Lisieux
Town hall
Lisieux
Location within Lower Normandy region  Lisieux
Administration
Country	France
Region	Lower Normandy
Department	Calvados
Arrondissement	Lisieux
Canton	Lisieux-1, Lisieux-2, and Lisieux-3
Intercommunality	Lisieux Pays d'Auge
Mayor	Bernard Aubril (2008-2014)
Statistics
Elevation	32–152 m (105–499 ft)
Land area1	13.07 km2 (5.05 sq mi)
Population2	22,109  (2006)
- Density	1,692 /km2 (4,380 /sq mi)
INSEE/Postal code	14366/ 14100
1 French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries.
2 Population without double counting: residents of multiple communes (e.g., students and military personnel) only counted once.

Coordinates: 49°08′47″N 0°13′36″E / 49.1464°N 0.2267°E / 49.1464; 0.2267

Lisieux (French pronunciation: [li.zjø]) is a commune in the Calvados department in the Basse-Normandie region in northwestern France.

Lisieux is the capital of the Pays d'Auge area, which is characterised by valleys and hedged farmland. The inhabitants of Lisieux are known in France as Lexoviens (male) or Lexoviennes (female).

Geography[link]

Lisieux is situated on the confluence of the river Touques and many of its tributaries: the rivers Orbiquet, Cirieux and Graindain.

The town is in the heart of the Pays d'Auge, of which it is the capital. Lisieux is therefore surrounded by Normandy's typical hedged farmland, where there is a mix of livestock farming (mostly milk cows) and cider apple cultivation (from which cider and calvados are made, not forgetting pommeau).

Climate[link]

Lisieux has a temperate oceanic humid climate.

The table below shows the temperatures and precipitation for the year 2007 (provided by the Caen-Carpiquet weather station^[2]:

The table below shows the record minimum and maximum temperatures^[3]:

Transport[link]

Lisieux railway station

The town of Lisieux is served by a bus network called Lexobus, with 6 routes. The town is also linked to surrounding towns and villages by a network of buses; Bus Verts du Calvados. There is a train station in Lisieux, which is the connecting station between the Paris-Cherbourg and Paris-Trouville/Deauville main lines, served by Corail Intercités Normandie trains. The station is also accessible by the Transport express régional (regional express) trains on the Basse-Normandie and Haute-Normandie routes. The train station appeared in the film Un singe en hiver by Henri Verneuil.

To reach the town by car, the D613 (formerly route nationale 13) from Paris to Cherbourg crosses the town from east to west. The second main road of Lisieux is the D579, leading to Deauville to the north and the department of Orne to the south. Lisieux benefits from a bypass, built in the 1990s, running to the south of the town, easing traffic in the town-centre, particularly on boulevard Sainte-Anne.

History[link]

Toponymy[link]

The name of the town comes from the Gallic tribe which inhabited the region: the Lexovii during Gallo-Roman times. This explains why inhabitants are known as Lexoviens today. The commune was known as Noviomagus (Celtic novio, "new", and magos, "market") or Noviomagus Lexoviorum by the Romans.

Antiquity[link]

Lisieux is the former capital of the Lexovii. In his work, Commentaries on the Gallic War, Caesar mentions a Gallic oppidum, a term which refers to Celtic towns located on the tops of hills. The oppidum has been pinpointed to a place referred to as le Castellier,^[4] located 3 km to the south-west of the town. However the Gallo-Roman city was in fact located where Lisieux is to be found today.

Middle Ages[link]

Lisieux was an important center of power in medieval times. The bishopric of Lisieux controlled most of the Pays d'Auge by the 12th century. King Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine are thought to have married at Lisieux in 1152, and the town remained powerful for several centuries afterwards until in the 14th century the triple scourges of the Plague, war and resulting famine devastated Lisieux and reduced its influence. The main judge of Joan of Arc, Pierre Cauchon, became a bishop of Lisieux after her death and is buried in the Lady Chapel of the cathedral.

Events[link]

• 4th century: Presence of the Germanic laeti, auxiliaries of the Roman Army, who settled in Lisieux with their families. Their graves have been discovered in the “Michelet” necropolis, some of which contain artefacts typical of northern Germania.
• 1432: Pierre Cauchon, the supreme judge during the trial of Joan of Arc at Rouen became the bishop of Lisieux. He commissioned the building of the side chapel of the cathedral, in which he is now buried.
• 1590: During the Eighth War of Religion, Henri IV had to fight to win back his kingdom. When he arrived at Lisieux he took the town without force, after the garrison had fled the town.
• 1907: The first helicopter flight, piloted by Paul Cornu.
• 1897: Sister Therese of the Child Jesus of the Holy Face, later to become "St. Therese of Lisieux," died in the Carmelite monastery at Lisieux.
• 1925: Sister Therese of the Child Jesus of the Holy Face was canonized.
• 1937: Monseigneur Eugenio Pacelli, papal legate and future Pope Pius XII, visited Lisieux.
• 6/ 7 June 1944: The allied bombardment killed 800 victims and destroyed two thirds of the town.
• 23 August 1944: Liberation by the allied troops.
• 1960: Lisieux merged with the Saint-Jacques commune.
• 2 June 1980: Pope Jean-Paul II visited Lisieux.

Religion[link]

Since the Middle Ages Lisieux has been the seat of one of the seven Roman Catholic dioceses of Normandy under the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical province of Rouen. The bishopric was abolished in 1801 before being recreated and merged with that of Bayeux in 1855, under the new name of "Bayeux and Lisieux".

The most well known of the Bishops of Lisieux is probably Pierre Cauchon who had a decisive influence during the trial of Joan of Arc.

Devotion to Sainte-Thérèse who lived in the nearby Carmelite convent has made Lisieux France's second most important site of pilgrimage, after the Pyrenean town of Lourdes.

Administration[link]

Les maires de Lisieux[link]

List of everyone who has held the position of Mayor of Lisieux^[5] :

Twin towns[link]

• Taunton (flag - England) - since 1951;
• Saint-Georges, Quebec (Canada) - since 1996
• Saint-Jérôme, Quebec (Canada)[ref. necessary] - since Jay 2010

Population[link]

Lisieux is set to once again become Calvados' second largest town in terms of population. Its metropolitan area of 45,065 inhabitants is also the second largest of the department.

{

   id:lightgrey value:gray(0.9)
   id:darkgrey  value:gray(0.7)
   id:sfondo value:rgb(1,1,1)
   id:barra value:rgb(0.6,0.7,0.8)

   bar:1793 text:1793
   bar:1800 text:1800
   bar:1806 text:1806
   bar:1821 text:1821
   bar:1831 text:1831
   bar:1841 text:1841
   bar:1851 text:1851
   bar:1861 text:1861
   bar:1872 text:1872
   bar:1881 text:1881
   bar:1891 text:1891
   bar:1901 text:1901
   bar:1911 text:1911
   bar:1921 text:1921
   bar:1931 text:1931
   bar:1946 text:1946
   bar:1954 text:1954
   bar:1962 text:1962
   bar:1975 text:1975
   bar:1982 text:1982
   bar:1990 text:1990
   bar:1999 text:1999
   bar:2006 text:2006

color:barra width:15 align:center
bar:1793 from:0 till: 10118
bar:1800 from:0 till: 10171
bar:1806 from:0 till: 10937
bar:1821 from:0 till: 10403
bar:1831 from:0 till: 10257
bar:1841 from:0 till: 11378
bar:1851 from:0 till: 11754
bar:1861 from:0 till: 13121
bar:1872 from:0 till: 18341
bar:1881 from:0 till: 16039
bar:1891 from:0 till: 16260
bar:1901 from:0 till: 16084
bar:1911 from:0 till: 15948
bar:1921 from:0 till: 15341
bar:1931 from:0 till: 15362
bar:1946 from:0 till: 12746
bar:1954 from:0 till: 15342
bar:1962 from:0 till: 21156
bar:1975 from:0 till: 25521
bar:1982 from:0 till: 24940
bar:1990 from:0 till: 23703
bar:1999 from:0 till: 23166
bar:2006 from:0 till: 23200

bar:1793 at: 10118 fontsize:S text: 10,118   shift:(0,5)
bar:1800 at: 10171 fontsize:S text: 10,171   shift:(0,5)
bar:1806 at: 10937 fontsize:S text: 10,937   shift:(0,5)
bar:1821 at: 10403 fontsize:S text: 10,403   shift:(0,5)
bar:1831 at: 10257 fontsize:S text: 10,257   shift:(0,5)
bar:1841 at: 11378 fontsize:S text: 11,378   shift:(0,5)
bar:1851 at: 11754 fontsize:S text: 11,754   shift:(0,5)
bar:1861 at: 13121 fontsize:S text: 13,121   shift:(0,5)
bar:1872 at: 18341 fontsize:S text: 18,341   shift:(0,5)
bar:1881 at: 16039 fontsize:S text: 16,039   shift:(0,5)
bar:1891 at: 16260 fontsize:S text: 16,260   shift:(0,5)
bar:1901 at: 16084 fontsize:S text: 16,084   shift:(0,5)
bar:1911 at: 15948 fontsize:S text: 15,948   shift:(0,5)
bar:1921 at: 15341 fontsize:S text: 15,341   shift:(0,5)
bar:1931 at: 15362 fontsize:S text: 15,362   shift:(0,5)
bar:1946 at: 12746 fontsize:S text: 12,746   shift:(0,5)
bar:1954 at: 15342 fontsize:S text: 15,342   shift:(0,5)
bar:1962 at: 21156 fontsize:S text: 21,156   shift:(0,5)
bar:1975 at: 25521 fontsize:S text: 25,521   shift:(0,5)
bar:1982 at: 24940 fontsize:S text: 24,940   shift:(0,5)
bar:1990 at: 23703 fontsize:S text: 23,703   shift:(0,5)
bar:1999 at: 23166 fontsize:S text: 23,166   shift:(0,5)
bar:2006 at: 23343 fontsize:S text: 23,343   shift:(0,5)

Sights[link]

About 60 percent of the town was destroyed in 1944, so few of the monuments have been preserved.

Basilica of Sainte-Thérèse de Lisieux[link]

The Basilica of Sainte-Thérèse de Lisieux was constructed in honour of Sainte-Thérèse de Lisieux, who was beatified in 1923 and canonized in 1925. It was built for pilgrims who came in increasing numbers to venerate the new saint in the town where she had lived and died.

Château de Saint-Germain-de-Livet[link]

As its name indicates, the Château de Saint-Germain-de-Livet is situated in the commune of Saint-Germain-de-Livet. It is to be found opposite the village church which dates from the 19th century. The château has been owned by the town of Lisieux since 1958 when it was donated by the Riesener family.

From an architectural point of view the château comprises a half-timbered manor dating from the 15th century and a glazed brick and stone building from the Pré-d'Auge dating from the end of the 16th century.

The chateau combines medieval and Renaissance elements and is surrounded by a moat and a peacock garden.

Saint-Pierre Cathedral[link]

Lisieux’s Saint-Pierre Cathedral is a rare monument which survived the 1944 allied bombardment. Even though the cathedral has been around since the 6th century, the church we see today must have been constructed between 1160 and 1230 by Bishop Arnoul.

From the outset, the architect designed quadripartite rib vaults and flying buttresses, making it one of Normandy’s first gothic buildings. The nave is fairly austere and is inspired by the Gothic style of the Île de France whereas the most recent parts of the building were constructed in the 18th century (the chevet, the lantern tower and the western façade) in Norman style.

It is wrongly claimed that Henry, the Count of Anjou, the Duke of Normandy and the future king of England married Eleanor of Aquitaine at the cathedral in 1152. Having been involved in the trial of Joan of Arc, Pierre Cauchon was in fact named as Bishop of Lisieux in 1432 and is buried there.

Town Hall[link]

The town hall (18th century) was formerly a private residence.

Personalities[link]

Births

• Jean-Baptiste Laumonier (1749–1818), surgeon ;
• Thomas de Frondeville (1750–1816), politician ;
• Paul-Louis Target (1821–1908), politician;
• Henry Chéron (1867–1936), mayor of Lisieux (1894–1908 and 1932–1936) and several times a minister under the French Third Republic;
• Jean Derode (1887–1918), World War I flying ace and military hero;
• Jean Charles Contel (1895–1928), painter;
• Michel Magne (1930–1984), composer (film music) ;
• Matthieu Lagrive (1979-), endurance motorbike rider;
• Nicolas Batum (1988-), a promising young French basketball player, currently playing with the Portland Trail Blazers;
• Chloé Mortaud (1989-), elected Miss France in 2009, lived in Lisieux until she was ten.

Deaths

• César Ruminski (1924–2009), international footballer.

Photo gallery[link]

• 

  "Street in Lisieux" by Henry Edridge

• 

  Basilique de Sainte-Thérèse

• 

  Lisieux Cathedral

See also[link]

Normandy portal

• Bishopric of Lisieux
• Communes of the Calvados department

References[link]

• INSEE

External links[link]

• Lisieux website (French)
• Tourism website (French) (English) (German)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Lisieux

