After Joan of Valois husband Louis gained the throne of France in 1498, he obtained an annulment of their marriage from the Holy See, on the basis of their having been forced into the marriage by Joan's father. After being freed from her marriage, Joan retired to Bourges, where in 1501 she succeeded in founding a monastery in honor of the Annunciation of the Angel Gabriel to the Blessed Virgin Mary.[1] The Rule of Life she wrote for her community is entitled The Ten Virtues of the Blessed Virgin, the imitation of which she proposed as the aim of the order. It was confirmed by Pope Alexander VI and, on 8 October 1502, the first five members received the veil, the foundress herself taking solemn vows on 4 June 1503. She died in 1505.
The Franciscan friar who had assisted Joan in the foundation, Gilbert Nicolas, (whose name was changed by brief of Pope Alexander to Gabriel Maria) was appointed Superior of the monastery by her, and, after revising the Constitutions of the Order, presented them for confirmation in 1517 to Pope Leo X, who then placed the Order under the jurisdiction of the Friars Minor.[1] Under Nicholas' guidance, new monasteries of the Order were founded in Albi (1507), Béthune (1516), Bruges (1517), Rodez (1519), Bordeaux (1520), Chanteloup (1529), and Louvain (1530). The rapid expansion of the Order was due primarily to the patronage of the ArchduchessMargaret of Austria, who had been betrothed in her infancy to the future King Charles VIII of France and brought up at the French royal court. When she became Governor of the Netherlands, she showed great interest in the Franciscan Order and the Order founded by Joan, whom she had known personally.[2]
Beginning in 1610, the Ministers Provincial of the Franciscan friars in France conducted a reform of female communities of the Franciscan Third Order Regular, which established for them enclosed monasteries and allowed the taking of solemn vows, which previously had been barred to them due to the more apostolic way of life they had followed.[2] In this way a number of communities of Franciscan Sisters were added to the Annonciade nuns.
Persecution
The Thirty Years' War proved to be a difficult period for the monasteries of the Order, with many of them damaged, burned, and abandoned. The history of one house of the Order serves to illustrate the turmoil they faced. In May 1635, Catherine Bar, and the nuns of the monastery in Bruyères were forced to flee before the Swedish army. After briefly settling in Badonviller, they were instructed by the Minister Provincial to move to Commercy, where they opened a small school for girls. Some nuns, exhausted by hardships, fell ill along the way with the plague. Only six nuns of the original community of twenty survived. The survivors found shelter with a community of Benedictine nuns in Rambervillers and joined them in 1639. Bar then took the new religious name of Mechtilde of the Blessed Sacrament. She later went on to found the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in her hometown of Saint-Dié-des-Vosges in 1660.[2]
Three of the nuns from that original monastery, however, found their way to the hospitality of a friend of their former monastery living in Burey-en-Vaux. With her help, in 1647 they re-established their community in Vaucouleurs.[2]
Prior to the French Revolution, there were 45 Annonciade monasteries, mostly in France and Belgium. The French houses were suppressed during the turmoil.[1] According to tradition, three nuns from the Villeneuve-sur-Lot monastery were executed during the Reign of Terror for their faith.[3]
Fleeing restrictions on and persecution of religious orders during the Third Republic, a monastery existed at Saint Margaret's Bay (Kent, England) from 1903 until 1976. A photograph of the facility appears on St Margaret's Village Archive website.[4][5]
Their present-day mission as nuns is first and foremost contemplation and giving praise to God. Hours are designated for meditation and silence.[6] Today the Order numbers around eighty nuns living in seven monasteries in France, Belgium and Costa Rica. A new foundation is under way at the Marian Shrine in Licheń, Poland.
Monasteries
The Order currently (2015) has four monasteries in France and one each in Belgium, Costa Rica, and Poland:
Monastère de l’Annonciade, Villeneuve-sur-Lot, Lot-et-Garonne, France, was re-established in 1863 on the site of an Annonciade monastery established in 1624.[3]
Monastère de l’Annonciade, 38, rue J.-F. Marmontel, Thiais, Val-de-Marne, France, established in 1926.[7] This convent publishes much of the literature produced by this order and serves as its central archives.[8]
Monasterium Magnificat, Westmalle, Belgium, established in 1965 by merging Tienen (1629), Geel (1853), and Merksem (1898), the three small monasteries existing in Flanders.[9]
Monastère de l’Annonciade, Brucourt, Calvados, France, established in 1975 by six nuns from Thiais. On October 8, 2014, the cornerstone for a new monastery was laid at Caen-Grentheville, Calvados, France.[10]
Monastère de l’Annonciade, Peyruis, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France, established in 1980 and transferred in April 2007 to Alajuela, Costa Rica, now known by the Spanish name Monasterio de la Anunciada.[11]
Monastère de l'Annonciade, Saint-Doulchard, near Bourges, Cher, France, established on 16 June 1988 by eight sisters from Thiais.
Grablin Forest, Poland. While their monastery was being built, the sisters resided at the Licheń Shrine established in 2009, although the Order had had a presence in Poland since the 1970s.[12][13]
Confraternity of the Annunciation
In 1517 Gabriel Nicholas obtained Church approval for the merger of two previously existing religious fraternities into a confraternity called the Way of Peace (Chemin de Paix) known today as the Confraternity of the Annunciade, the Way of Peace.[2] The Order of Peace may be joined through affiliation to one of the monasteries of the Order.
The Poor Clares, officially the Order of Saint Clare, originally referred to as the Order of Poor Ladies, and also known as the Clarisses or Clarissines, the Minoresses, the Franciscan Clarist Order, and the Second Order of Saint Francis, are members of an enclosed order of nuns in the Roman Catholic Church. The Poor Clares were the second Franciscan branch of the order to be established. Founded by Clare of Assisi and Francis of Assisi on Palm Sunday in the year 1212, they were organized after the Order of Friars Minor, and before the Third Order. As of 2011, there were over 20,000 Poor Clare nuns in over 75 countries throughout the world. They follow several different observances and are organized into federations.
Joan of France was briefly Queen of France as wife of King Louis XII, in between the death of her brother, King Charles VIII, and the annulment of her marriage. After that, she retired to her domain, where she soon founded the monastic Order of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, where she served as abbess. From this Order later sprang the religious congregation of the Apostolic Sisters of the Annunciation, founded in 1787 to teach the children of the poor. She was canonized on 28 May 1950.
Isabelle of France was a French princess and daughter of Louis VIII of France and Blanche of Castile. She was a younger sister of King Louis IX of France and of Alfonso, Count of Poitiers, and an older sister of King Charles I of Sicily. In 1256, she founded the nunnery of Longchamp in part of the Forest of Rouvray, west of Paris. Isabelle consecrated her virginity and her entire life to God alone. She is honored as a saint by the Franciscan Order. Her feast day is 26 February.
The Franciscan Crown is a rosary consisting of seven decades in commemoration of the Seven Joys of the Virgin, namely, the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity of Jesus, the Adoration of the Magi, the Finding in the Temple, the Resurrection of Jesus, and finally, either or both the Assumption of Mary and the Coronation of the Virgin. Devotion to the seven joys of Mary is found in a variety of forms and communities. It is especially popular with the Franciscans, Cistercians, and the Annunciades of St. Joan of France. The devotion was granted many indulgences by different popes, becoming the most heavily indulgenced devotion in the Catholic Church. In order for any associated indulgences to be received it was not necessary for a Franciscan rosary to have been blessed or even to use beads at all.
Mary of Jesus of Ágreda , OIC, also known as the Abbess of Ágreda, was a Franciscan abbess and spiritual writer, known especially for her extensive correspondence with King Philip IV of Spain and reports of her bilocation between Spain and its colonies in New Spain. She was a noted mystic of her era.
