Marc de la Nativité de la Vierge

Marc de la Nativité de la Vierge (9 January 1617 – 23 February 1696), born Jean Genest, was a French Carmelite friar and ascetical writer. A member of the Touraine Reform, he was closely associated with the reformed Carmelite programme of novice formation and was the principal redactor of the multi-volume Conduite spirituelle des novices, a directory for the formation of novices in the reformed houses of the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

Biography

Formation

Jean Genest was born on 9 January 1617 at Cuon, near Saumur, in the diocese of Angers. His parents, who were relatively prosperous, sent him and his brother at the age of eight to the Collège royal Henri-le-Grand at La Flèche, then conducted by the Jesuits. There he was attracted by the example of young Carmelites who were studying theology at the college.

In 1636 Marc spent several months at the Carmelite convent of the Place Maubert in Paris, where he participated in an unsuccessful attempt to introduce the reform. He then studied philosophy at Angers and theology at Rennes in 1638. In 1640 he defended theological theses in the presence of the Parliament of Brittany. His superiors directed him toward the formation of novices, and at the provincial chapter of Poitiers in 1647 he distinguished himself by defending a thesis on mystical theology.

The third volume, La vie regulière, corresponds to the statutes and regular observances of the Touraine Reform. In a modern Carmelite study of contemplation, Michael Plattig notes that Marc wrote in the foreword to this third volume that practices which might appear insignificant had been conscientiously applied in the reform for fifty years; Plattig uses the passage to illustrate the pragmatic and empirical character of the Touraine Reform, whose reformers tested, retained, modified, or dropped practices according to experience.

The fourth volume, Méthode claire et facile pour bien faire oraison mentale et pour s'exercer avec fruit en la présence de Dieu, treats mental prayer and the exercise of the presence of God. A 1658 edition, published in Paris by Siméon Piget, identifies the work as intended for the reformed convents of the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and attributes it to Marc de la Nativité de la Vierge. The fifth volume, the Traité de la componction, was published at Tours in 1696 after Marc's death.

The Conduite spirituelle was not a work of a single authorial moment. The introduction to a modern edition of Maur de l'Enfant-Jésus describes it as combining the successive contributions of several Carmelite friars: Dominique de Saint-Albert, Bernard de Sainte-Magdeleine, Marc de la Nativité, and Maur de l'Enfant-Jésus. Marc, already known as a master of novices and as the defender of theses in mystical theology at the chapter of Poitiers, was charged with the redaction by the chapter of 1647 and spent two years on it in the solitude of Aulnay.

Marc also wrote works on religious privileges, conventual offices, the Carmelite Third Order, preparation for death, and the Office of the Virgin according to the ancient usage of the Carmelite Order.

Spirituality

Marc's writings are primarily ascetical and pedagogical. They were directed less toward speculative mystical theology than toward the formation of religious life, regular observance, mental prayer, and the ordering of the novice's interior and exterior conduct. Blommestijn characterizes his work as especially important for the formation of members of the Touraine Reform.

The influence of John of St. Samson is nevertheless visible in Marc's treatment of affective prayer. His method of mental prayer gives a central place to the movement of the will, while meditation, prepared by the memory and exercised through the understanding, is ordered toward affective union with God. His teaching on aspirative prayer and on the presence of God belongs to the characteristic devotional inheritance of the Touraine Reform, in which the practice of interior prayer was joined to common observance.

Plattig places the Touraine Reform within the wider Carmelite attempt to preserve a contemplative atmosphere while maintaining active apostolic commitments. In this setting Marc's directory reflects a reforming culture that did not simply invent new forms, but adapted inherited Carmelite practices to contemporary needs and tested them within communal life. The fourth volume of the directory, devoted to mental prayer and the presence of God, belongs to this effort to form novices in a stable practice of prayer rather than merely to regulate external discipline.