Maur de l'Enfant-Jésus

Maur de l'Enfant-Jésus (c. 1617 – 19 April 1690), born Jean Man and also known as Le Man or Le Mans, was a French Carmelite friar, spiritual director, mystical theologian, and representative of the Touraine Reform of the Carmelite Order. A disciple of the spiritual lineage of John of St. Samson, he became known for a doctrine of interior annihilation, abandonment to God, the kingdom of Christ in the soul, and the transformation of the human person by divine operation.

Maur was active in the spread of the Touraine Reform in the province of Gascogne and served in several senior offices of his order. His writings include L'Entrée à la divine Sagesse, Le Royaume intérieur de Jésus-Christ dans les âmes, Le Sacré Berceau de l'Enfant Jésus, letters of spiritual direction, and treatises on the interior and mystical life. Later mystical circles associated with Madame Guyon preserved some of his letters and read him as part of the wider tradition of passive prayer and pure love, though modern scholarship generally distinguishes his teaching from the condemned forms of Quietism.

Biography

Early life and formation

Jean Man was born in 1617 or 1618 at Château-du-Loir, near Le Mans, in France. Maur was formed in the second generation of the reform, in the milieu shaped by John of St. Samson, the blind Carmelite mystic who became its principal interior master. His companions and predecessors in this circle included Marc de la Nativité de la Vierge, Bernard de Sainte-Magdeleine, and Dominique de Saint-Albert.

In 1647, the provincial chapter of Poitiers appointed Maur to assist Marc de la Nativité de la Vierge in composing a new directory for novices. In 1648 he was sent to Bordeaux to help establish the reform in the Carmelite province of Gascogne, where it had been introduced in 1632. In 1650 he accompanied the commissary general presiding over the provincial chapter of Gascogne and was appointed novice master at Bordeaux. He became prior there in 1651.

Spiritual networks and Lormont

Maur occupied a significant place in the spiritual networks of seventeenth-century Bordeaux, Rennes, Paris, and Loudun. He was associated with the Jesuit mystic Jean-Joseph Surin, who was involved in the aftermath of the Loudun possessions. Surin referred to Maur as a trusted friend and servant of God, and the two men were later grouped by modern editors among the mystics opposed to the anti-mystical tendency represented by Jean Cheron.

The work circulated widely in the seventeenth century. After the first edition of 1652, Paris editions appeared in 1655, 1669, 1678, and 1692; Dutch translations were published at Ghent in 1679 and 1698 and at Antwerp in 1706. Dominique and Murielle Tronc interpret the early writings as unusually direct and confident witnesses to the mystical elan of the Touraine Reform before later anti-mystical controversies imposed greater caution on spiritual writers.

Letters of direction

Forty-three letters of spiritual direction attributed to Maur are known. Twenty-one were addressed to a young married woman, whom Dominique Tronc identifies as Jeanne-Marie Guyon, probably between about 1670 and 1675. Twenty-two others were addressed about a decade later to a Visitandine religious at Bordeaux.

Spirituality

Experiential mystical theology

Maur did not construct a systematic scholastic theology. As a director of souls, he was chiefly concerned with the concrete movement of the interior life. He described mystical theology as "a theology of the heart, much more than of the understanding; more in experience than in knowledge; almost entirely of God and very little of creation".

This annihilation is not natural destruction of the person. The faculties of the soul are not abolished but suspended in their self-originating activity, so that divine operation may act through the transformed human spirit. Maur describes the highest consummation of this process as an "estate of resurrection".

The kingdom of Christ in the soul

Maur's later works give increasing prominence to the indwelling and operation of Christ. In Le Royaume intérieur, the spiritual life is described as the establishment of Christ's kingdom within the person. The Christian may have broken the cords of sin and begun to give himself to God, but the roots of sin remain, and the soul must enter paths where faith and grace, rather than natural effort alone, become the principal agents.

This Christological emphasis modifies any purely negative reading of Maur's annihilation. The destruction of self-love and self-possession is ordered toward the life of Christ in the soul. Christ, as king of the soul, renews its powers and carries its operations back toward their divine source. In this respect Maur's mature doctrine approaches themes associated with the French school of spirituality, especially the appropriation of the interior dispositions of Jesus Christ, though Hein Blommestijn notes that Maur never fully integrates the Bérullian system.

Prayer and passivity

Maur responded to the seventeenth-century devotional interest in the prayer of "simple regard", or simple loving attention to God. He increasingly privileged this form of prayer over the doctrine of aspirations especially associated with John of Saint Samson, though he did not reject the earlier Carmelite emphasis on aspirations.

