Blessed Marie of the Incarnation Acarie

Blessed Marie of the Incarnation, known as Madame Acarie, was a Parisian wife and mother of six, a mystic through whom the Carmel renewed by Saint Teresa of Ávila came to France. After her husband’s death she herself became a Carmelite. The Roman Martyrology commemorates her on April 18, the day of her death.

She was born in Paris on February 1, 1566, as Barbe Avrillot, the daughter of an official of the royal Chamber of Accounts. She was brought up by the Poor Clares at the abbey of Longchamp, and there she came to desire the religious life. Her mother decided otherwise: in 1582, at sixteen, Barbe was given in marriage to Pierre Acarie, a wealthy official of the same chamber. She came to love the husband she had not chosen, and she bore him three sons and three daughters.

Around 1587 she read a sentence that changed her life: “Too greedy is the one for whom God is not enough.” From then on she combined the duties of her household with prayer and service to those in need. During the siege of Paris in 1590 she fed the starving and spent whole days among the sick in the hospital. In that same year her ecstasies began, which she tried to conceal.

Pierre Acarie was one of the leaders of the Catholic League, which opposed Henry IV. When the king took Paris in 1594, Pierre was banished from the city and the family’s property was seized. For four years Barbe defended her husband against creditors and in the courts, until the family recovered its home. After a fall from a horse and further fractures of her leg, she walked with difficulty for the rest of her life.

Her Paris home became a meeting place for people who were renewing the religious life of France. Among its visitors were her cousin Pierre de Bérulle and Saint Francis de Sales, who for several months was her confessor. Toward the end of 1601 she came to know the life and writings of Saint Teresa of Ávila. As her biographers relate, the saint appeared to her twice and told her to bring her order to France. Barbe submitted this to the judgment of theologians, and then, with the help of friends, obtained the consent of the king and of Pope Clement VIII. In October 1604 the first French Carmel was founded in Paris, and Bérulle brought Carmelite nuns from Spain to it. Monasteries at Pontoise, Dijon, and Amiens soon followed. All three of Barbe’s daughters became Carmelites.

Pierre Acarie died in November 1613, after thirty-one years of marriage. In 1614 his widow entered the Carmel of Amiens. She asked to be received as a lay sister, assigned to household work. She was given the name Marie of the Incarnation and made her religious vows. She worked in the kitchen and cared for the sick sisters. In December 1616 she was transferred to the monastery at Pontoise. There, after a grave illness, she died on April 18, 1618, the Wednesday after Easter.

The process was begun a few years after her death, but it was halted by the new rules of Pope Urban VIII and resumed only in 1782. Pope Pius VI beatified her on June 5, 1791, during the French Revolution.