OUR FOUNDERS
Get to know the life and work of the founders of the Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary
Founders and Beginning
"The capture of the Bastille". Picture painted by Jean-Pierre Houël, exhibited in the National Library of France.
Pierre Joseph de Clorivière
On both the paternal and maternal sides, the ancestors of Father de Clorivière, whose genealogy dates back to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, are part of the Breton and more precisely Mallois nobility and gentry. Their names are linked to the local history in various liberal professions, and especially in the high deeds of the navy, glory of Saint-Malo. In Saint-Malo, on June 29, 1735, Pierre-Joseph de Clorivière was born, the second of eight children, in a marine-related business family. Pierre Joseph lost his father at the age of six and three years later he also lost his mother, a situation that painfully marked his soul, broke his delicate sensibility and in a feeling of loneliness he began to cling to God and the Virgin Mary. Clorivière stayed with his family in Saint-Malo for a few years. Then, as they had relatives in Douai, he was sent there to a flourishing English Benedictine college to complete his literary formation. At the age of 19, he devoted himself to the study of law, which he continued until he entered the novitiate of the Society. "God was waiting for me there in Paris," he writes, in a brief autobiography of his early years and adds: "I fell into the hands of an excellent secular priest and through him, came my conversion, after a spiritual retreat that he made for me, just turned 20 years old." "From that moment on, I truly became another man". After that, he made another 10-day retreat, in which he confirmed his vocation: "I had a calm and strong impression at the same time and a very clear conviction that God was calling me to the priesthood". He entered the Society of Jesus on August 14, 1756 at the age of 21. He made his first vows on August 17, 1758. As a consequence of the suppression of the Society in France, he was assigned to the English province in 1762. He studied theology and was ordained a priest on October 2, 1763, in Cologne. Ten years later, on August 15, 1773, he pronounced his perpetual vows, a few days before the suppression of the Society of Jesus. During his priestly ministry he was a pastor, chaplain to nuns, rector of the Scholasticate. Together with Maria Adelaide de Cicé, he founded the Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary in 1791. In 1814, he was commissioned by Father General of the Jesuits to work for the restoration of the Society of Jesus in France. He lived his priestly ministry with total generosity and audacity. He is remembered as a "priest of the essential" and in various circumstances was called the "living Gospel". Father de Clorivière died on January 9, 1820 in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament.
Adelaida de Cicé
Adelaide was born in Rennes, France, on 5 November 1749, into the Champion de Cicé family, established in Brittany since the 15th century. Her father was a counselor in the Parliament of Brittany, as were her grandfather and great-grandfather. Adelaide was baptised on the same day of her birth in the parish of Saint Aubin. Her mother was 47 years old and her father 69. Only one year after her birth, her father died, leaving the whole family burden on Madame de Cicé. Adelaide grew up in a rather austere atmosphere with little contact with her older siblings, as most of them were already away from home. At the age of 10, she made her first communion at the Visitation in Rennes. It was an act that profoundly marked his spiritual life. On that day he made a resolution "not to answer sharply and to talk gently". From her childhood she had a delicate and generous temperament. Her attitudes of tenderness led her with special concern for the poor children to whom she distributed the alms she asked for them among her relatives. She often said "Let us love Jesus Christ and the poor". From her earliest years Adelaide directed her life towards God. On the day of her first communion she made a resolution not to answer rudely and to speak gently. She expressed with simplicity how she felt her call to religious life in everyday life. Her religious vocation was confirmed after a retreat in Rennes. During this retreat in August 1776 she wrote: "I have taken the resolution to restrain all useless expenses for myself and to limit myself in this to what is really necessary in my position. I will look on my possessions as if they belong to the poor much more than to me". Adelaide, wanting to surrender herself entirely to the Lord, began her search for existing religious institutions and managed to get her mother to stay in the convent. She began her religious formation at the Visitation in Rennes. A few months after her entry into the novitiate, her brother Jean-Baptiste, bishop of Auxerre, forced her to leave the convent and return to the Château de Cicé to take care of her mother, as was really appropriate at the time. Adelaide meekly obeyed her brother but did not renounce the deep desire of her heart. At the age of 27, she was determined to obey her mother as her superior. Her fragile health obliged her to go to Dinan, where she met Father de Clorivière, with whom she shared her first project of religious life. Adelaide aspired to establish a community of women consecrated to God and to the service of the most needy. It was a new form of religious life to be lived in the midst of the world, quietly and unnoticed, without habit or enclosure, modelled on the first Christian communities, permeating the different environments with the values of the Gospel. Both Adelaide, with her long matured intuition, and Father Clorivière, with his sudden inspiration, arrive at the same conception of religious life in the midst of the world. Like Father de Clorivièrer, Adelaide celebrates her definitive encounter with the Lord, in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, on the morning of 26th April 1818.
