Sacramentines: Difference between revisions

The Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament is an enclosed religious order and a reform of the Dominican Order devoted to the perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. They are also known as the Sacramentine Nuns.^[1]

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Anthony Le Quieu (1601–1676) was born at Paris. He entered the Order of Friars Preachers in the Rue St. Honoré, in 1622, and was in due time made master of novices first in his own monastery, at Avignon in 1634, and later prior of the convent at Paris. In 1639, Père Antoine established a religious house for women, exclusively devoted to the practice of Perpetual Adoration at Marseille.^[2]

Sister Anne Negrel was named the first Superior. The definitive establishment took place in 1659-60, when Etienne de Puget, Bishop of Marseille, erected them into a congregation (under the title of Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament). The final formalities for the approval of the order having been concluded in Rome (1680), Pope Innocent XI expedited a papal brief, which could not be put in execution because of a change of bishop.^[3]

It was not till after the death of the founder, that the constitutions were approved by Pope Innocent XII in 1693, who authorized the nuns to take solemn vows and bound them to enclosure,^[3] That same year the Apostolic Process was opened for the canonization of its founder.

Another foundation was made at Bollène in 1725. ^[4]

During the period of the Terrors of the French Revolution, the monastery at Bollène, then under the leadership of Mother de La Fare, the Couvent du Saint-Sacrement saw 13 of its members executed,^[5] from 5 to 26 July 1794, among them Andrée Minutte,^[6][7] and Marie-Marguerite Bonnet.^[8] The process for the canonization of these martyrs was opened at Rome in January 1907.

Mother de La Fare, having escaped the guillotine, gathered together the remnant of her community in 1802 and resumed their work of perpetual. A foundation was made at Avignon in 1807. The same year a Sacramentine of Marseille founded a monastery at Aix-en-Provence.

In 1816 the monastery in Marseille was reopened, and Mother de La Fare made a new foundation at Carpentras. In 1859 six religious sisters of Aix founded a house at Bernay, Normandy, and in 1863 Sisters from Bollène founded a Monastery of Perpetual Adoration at Taunton, England. Oxford also had a foundation.

All the houses of this Order are autonomous and dependent on the Ordinary of the diocese, who is their superior. In consequence of the legal position of religious congregations in France, the Sacramentines of Marseille were obliged to abandon their monastery. The four other houses in southern France were authorized by the Government.

The Sacramentines of Bernay at the time of the expulsion, July, 1903, were compelled to close their boarding-school and go into exile. Thirteen of the sisters retired to Belgium, and founded a house at Hal. The rest of their community settled in Wales at Whitson Court, Newport, Monmouthshire; they had left by the 1930s.^[9]

In March 1911, the Sacramentines were permitted by Archbishop Farley to open a monastery in Holy Trinity Parish in Yonkers, New York, their only community in the Americas. They purchased the Ethan Flagg House in 1915 and added a monastery and school for girls in 1922. They closed the school in the 1980s and relocated to Warwick, New York in 1991.^[10] It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.^[11]

In 1996, the Sacramentine nuns established Blessed Sacrament Monastery in Edgemont, New York. The building was originally a single-family home; as of 2018, it housed four nuns.^[12]

The Perpetual Adorers of the Blessed Sacrament, also called Sacramentines, were a female religious congregation, who, in 1941, became part of the Assumptionist Order, the Orantes of the Assumption.^[13]

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Perpetual Adorers of the Blessed Sacrament". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. The entry cites:

• • Helyot, Histoire des Ordres, IV, 421 sq.;
  • Heimbucher, Die Orden und Kongregationen, s.v. Sakramentinerinnen.