Camille de Soyécourt, filled with divine fortitude

Synthèse :

The birth in Paris, on 25 June 1757, of Camille Marie Françoise de Soyécourt was not an occasion for joy for her noble and very wealthy family. They had hoped for a boy, but instead it was a third daughter... The disappointment was such that when asked: "What name should we give her?" one of her aunts replied: "Miss one too many!"To correct this mean-spirited remark, someone exclaimed: "Who knows if this little one won't be the honour and consolation of her family?"This last remark was prophetic, for the child would indeed be the glory of her lineage and would play a providential role in the restoration of Catholicism in France.

Camille was fifteen when her parents decided to make a good match for her, that is, for the family. It was a normal age for the time and for her social class. They set their sights on a well-titled and wealthy suitor, who had only one major flaw for such a young girl: he was nearly sixty... However, it was not this age difference that upset Mademoiselle de Soyécourt, but rather the prospect that this unfortunate marriage plan would prevent her from fulfilling her secret aspiration: to enter a Carmelite convent. As an adult, she would later be capable of standing up to Napoleon or imposing her views on the Pope and the Cardinals, but she was still just an adolescent, petrified of her parents, and she didn't dare express her repugnance to them. Naive and ignorant of the realities of married life, she was about to consent to this union, in the hope that such a great old man would soon leave her a widow and that, emancipated, she would be able to enter the convent. But God wanted her all to himself and, before the date set for the wedding, the fiancé died unexpectedly. Camille was saved. From then on, nothing would stop her from defending her vocation.

After overcoming her taste for worldly pleasures and her parents' reluctance, Camille de Soyécourt entered the Carmelite convent in 1784 and survived the Reign of Terror, during which she lost her entire family. Her parents were arrested at the end of November 1793 (along with one of their eldest daughters) and imprisoned - her father in the former male Carmelite convent, now a prison and already the scene of the massacre of one hundred and two priests and seminarians on 2 and 3 September 1792, and her mother in the former Sainte-Pélagie convent, where she died of illness. Monsieur de Soyécourt and Camille's sister were guillotined at the end of July 1794, shortly before the fall of Robespierre.

Orphaned from her family and separated from her spiritual family - scattered, hidden and seemingly definitively destroyed - the young woman was alone, without material support or a penny to her name, since the enormous family fortune had been confiscated by the Republic; she had also had to take in the son of her executed sister, whom she had to bring up and feed. Anyone else would have given up, but not Camille. She was working to salvage what could be salvaged and, to ensure her nephew's future and her own, to recover everything that could be salvaged from the family estate. Camille was also taking steps to recover the family fortune, of which she remained the sole heiress. But one scruple stopped her: she had taken a vow of poverty. The priests she hid, helped and rescued advised her to go to Pope Pius VI and tell him that the money would be used to meet the needs of the Church in France. The Pope exceptionally dispensed her from her vow of poverty. Mademoiselle de Soyécourt thus recovered several millions: she was now very rich.

Camille bought back the former convent of the Discalced Carmelites, which had been threatened with demolition - in memory of her father, who lived there for his last months, and the martyred priests who were massacred there - and recreated a clandestine Carmelite convent, in which she brought together the surviving Carmelite nuns, separated from their companions and wishing to return to the contemplative life. She reopened the Carmelite convent without authorisation,because the contemplative life, deemed unnecessary, was not part of Bonaparte's plans for the restoration of Catholicism. Determined to use her money for the good of the Church, Mother Thérèse-Camille of the Child Jesus helped to save many other convents that she bought, both in Paris and in the provinces. She not only restored sixty houses of Carmel, but also provided the funds needed to revive dozens of religious institutes destroyed during the Revolution.

It was this work that she did not hesitate to jeopardise when, in 1810, she joined the Catholic resistance to Napoleon, who had invaded the Papal States and annexed them to the Empire before imprisoning Pope Pius VII. Even though these actions were symbolic - such as the distribution of leaflets hostile to the emperor's religious policy, which did not represent any real danger to him - Napoleon, exasperated at seeing Catholics letting him down, ordered the police to be severe. He demoted certain cardinals exiled in the provinces, who were then forced to return to the state of ordinary priests, earning them the nickname of "black cardinals", because they had condemned his remarriage to Marie-Louise of Austria. Although under house arrest, some of them travelled to the capital as they pleased, thanks to the help of a certain "Lady Camilla". The police identified her as the Reverend Mother Thérèse-Camille of the Child Jesus,the "millionaire Carmelite nun", who was not afraid of anything or anyone. They decided to arrest her in the hope of taking down her network.

This was done in 1811, but Mother Thérèse-Camille of the Child Jesus kept silent and did not give up her "accomplices", even though she knew that the Emperor was furious and could close her convents, destroying her work. Confident, she put her trust in providence and was rewarded for it. A high prelate vouched for her, swearing that she had no subversive agenda against the government. She was exiled to Guise, but continued to run her networks and even managed to return to her Parisian Carmelite convent. To avoid ridicule, the government pardoned her on health grounds. Admiring her, Napoleon deplored not having in his entourage someone as loyal and devoted to him as the nun was to the Pope. In retaliation, he had the religious institutes that opposed his views closed, but in 1813 he officially acknowledged the return of the Carmelite order in France.

Aller plus loin :

Vie de la révérende mère Thérèse-Camille de Soyécourt by Mère Éléonore du Saint-Sacrement (published anonymously, the work is sometimes also attributed to Mother Saint-Jérôme), , 1878. Available on demand from Eyrolles and can be consulted online.

En savoir plus :

• Cardinal Baudrillard, La très vénérable Camille de Soyécourt ou celle qui n'a eu pas peur, Albin Michel, 1941.
• C. Tavernier, "Mère Camille de Soyécourt et les cardinaux noirs", Revue d'histoire de l'Église de France, vol. 42, 1956.
• The Aleteia article: " Camille de Soyecourt, l'intrépide carmélite de la Révolution ".