His teaching on passivity concerns the cessation of self-directed appropriation rather than spiritual idleness. The preface to L'Entrée à la divine Sagesse rejects the notion that one becomes spiritual by remaining inactive. Grace moves the soul back toward its divine principle; the soul's repose consists in receiving divine communications in order to act more divinely through them. For this reason, modern editors distinguish Maur's doctrine from the later condemned forms of Quietism, while recognizing that his vocabulary of annihilation, abandonment, naked faith, and divine operation made him attractive to later readers associated with passive prayer.

Chevallier summarizes Maur's direction as an exhortation to abandonment through complete dispossession of self-will, especially in the letters to Madame Guyon and to the Visitandine religious.

Reception and influence

Maur's works were read in the context of the Touraine Reform and later in wider French mystical circles. The early editions and translations of L'Entrée à la divine Sagesse within roughly half a century suggest that it answered a real demand among readers sympathetic to Carmelite interior spirituality. The 1692 Paris edition of L'Entrée à la divine Sagesse gives evidence of the work's continued late seventeenth-century circulation. Later, however, his work fell into relative obscurity. Dominique Tronc attributes this partly to Maur's distance from Paris, his eremitical life at Lormont, the later disappearance of the Grands Carmes in France, and the growing suspicion of mystical inaction in the late seventeenth century.

The controversy with Jean Cheron formed part of this reception. Cheron's Examen de la théologie mystique (1657) criticized mystical theology from a rationalist and anti-mystical perspective. Although Maur was not necessarily its direct target, his friend Jean-Joseph Surin answered the anti-mystical tendency in his Guide spirituelle of 1660–1661, and Maur's later works show greater care and precision in expression.

Maur's relationship to Madame Guyon is a significant element of his later reception. Dominique Tronc identifies the young married woman addressed in twenty-one of Maur's letters as Guyon, and Dominique and Murielle Tronc state that she consulted Maur while still young and undergoing an interior desert. They further argue that Guyon's preservation of these letters in Le Directeur mystique shows the importance she attached to his direction. Chevallier's review independently identifies the first series of letters as responses to the young Madame Guyon during a period of severe trials and early mystical aspiration.

In the Justifications assembled in 1695 with the assistance of Fénelon, Guyon gave a prominent place to John of Saint Samson, Maur's spiritual master within the Touraine Reform. Dominique and Murielle Tronc therefore place Maur within a broader line of transmission running from the reformed Grands Carmes to Guyon, Bertot, Fénelon, and later European circles of interior prayer. This does not make Maur a Quietist in the later condemned sense, but it helps explain why his language and writings were received within circles devoted to abandonment, pure love, and passive contemplation.

Maur also influenced or was connected with the Lormont eremitical milieu represented by the abbé de Brion. Darricau's study of Brion describes the movement from court life to the hermitage of Lormont, and Tronc identifies Brion as a likely recipient of Maur's two treatises on the interior and mystical life.

Works

Traité de la conduite spirituelle des novices, pour les couvens réformés de l'ordre de Nostre Dame du Mont-Carmel (Paris, 1650–1651) Théologie chrestienne et mystique, ou conduite spirituelle pour arriver bientost au souverain degré de la perfection (Bordeaux, 1651) L'Entrée à la divine Sagesse (Bordeaux, 1652; Paris, 1655, 1669, 1678, 1692; Dutch translations, Ghent, 1679 and 1698; Antwerp, 1706) Le Royaume intérieur de Jésus-Christ dans les âmes (Paris, 1664) Le Sacré Berceau de l'Enfant Jésus, ou les entretiens spirituels sur tous les mystères de l'Enfance de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (Paris, 1682) Traité de la vie intérieure et mystique, in Jacques Bertot, Le Directeur mystique, vol. 4 (Cologne, 1726) Twenty-one letters of direction to a young married woman, identified by Dominique Tronc as Jeanne-Marie Guyon Twenty-two letters to a Visitandine religious, later edited by Michel de Certeau Écrits de la maturité, 1664–1689: Lettres de direction; Le Royaume intérieur de Jésus-Christ dans les âmes; Deux traités de la vie intérieure et mystique, ed. Dominique Tronc (Toulouse: Éditions du Carmel, 2007) Entrée à la divine Sagesse: Théologie chrétienne et mystique; Sanctuaire de la divine Sapience; Montée spirituelle; Exposition des communications divines; Traité de la fidélité; Les trois portes du Palais de la divine Sapience, ed. Dominique and Murielle Tronc (Éditions du Carmel, 2008)