Alix Le Clerc

Alix Le Clerc (2 February 1576 – 9 January 1622), known as Mother Alix, was a French religious leader and founder of the Canonesses of Saint-Augustin of the Notre-Dame Congregation , a religious order created to provide education to girls, especially those living in poverty. They opened Schools of Our Lady throughout Europe. Offshoots of this order brought its mission and spirit around the globe. Le Clerc was beatified by the Catholic Church in 1947.

Life Early life Alix (the local form of Alice) Le Clerc was born on 2 February 1576 into a wealthy family in Remiremont in the independent Duchy of Lorraine, part of the Holy Roman Empire. She was a vivacious girl who loved music and dancing. She would spend her evenings partying with her young friends. When she was about 18, her family moved to Mattaincourt, a manufacturing center.

Conversion Three years later, a sudden illness confined her to her bed. While there, her only reading material was a devotional book. From the reading and reflection she was able to do while recuperating from her illness, Le Clerc began to feel the need for a change in her life. She approached the pastor of the town, Dom Peter Fourier, with whom she shared this growing conviction about the need for a new direction in her life,

Foundress On Christmas Day 1597, Le Clerc and her companions made private vows in the parish church to Fourier. The small community opened their first school the following July in Poussay, where they offered free education to the girls of the duchy. Expansion of their work developed quickly, with communities being opened in Mattaincourt (1599), Saint-Mihiel (1602), Nancy (1603), Pont-à-Mousson (1604), Verdun, and Saint-Nicolas-de-Port (1605). All the schools took the name of Notre-Dame.

Le Clerc established herself in Nancy, capital of the duchy, and devoted herself to the care of the girls who came to the schools of the new congregation. At the same time, working through major obstacles, she and Fourier developed constitutions for the new congregation through which the communities could be legally recognized by the Church and the State.

The congregation had also spread to other regions of Europe by the time it faced a century of upheaval, starting with the French Revolution, which closed many of their houses. In central Europe, communities were scattered, moving back and forth between Germany (founded in 1640) and Bohemia. Out of this chaos, Theresa Gerhardinger, a former student of the suppressed monastery in Stadtamhof, came to found the School Sisters of Notre Dame in the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1833. It currently has 3,500 members working in over 30 countries around the world.

At the time of Fourier's canonization in 1897, thirty monasteries of the congregation still functioned in Europe. Over the next decades, the congregation expanded to South America, Africa, and Asia, and they now serve in 43 nations. Their mission has expanded to include work for human rights, such as the protection of the rights of migrants and the promotion of justice for developing nations. The General Chapter of 2008 formally recognized the many groups of alumni and associates of the congregation which had sprung up around the world as full partners in the heritage of Fourier and Le Clerc.