HISTORY
The Society "Daughters of the Heart of Mary" was founded by Pierre Joseph de Clorivière, S.J. and Marie Adelaide de Cicé, in Paris, France in 1791. In 1785, Father de Clorivière was the rector of the Church's School in Dinan. It was there, in Dinan that, by God's design, the meeting took place between this saintly and audacious priest and Miss Marie Adelaide de Cicé, a Breton woman, destined by the Lord for great works. Near Dinan there was a famous hot springs spa, which Adelaide frequented on the recommendation of her doctor. She was staying at the Ursuline monastery and soon sought confession with Father de Clorivière, chaplain of the monastery. The priest soon recognized in Adelaide a soul devoted to the Lord, humble, generous, a servant of the poor and ready for any noble endeavor for the Kingdom of God. From there began a long journey of accompaniment by Father de Clorivière to this pious young woman who ardently desired to find God's will for her life. In the course of this accompaniment, Adelaide confided to Father de Clorivière her dream of a religious life different from the one existing at that time. She wanted to unite the contemplative life and the apostolic life, at the service of the poorest, something unthinkable in her time. It was about a religious life without habit or enclosure, in total consecration to the Lord by the religious vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and at the same time, to remain in the midst of the world to serve the poor, with all kinds of apostolic works. Father de Clorivière listened to her and guided her in her spiritual life, encouraging her to wait patiently for God's time. With the guidance of Father de Clorivière, Adelaide made attempts at religious life in different convents and societies of apostolic life, but she did not find what she was looking for. Father de Clorivière, open to the signs of the times and in a permanent attitude of discernment, accompanied her and supported her in her religious formation, while still seeking the designs of the Lord. In 1789 the French revolution broke out and on February 13, 1790 the assembly decreed the suppression of the religious vows, all the people living in the convents had to leave them. All communities were expelled from France, including the Society of Jesus. Father de Clorivière, despite all the threats and dangers, continued to preach the gospel and defend the church. Meanwhile, Adelaide continued her search and her apostolic dedication to the service of the poor, whom she loved unconditionally. In the midst of the revolutionary storm, on July 19, 1790, feast of St. Vincent de Paul, Father de Clorivière had "a strong inspiration and heard a clear inner voice telling him: Why not in France? And why not in the whole universe? And as if in a flash, he was presented with an outline or plan of religious life that should be useful to the church and do much good to society" (cfr. Ganuza, Juan M., S.J. Life of the Servant of God, Pedro José de Cloriviere). To repond to the urgent needs of the church, his first inspiration was that of a community of men: the priests of the Heart of Jesus. It would be "A society of men who would breathe nothing but the glory of God and the salvation of their neighbor...The religious of this society would have no goods in common; and gathered together in Jesus Christ, as closely as possible, they would have no external sign of their association, no habit, uniform, no houses, no churches of their own, nor other such things. And they would live separately as the early Christians did." Once this project was finished, it was very strongly presented to the spirit, that the same thing that he had done for men, he should do for women and after asking for the light of the Holy Spirit, two fundamental texts of the gospel that are heading the plan of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary were presented to his memory and he believed that in them was the order of the Lord and the spirit of what he had to propose: "Father: I do not ask you to take them out of the world but to preserve them from evil" (Jn17:15); "I no longer call you servants but friends" (Jn 15:15). In these two texts, the characteristics of the Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary are well identified: total consecration to the Lord, based on a profound interior experience and lived in the middle of the world, without habit or enclosure. This novel project of religious life coincided with what Adelaide had dreamed for several years, so Father de Clorivière soon shared with Adelaide his inspiration to initiate together this work that the Lord was placing in their hearts and in their hands. Father de Clorivière sent to Monsignor de Pressigny his two manuscripts with the double plan of the institutes, who, after studying them carefully, recognized in them the spirit of God and approved them broadly verbally and in writing, on September 18, 1790. He also gave permission to the father to associate to the two institutes the persons he judged suitable. Soon two Jesuits and eleven (11) Breton priests joined to form the first nucleus of the Society of the Sacred Heart. In the same way, some pious and generous women gathered around Marie Adelaide, who was happy to undertake this form of life she had always dreamed (cf. Ganuza, Jean M., S.J. Life of the Servant of God, Pierre Joseph de Clorivière). On February 2, 1791, on the feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, after three days of silence and prayer, the two institutes officially began by means of a consecration and a sort of founding act that they all signed. The Society of the Heart of Jesus had nine members and five of them performed their consecration ceremony at the shrine of Montmartre, in the chapel of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Father de Clorivière celebrated a special Eucharist; after it, each one made his offering to the Lord and the Founder, in the name of all, pronounced the formula of association which was signed by all of them. In the Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary, each of the 11 members of the Institute made their consecration to the Lord. Father de Clorivière signed for Adelaide de Cicé, for she was, as the Founder declared, the foundation stone of this foundation. The two societies elected Father de Clorivière as their superior.
APPROVAL
On January 19, 1801, the Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary received verbal approval from Pope Pius VII. (Const. p.104. Approvals of the Church).
On April 24, 1857, Pope Pius IX approved and confirmed definitively, by decree, the Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary.
On June 18, 1890, Pope Leo XIII, approved definitively the Constitutions of the Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary.