystique, vol. 4 (Cologne, 1726)
• Twenty-one letters of direction to a young married woman, identified by Dominique Tronc as Jeanne-Marie Guyon
• Twenty-two letters to a Visitandine religious, later edited by Michel de Certeau
• Écrits de la maturité, 1664–1689: Lettres de direction; Le Royaume intérieur de Jésus-Christ dans les âmes; Deux traités de la vie intérieure et mystique, ed. Dominique Tronc (Toulouse: Éditions du Carmel, 2007)
• Entrée à la divine Sagesse: Théologie chrétienne et mystique; Sanctuaire de la divine Sapience; Montée spirituelle; Exposition des communications divines; Traité de la fidélité; Les trois portes du Palais de la divine Sapience, ed. Dominique and Murielle Tronc (Éditions du Carmel, 2008)