Annunciade ('Annunciation'), and various alternate spellings, is the name of several religious or military orders, including:
The Monastery of Our Lady of Prouille or Prouilhe, is the "cradle of the Dominicans", where the first Dominican house, a monastery of nuns, was founded in late 1206 or early 1207. It is located in a hamlet in Languedoc, France, lying between Fanjeaux and Bram, at the point where the road from Castelnaudary to Limoux crosses the road from Bram to Mirepoix.
The Order of the Immaculate Conception, abbreviated OIC and also known as the Conceptionists, is a Catholic religious order of Pontifical Right for nuns founded by Saint Beatrice of Silva. For some years, they followed the Poor Clares Rule, but in 1511 they were recognized as a separate religious order, taking a new rule with the name Order of the Immaculate Conception.
Augustinian nuns are the most ancient and continuous segment of the Augustinian religious order. Named after Augustine of Hippo, there are several Catholic religious communities of women living according to a guide to religious life known as the Rule of St. Augustine. Prominent Augustinian nuns include the canonized Italian mystics Clare of Montefalco and Rita of Cascia.
Beatrice of Silva, born Beatriz de Menezes da Silva, was a Portuguese noblewoman who became the foundress of the monastic Order of the Immaculate Conception. Amadeus of Portugal's younger sister, she is honored as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.
The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and Our Lady is an enclosed religious order and a reform of the Dominican Order devoted to the perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. The congregation was founded in Marseille in 1659 by a Dominican priest, Anthony Le Quieu.
Agnes of Jesus, OP was a French Catholic nun of the Dominican Order. She was prioress of her monastery at Langeac, and is venerated in the Catholic Church, having been beatified by Pope John Paul II on 20 November 1994.
The Colettine Poor Clares are a reform branch of the Order of St. Clare, founded by Clare of Assisi in Italy in 1211. They follow the interpretation of the Rule of St. Clare established in 1410 by Saint Colette, originally a French hermit and member of the Third Order of St. Francis.
The Monastic Family of Bethlehem, of the Assumption of the Virgin and of Saint Bruno – or simply known as Monastic Brothers of Bethlehem and Monastic Sisters of Bethlehem – is a Roman Catholic institute of consecrated life.
Our Lady of Pellevoisin is a title of the Blessed Virgin Mary which refers to a series of Marian apparitions in Pellevoisin, Indre, France. Pellevoisin is west of Châteauroux in the Catholic Archdiocese of Bourges.
The Order of the Most Holy Annunciation (OMHA), also known as the Turchine or Blue Nuns, as well as the Celestine Nuns, is a Roman Catholic religious order of contemplative nuns formed at Genoa, Italy, by Blessed Maria Vittoria De Fornari Strata in honour of the mystery of the Incarnation of Christ.
Gilbert Nicolas, OFM, religious name Gabriel-Maria, was a French Roman Catholic priest and a professed member of the Order of Friars Minor. He co-founded – alongside Saint Jeanne de Valois – the Order of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1501. Nicolas met with both Pope Alexander VI and Pope Leo X in relation to the congregation's foundation and rule and was noted for his humble and meek outlook amongst his peers while also being known for his intelligence and diligence in the affairs of the congregation he helped establish.
Benedictine Nuns of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is a female enclosed Catholic order founded in Paris, France in 1653 by Mechtilde of the Blessed Sacrament.
The Monastery Saint Claire, also known as the Convent of Mary's Fear and by other names, is a convent of the Poor Clares on Tremor Hill in southern Nazareth, Israel. Established in 1884, it is primarily known for the productive time the now-sainted Charles de Foucauld spent there at the end of the 19th century. Expelled from the Ottoman Empire at the onset of World War I, the nuns of the abbey relocated to Malta, founding a new community there. The Sisters of St Clare returned to Nazareth in 1949 but used newer facilities on 3105 Street on the north slope of Tremor Hill. Their former location beside what is now Paulus HaShishi Street was repaired by the Servants of Charity for use as a special needs school in the 1970s.
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