v t e Communes of the Calvados department Ablon Acqueville Agy Aignerville Airan Amayé-sur-Orne Amayé-sur-Seulles Amblie Amfreville Anctoville Angerville Angoville Anguerny Anisy Annebault Arganchy Argences Arromanches-les-Bains Asnelles Asnières-en-Bessin Auberville Aubigny Audrieu Aunay-sur-Odon Auquainville Les Autels-Saint-Bazile Authie Les Authieux-Papion Les Authieux-sur-Calonne Auvillars Avenay Balleroy Banneville-la-Campagne Banneville-sur-Ajon Banville Barbery Barbeville Barneville-la-Bertran Baron-sur-Odon Barou-en-Auge Basly Basseneville Bauquay Bavent Bayeux Bazenville La Bazoque Beaufour-Druval Beaulieu Beaumais Beaumesnil Beaumont-en-Auge Bellengreville Bellou Benerville-sur-Mer Bénouville Le Bény-Bocage Bény-sur-Mer Bernesq Bernières-d'Ailly Bernières-le-Patry Bernières-sur-Mer Beuvillers Beuvron-en-Auge Biéville-Beuville Biéville-Quétiéville La Bigne Billy Bissières Blainville-sur-Orne Blangy-le-Château Blay Blonville-sur-Mer Le Bô Boissey La Boissière Bonnebosq Bonnemaison Bonneville-la-Louvet Bonneville-sur-Touques Bonnœil Bons-Tassilly Bougy Boulon Bourgeauville Bourguébus Branville Brémoy Bretteville-le-Rabet Bretteville-l'Orgueilleuse Bretteville-sur-Dives Bretteville-sur-Laize Bretteville-sur-Odon Le Breuil-en-Auge Le Breuil-en-Bessin Le Brévedent La Brévière Bréville-les-Monts Bricqueville Brouay Brucourt Bucéels Burcy Bures-les-Monts Le Bû-sur-Rouvres Cabourg Caen Cagny Cahagnes Cahagnolles La Caine Cairon La Cambe Cambes-en-Plaine Cambremer Campagnolles Campandré-Valcongrain Campeaux Campigny Canapville Canchy Canteloup Carcagny Cardonville Carpiquet Cartigny-l'Épinay Carville Castillon Castillon-en-Auge Castilly Caumont-l'Éventé Caumont-sur-Orne Cauvicourt Cauville Cernay Cerqueux Cesny-aux-Vignes Cesny-Bois-Halbout Champ-du-Boult La Chapelle-Engerbold La Chapelle-Haute-Grue La Chapelle-Yvon Cheffreville-Tonnencourt Chênedollé Cheux Chicheboville Chouain Cintheaux Clarbec Clécy Cléville Clinchamps-sur-Orne Colleville-Montgomery Colleville-sur-Mer Colombelles Colombières Colombiers-sur-Seulles Colomby-sur-Thaon Combray Commes Condé-sur-Ifs Condé-sur-Noireau Condé-sur-Seulles Conteville Coquainvilliers Corbon Cordebugle Cordey Cormelles-le-Royal Cormolain Cossesseville Cottun Coudray-Rabut Coulombs Coulonces Coulvain Coupesarte Courcy Courseulles-sur-Mer Courson Courtonne-la-Meurdrac Courtonne-les-Deux-Églises Courvaudon Crépon Cresserons Cresseveuille Creully Crèvecœur-en-Auge Cricquebœuf Cricqueville-en-Auge Cricqueville-en-Bessin Cristot Crocy Croisilles Croissanville Crouay La Croupte Culey-le-Patry Cully Curcy-sur-Orne Cussy Cuverville Damblainville Dampierre Danestal Danvou-la-Ferrière Deauville Démouville Le Désert Le Détroit Deux-Jumeaux Dives-sur-Mer Donnay Douville-en-Auge Douvres-la-Délivrande Dozulé Drubec Ducy-Sainte-Marguerite Écrammeville Ellon Émiéville Englesqueville-en-Auge Englesqueville-la-Percée Épaney Épinay-sur-Odon Épron Équemauville Eraines Ernes Escoville Espins Esquay-Notre-Dame Esquay-sur-Seulles Esson Estrées-la-Campagne Estry Éterville Étouvy Étréham Évrecy Falaise Familly Fauguernon Le Faulq La Ferrière-Harang Fervaques Feuguerolles-Bully Fierville-Bray Fierville-les-Parcs Firfol Fleury-sur-Orne La Folie La Folletière-Abenon Fontaine-Étoupefour Fontaine-Henry Fontaine-le-Pin Fontenay-le-Marmion Fontenay-le-Pesnel Fontenermont Formentin Formigny Foulognes Fourches Fourneaux-le-Val Le Fournet Fourneville Frénouville Le Fresne-Camilly Fresné-la-Mère Fresney-le-Puceux Fresney-le-Vieux Friardel Fumichon Garcelles-Secqueville Le Gast Gavrus Géfosse-Fontenay Genneville Gerrots Giberville Glanville Glos Gonneville-en-Auge Gonneville-sur-Honfleur Gonneville-sur-Mer Goupillières Goustranville Gouvix Grainville-Langannerie Grainville-sur-Odon Grandcamp-Maisy Grandchamp-le-Château Grangues La Graverie Graye-sur-Mer Grentheville Grimbosq Guéron Hamars Hermanville-sur-Mer Hermival-les-Vaux Hérouville-Saint-Clair Hérouvillette Heuland Heurtevent Hiéville La Hoguette Honfleur L'Hôtellerie Hotot-en-Auge Hottot-les-Bagues La Houblonnière Houlgate Hubert-Folie Ifs Isigny-sur-Mer Les Isles-Bardel Janville Jort Juaye-Mondaye Jurques Juvigny-sur-Seulles Laize-la-Ville Landelles-et-Coupigny Landes-sur-Ajon La Lande-sur-Drôme Langrune-sur-Mer Lantheuil Lasson Lassy Léaupartie Lécaude Leffard Lénault Lessard-et-le-Chêne Lingèvres Lion-sur-Mer Lisieux Lison Lisores Litteau Livarot Livry Le Locheur Les Loges Les Loges-Saulces Longraye Longues-sur-Mer Longueville Longvillers Loucelles Louvagny Louvières Louvigny Luc-sur-Mer Magny-en-Bessin Magny-la-Campagne Magny-le-Freule Maisoncelles-la-Jourdan Maisoncelles-Pelvey Maisoncelles-sur-Ajon Maisons Maizet Maizières Malloué Maltot Mandeville-en-Bessin Manerbe Manneville-la-Pipard Le Manoir Manvieux Le Marais-la-Chapelle Marolles Martainville Martigny-sur-l'Ante Martragny Mathieu May-sur-Orne Merville-Franceville-Plage Méry-Corbon Meslay Le Mesnil-au-Grain Le Mesnil-Auzouf Le Mesnil-Bacley Le Mesnil-Benoist Le Mesnil-Caussois Mesnil-Clinchamps Le Mesnil-Durand Le Mesnil-Eudes Le Mesnil-Germain Le Mesnil-Guillaume Le Mesnil-Mauger Le Mesnil-Patry Le Mesnil-Robert Le Mesnil-Simon Le Mesnil-sur-Blangy Le Mesnil-Villement Meulles Meuvaines Mézidon-Canon Missy Mittois Le Molay-Littry Les Monceaux Monceaux-en-Bessin Mondeville Mondrainville Monfréville Montamy Mont-Bertrand Montchamp Montchauvet Monteille Montfiquet Montigny Montreuil-en-Auge Monts-en-Bessin Montviette Morteaux-Coulibœuf Mosles Mouen Moulines Moult Les Moutiers-en-Auge Les Moutiers-en-Cinglais Les Moutiers-Hubert Moyaux Mutrécy Neuilly-la-Forêt Nonant Norolles Noron-l'Abbaye Noron-la-Poterie Norrey-en-Auge Notre-Dame-de-Courson Notre-Dame-de-Livaye Notre-Dame-d'Estrées Noyers-Bocage Olendon Ondefontaine Orbec Osmanville Les Oubeaux L'Oudon Ouézy Ouffières Ouilly-du-Houley Ouilly-le-Tesson Ouilly-le-Vicomte Ouistreham Ouville-la-Bien-Tournée Parfouru-sur-Odon Pennedepie Percy-en-Auge Périers-en-Auge Périers-sur-le-Dan Périgny Perrières Pertheville-Ners Petiville Pierrefitte-en-Auge Pierrefitte-en-Cinglais Pierrepont Pierres Le Pin Placy Planquery Le Plessis-Grimoult Plumetot La Pommeraye Pont-Bellanger Pont-d'Ouilly Pontécoulant Pont-Farcy Pont-l'Évêque Port-en-Bessin-Huppain Potigny Poussy-la-Campagne Préaux-Bocage Préaux-Saint-Sébastien Le Pré-d'Auge Presles Prêtreville Proussy Putot-en-Auge Putot-en-Bessin Quetteville Ranchy Ranville Rapilly Le Reculey Repentigny Reux Reviers La Rivière-Saint-Sauveur Rocquancourt La Rocque Rocques La Roque-Baignard Rosel Rots Roucamps Roullours Rouvres Rubercy Rucqueville Rully Rumesnil Russy Ryes Saint-Agnan-le-Malherbe Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil Saint-André-d'Hébertot Saint-André-sur-Orne Saint-Arnoult Saint-Aubin-d'Arquenay Saint-Aubin-des-Bois Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer Saint-Benoît-d'Hébertot Saint-Charles-de-Percy Saint-Côme-de-Fresné Saint-Contest Saint-Cyr-du-Ronceray Saint-Denis-de-Mailloc Saint-Denis-de-Méré Saint-Denis-Maisoncelles Saint-Désir Sainte-Croix-Grand-Tonne Sainte-Croix-sur-Mer Sainte-Foy-de-Montgommery Sainte-Honorine-de-Ducy Sainte-Honorine-des-Pertes Sainte-Honorine-du-Fay Sainte-Marguerite-d'Elle Sainte-Marguerite-des-Loges Sainte-Marguerite-de-Viette Sainte-Marie-Laumont Sainte-Marie-Outre-l'Eau Saint-Étienne-la-Thillaye Saint-Gabriel-Brécy Saint-Gatien-des-Bois Saint-Georges-d'Aunay Saint-Georges-en-Auge Saint-Germain-d'Ectot Saint-Germain-de-Livet Saint-Germain-de-Montgommery Saint-Germain-de-Tallevende-la-Lande-Vaumont Saint-Germain-du-Crioult Saint-Germain-du-Pert Saint-Germain-la-Blanche-Herbe Saint-Germain-Langot Saint-Germain-le-Vasson Saint-Hymer Saint-Jean-de-Livet Saint-Jean-des-Essartiers Saint-Jean-le-Blanc Saint-Jouin Saint-Julien-de-Mailloc Saint-Julien-le-Faucon Saint-Julien-sur-Calonne Saint-Lambert Saint-Laurent-de-Condel Saint-Laurent-du-Mont Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer Saint-Léger-Dubosq Saint-Louet-sur-Seulles Saint-Loup-de-Fribois Saint-Loup-Hors Saint-Manvieu-Bocage Saint-Manvieu-Norrey Saint-Marcouf Saint-Martin-aux-Chartrains Saint-Martin-de-Bienfaite-la-Cressonnière Saint-Martin-de-Blagny Saint-Martin-de-Fontenay Saint-Martin-de-la-Lieue Saint-Martin-de-Mailloc Saint-Martin-de-Mieux Saint-Martin-de-Sallen Saint-Martin-des-Besaces Saint-Martin-des-Entrées Saint-Martin-Don Saint-Martin-du-Mesnil-Oury Saint-Michel-de-Livet Saint-Omer Saint-Ouen-des-Besaces Saint-Ouen-du-Mesnil-Oger Saint-Ouen-le-Houx Saint-Ouen-le-Pin Saint-Pair Saint-Paul-du-Vernay Saint-Philbert-des-Champs Saint-Pierre-Azif Saint-Pierre-Canivet Saint-Pierre-de-Mailloc Saint-Pierre-des-Ifs Saint-Pierre-du-Bû Saint-Pierre-du-Fresne Saint-Pierre-du-Jonquet Saint-Pierre-du-Mont Saint-Pierre-la-Vieille Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives Saint-Pierre-Tarentaine Saint-Rémy Saint-Samson Saint-Sever-Calvados Saint-Sylvain Saint-Vaast-en-Auge Saint-Vaast-sur-Seulles Saint-Vigor-des-Mézerets Saint-Vigor-le-Grand Sallen Sallenelles Sannerville Saon Saonnet Sassy Secqueville-en-Bessin Sept-Frères Sept-Vents Soignolles Soliers Sommervieu Soulangy Soumont-Saint-Quentin Subles Sully Surrain Surville Tessel Thaon Le Theil-Bocage Le Theil-en-Auge Thiéville Thury-Harcourt Tierceville Tilly-la-Campagne Tilly-sur-Seulles Tordouet Le Torquesne Torteval-Quesnay Tortisambert Touffréville Touques Tour-en-Bessin Tourgéville Tournay-sur-Odon Tournebu Le Tourneur Tournières Tourville-en-Auge Tourville-sur-Odon Tracy-Bocage Tracy-sur-Mer Tréprel Trévières Troarn Trois-Monts Le Tronquay Trouville-sur-Mer Trungy Truttemer-le-Grand Truttemer-le-Petit Urville Ussy Vacognes-Neuilly La Vacquerie Valsemé Varaville Vassy Vaubadon Vaucelles Vaudeloges Vaudry Vauville Vaux-sur-Aure Vaux-sur-Seulles Vendes Vendeuvre Versainville Verson Ver-sur-Mer La Vespière Le Vey Vicques Victot-Pontfol Vienne-en-Bessin Vierville-sur-Mer Viessoix Vieux Vieux-Bourg Vieux-Fumé Vieux-Pont-en-Auge Vignats Villers-Bocage Villers-Canivet Villers-sur-Mer Villerville La Villette Villiers-le-Sec Villons-les-Buissons Villy-Bocage Villy-lez-Falaise Vimont Vire Vouilly

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
Photograph of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux in the Carmelite Brown Scapular (1895)
Virgin and Doctor of the Church
Born	(1873-01-02)2 January 1873 Alençon, France
Died	30 September 1897(1897-09-30) (aged 24) Lisieux, France
Honored in	Roman Catholic Church
Beatified	29 April 1923 by Pope Pius XI
Canonized	17 May 1925 by Pope Pius XI
Major shrine	Basilica of St. Thérèse in Lisieux, France
Feast	1 October 3 October in General Roman Calendar 1927–1969, Melkite Catholic Church
Attributes	Roses
Patronage	Missionaries; France; Russia; AIDS sufferers; florists and gardeners; loss of parents; tuberculosis; the Russicum.

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (2 January 1873 – 30 September 1897), or Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin, was a French Carmelite nun. She is also known as "The Little Flower of Jesus".

She felt an early call to religious life, and overcoming various obstacles, in 1888 at the early age of 15, became a nun and joined two of her older sisters in the cloistered Carmelite community of Lisieux, Normandy. After nine years as a Carmelite religious, having fulfilled various offices such as sacristan and assistant to the novice mistress, and having spent the last eighteen months in Carmel in a night of faith, she died of tuberculosis at the age of 24. The impact of The Story of a Soul, a collection of her autobiographical manuscripts, printed and distributed a year after her death to an initially very limited audience, was great, and she rapidly became one of the most popular saints of the twentieth century. Pope Pius XI made her the "star of his pontificate".^[1] She was beatified in 1923, and canonized in 1925. Thérèse was declared co-patron of the missions with Francis Xavier in 1927, and named co-patron of France with Joan of Arc in 1944. On 19 October 1997 Pope John Paul II declared her the thirty-third Doctor of the Church, the youngest person, and only the third woman, to be so honored. Devotion to Thérèse has developed around the world.^[2]

Thérèse lived a hidden life and "wanted to be unknown," yet became popular after her death through her spiritual autobiography - she left also letters, poems, religious plays, prayers, and her last conversations were recorded by her sisters. Paintings and photographs – mostly the work of her sister Céline – further led to her being recognised by millions of men and women. According to one of her biographers, Guy Gaucher, after her death, "Thérèse fell victim to an excess of sentimental devotion which betrayed her. She was victim also to her language, which was that of the late nineteenth century and flowed from the religiosity of her age." Thérèse herself said on her death-bed, "I only love simplicity. I have a horror of pretence", and she spoke out against some of the Lives of saints written in her day, "We should not say improbable things, or things we do not know. We must see their real, and not their imagined lives."^[3]

The depth of her spirituality, of which she said, "my way is all confidence and love," has inspired many believers. In the face of her littleness and nothingness, she trusted in God to be her sanctity. She wanted to go to heaven by an entirely new little way. "I wanted to find an elevator that would raise me to Jesus." The elevator, she wrote, would be the arms of Jesus lifting her in all her littleness.

The Basilica of Lisieux is the second largest place of pilgrimage in France after Lourdes.^[4]

Life[link]

Family background[link]

Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin was born in rue Saint-Blaise, Alençon, France, 2 January 1873, the daughter of Zélie Guérin, a lacemaker, and Louis Martin, a jeweler and watchmaker.^[5] Both her parents were devout Catholics. Louis had tried to become a monk, wanting to enter the Augustinian Monastery of the Great St Bernard, but had been refused because he knew no Latin. Zélie, possessed of a strong, active temperament, wished to serve the sick, and had also considered becoming a religious, but the superior of the sisters of the Hôtel-Dieu, Alençon had discouraged her enquiry outright.^[6] Disappointed, Zélie learned the trade of lacemaking. She excelled in it and set up her own business on rue Saint-Blaise at age 22.

Zélie Martin, mother of Thérèse. In June 1877 she left for Lourdes hoping to be cured, but the miracle did not happen..The Mother of God has not healed me because my time is up, and because God wills me to repose elsewhere than on the earth

Louis and Zélie met in 1858, and married on July 13, 1858. Both of great piety they were part of the petit-bourgeoisie, comfortable Alençon. At first they decided to live as brother and sister in a perpetual continence, but when a confessor discouraged them in this, they changed their lifestyle and had 9 children. From 1867 to 1870 they lost 3 infants and 5-and-a-half-year-old Hélène. All 5 of their surviving daughters became nuns:

• Marie (22 February 1860, a Carmelite in Lisieux, in religion, Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart, d. 19 January 1940),
• Pauline (7 September 1861, in religion, Mother Agnes of Jesus in the Lisieux Carmel, d. 28 July 1951),
• Léonie (3 June 1863, in religion Sister Françoise-Thérèse, Visitandine at Caen, d. 16 June 1941),
• Céline (28 April 1869, a Carmelite in Lisieux, in religion, Sister Geneviève of the Holy Face, d. 25 February 1959),
• and finally Thérèse.

Zélie was so successful in manufacturing lace that by 1870 Louis had sold his watchmaking shop to a nephew and handled the traveling and bookkeeping end of her lacemaking business.

Birth and survival[link]

Louis Martin, father of Thérèse. " He was a dreamer and brooder, an idealist and romantic...To his daughters he gave touching and naïve pet names: Marie was his diamond, Pauline his noble pearl, Céline the bold one..But Thérèse was his petite reine, little queen, to whom all treasures belonged."^[7]

Soon after her birth in January 1873, the outlook for the survival of Thérèse Martin was very grim. Enteritis, which had already claimed the lives of four of her siblings, threatened Thérèse, and she had to be entrusted to a wet nurse, Rose Taillé, who had already nursed two of the Martin children. Rose had her own children and could not live with the Martins, so Thérèse was sent to live with her in the forests of the Bocage at Semallé. On Holy Thursday April 2, 1874, when she was 15 months old, she returned to Alençon where her family surrounded her with affection. She was educated in a very Catholic environment, including Mass attendance at 5:30 AM, the strict observance of fasts, and prayer to the rhythm of the liturgical year. The Martins also practiced charity, visiting the sick and elderly and welcoming the occasional vagabond to their table. Even if she wasn't the model little girl her sisters later portrayed, Thérèse was very sensitive to this education. She played at being a nun. One day she went as far as to wish her mother would die; when scolded, she explained that she wanted the happiness of Paradise for her dear mother. Described as generally a happy child,^[8] the mother's humorous letters from this time provide a vivid picture of the baby Thérèse. In a letter to Pauline when Thérèse was three; " She is intelligent enough, but not nearly so docile as her sister Céline. When she says no nothing can make her change, and she can be terribly obstinate. You could keep her down in the cellar all day without getting a yes out of her; she would rather sleep there." Mischievous and impish, she gave joy to her family but she was emotional too, and often cried: "Céline is playing with the little one with some bricks... I have to correct poor baby who gets into frightful tantrums when she can't have her own way. She rolls in the floor in despair believing all is lost. Sometimes she is so overcome she almost chokes. She is a very highly-strung child." At 22, Thérèse, then a Carmelite, admitted: "I was far from being a perfect little girl."^[9]

"I hear the baby calling me Mama! as she goes down the stairs. On every step, she calls out Mama! and if I don't respond every time, she remains there without going either forward or back." Madame Martin to Pauline, 21 November 1875

On 28 August 1877, Zélie Martin died of breast cancer, aged 45. From 1865 she had complained of breast pain and in December 1876 a doctor told her of the seriousness of the tumour. Feeling the approach of death Madame Martin had written to Pauline in spring 1877, "You and Marie will have no difficulties with her upbringing. Her disposition is so good. She is a chosen spirit." Thérèse was barely 4 1/2 years old. Her mother's death dealt her a severe blow and later she would consider that the first part of her life stopped that day. She wrote: "Every detail of my mother's illness is still with me, specially her last weeks on earth." She remembered the bedroom scene where her dying mother received the last sacraments while Thérèse knelt and her father cried. She wrote: "When Mummy died, my happy disposition changed. I had been so lively and open; now I became diffident and oversensitive, crying if anyone looked at me. I was only happy if no one took notice of me... It was only in the intimacy of my own family, where everyone was wonderfully kind, that I could be more myself."^[10][11]

Three months after Zélie died, Louis Martin left Alençon, where he had spent his youth and marriage, and moved to Lisieux in the Calvados Department of Normandy, where Zélie's pharmacist brother Isidore Guérin lived with his wife and two daughters. In her last months Zélie had given up the lace business; after her death, Louis sold it. Louis leased a pretty, spacious country house, Les Buissonnets, situated in a large garden on the slope of a hill overlooking the town. Looking back, Thérèse would see the move to Les Buissonnets as the beginning of the "second period of my life, the most painful of the three: it extends from the age of four-and-a-half to fourteen, the time when I rediscovered my childhood character, and entered into the serious side of life."^[12] In Lisieux, Pauline took on the role of Thérèse's Mama. She took this role seriously, and Thérèse grew especially close to her, and to Céline, the sister closest to her in youth.

Early years[link]

Thérèse discovered the community life of school something for which she was unprepared. She wrote later that the five years of school were the saddest of her life and she found consolation only in the presence at the school of her dear Céline, Céline cherie (photo:Thérèse aged 8, 1881)

Thérèse was taught at home until she was eight and a half, and then entered the school kept by the Benedictine nuns of the Abbey of Notre Dame du Pre in Lisieux. Thérèse, taught well and carefully by Marie and Pauline, found herself at the top of the class, except for writing and arithmetic. However, because of her young age and high grades, she was bullied. The one who bullied her the most was a girl of fourteen who did poorly at school. Thérèse suffered very much as a result of her sensitivity, and she cried in silence. Furthermore, the boisterous games at recreation were not to her taste. She preferred to tell stories or look after the little ones in the infants class. " The five years I spent at school were the saddest of my life, and if my dear Céline had not been with me I could not have stayed there for a single month without falling ill." 'She now developed a fondness for hiding' Céline informs us^[13] 'she did not want to be observed, for she sincerely considered herself inferior.'"^[14] On her free days she became more and more attached to Marie Guérin, the younger of her two cousins in Lisieux. The two girls would play at being anchorites, as the great Teresa had once played with her brother. And every evening she plunged into the family circle. "Fortunately I could go home every evening and then I cheered up. I used to jump on Father's knee and tell him what marks I had had, and when he kissed me all my troubles were forgotten...I needed this sort of encouragement so much." Yet the tension of the double life and the daily self-conquest placed a strain on Thérèse. Going to school became more and more difficult.

Les Buissonnets, The Martin family house in Lisieux to which they moved in November 1877 following the death of Madame Martin. Thérèse lived here from November 16, 1877 to April 9, 1888, the day she entered Carmel.

When she was nine years old, in October 1882, her sister Pauline who had acted as a "second mother" to her, entered the Carmelite monastery at Lisieux. Thérèse was devastated. She understood that Pauline was cloistered and that she would never come back. "I said in the depths of my heart: Pauline is lost to me!" The shock reawakened in her the trauma caused by her mother's death. She also wanted to join the Carmelites, but was told she was too young. Yet Thérèse so impressed Mother Marie Gonzague, prioress at the time of Pauline's entry to the community that she wrote to comfort her, calling Thérèse "my future little daughter."

Illness[link]

At this time, Thérèse was often sick; she began to suffer from nervous tremors. The tremors started one night after her uncle took her for a walk and began to talk about Zélie. Assuming that she was cold, the family covered Therese with blankets, but the tremors continued; she clenched her teeth and could not speak. The family called Dr. Notta, who could make no diagnosis.^[15] In 1882, Dr Gayral diagnosed that Thérèse "reacts to an emotional frustration with a neurotic attack."^[16] An alarmed, but cloistered, Pauline began to write letters to Thérèse and attempted various strategies to intervene. Eventually Thérèse recovered after she had turned to gaze at the statue of the Virgin Mary placed in Marie's room, where Thérèse had been moved.^[17] She reported on 13 May 1883 that she had seen the Virgin smile at her.^[18][19] She wrote: "Our Blessed Lady has come to me, she has smiled upon me. How happy I am."^[20] However, when Thérèse told the Carmelite nuns about this vision at the request of her eldest sister Marie, God allowed her to find suffering through the remembrance of this favor.“The memory of this great grace caused me real spiritual anguish.”^[21]

In October 1886 her oldest sister, Marie, entered the same Carmelite monastery, adding to Thérèse's grief. The warm atmosphere at Les Buissonnets, so necessary to her, was disappearing. Now only she and Céline remained with their father. Her frequent tears made some friends think she had a weak character and the Guérins indeed shared this opinion. Thérèse also suffered from scruples, a condition experienced by other saints such as Alphonsus Liguori, also a Doctor of the Church and Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. She wrote: "One would have to pass through this martyrdom to understand it well, and for me to express what I experienced for a year and a half would be impossible."^[22]

Thérèse in 1886, age 13. "It would certainly be unfair to call Thérèse of Lisieux limited, narrow. She was very alert and intelligent, and could certainly have gone to university today, passing all examinations with flying colours. But her horizon was limited - she was quite definitely a vertical person, could only grow skywards and into the depths - no breadth." (Ida Gorres, Diaries 1955-57 )

Complete conversion: Christmas 1886[link]

Christmas Eve 1886 was a turning point in the life of Therese; she called it her "complete conversion." Years later she stated that on that night she overcame the pressures she had faced since the death of her mother and said that "God worked a little miracle to make me grow up in an instant." "On that blessed night ... Jesus, who saw fit to make Himself a child out of love for me, saw fit to have me come forth from the swaddling clothes and imperfections of childhood."^[23]

On Christmas Eve 1886, Louis Martin and his daughters, Léonie, Céline and Thérèse, had attended the midnight mass at the cathedral in Lisieux - "but there was very little heart left in them. On 1 December Léonie, covered in eczema and hiding her hair under a short mantilla, had returned to Les Buissonnets after just seven weeks of the Poor Clares regime in Alençon", and her sisters were helping her get over her sense of failure and humiliation. Back at Les Buissonnets as every year, Thérèse " as was the custom for French children, had left her shoes on the hearth, empty in anticipation of gifts, not from Father Christmas but from the Child Jesus, who was imagined to travel through the air bearing toys and cakes." ^[24] While she was going up the stairs she heard her father, 'perhaps exhausted by the hour, or this reminder of the relentless emotional demands of his weepy youngest daughter', say to Céline, 'Well, fortunately this will be the last year!' Thérèse had begun to cry and Céline advised her not to go back downstairs immediately. Then, suddenly, Thérèse pulled herself together and wiped her tears. She ran down the stairs, knelt by the fireplace and unwrapped her surprises as jubilantly as ever. In her account, nine years later, of 1895 : "In an instant Jesus, content with my good will, accomplished the work I had not been able to do in ten years." After nine sad years she had recovered the strength of soul she had lost when her mother died and, she said, she was to retain it forever. She discovered the joy in self-forgetfulness and added ; "I felt, in a word, charity enter my heart, the need to forget myself to make others happy - Since this blessed night I was not defeated in any battle, but instead I went from victory to victory and began, so to speak, to run a giant's course. (Psalms 19:5) "

" Thérèse instantly understood what had happened to her when she won this banal little victory over her sensitivity, which she had borne for so long... she had been vouchsafed a freedom which all her efforts had been unable to win. A long, painful period of growth lasting almost ten years was now over; ...freedom is found in resolutely looking away from oneself.. and the fact that a person can cast himself away from himself reveals again that being good, victory is pure grace, a sudden gift..It cannot be coerced, and yet it can be received only by the patiently prepared heart." ^[25] Biographer Kathryn Harrison : "After all , in the past she had tried to control herself, had tried with all her being and had failed. Grace, alchemy, masochism: through whatever lens we view her transport, Thérèse's night of illumination presented both its power and its danger. It would guide her steps between the mortal and the divine, between living and dying, destruction and apotheosis. It would take her exactly where she intended to go."

The character of the saint and the early forces that shaped her personality have been the subject of analysis, particularly in recent years. Apart from the family doctor who observed her in the 19th century, all other conclusions are inevitably speculative. For instance, author Ida Friederike Görres whose formal studies had focused on church history and hagiography wrote a book that performed a psychological analysis of the saint's character. Some authors suggest that Thérèse had a strongly neurotic aspect to her personality for most of her life.^{[26][27][28][29]} A recent biographer, Kathryn Harrison, concluded that, " her temperament was not formed for compromise or moderation...a life spent not taming but directing her appetite and her will, a life perhaps shortened by the force of her desire and ambition." ^[30]

Imitation of Christ, Rome, and entry to Carmel[link]

15th century manuscript of The Imitation of Christ, Royal library, Brussels.

Before she was fourteen, when she started to experience a period of calm, Thérèse started to read The Imitation of Christ. She read the Imitation intently, as if the author traced each sentence for her: "The Kingdom of God is within you... Turn thee with thy whole heart unto the Lord; and forsake this wretched world: and thy soul shall find rest."^[31] She kept the book with her constantly and wrote later that this book and parts of another book of a very different character, lectures by Abbé Arminjon on The End of This World, and the Mysteries of the World to Come, nourished her during this critical period.^[32] Thereafter she began to read other books, mostly on history and science.^[18]

In May 1887, Thérèse approached her 63-year old father Louis, who was recovering from a small stroke, while he sat in the garden one Sunday afternoon and told him that she wanted to celebrate the anniversary of "her conversion" by entering Carmel before Christmas. Louis and Thérèse both broke down and cried, but Louis got up, gently picked a little white flower, root intact, and gave it to her, explaining the care with which God brought it into being and preserved it until that day. Thérèse later wrote: "while I listened I believed I was hearing my own story." To Therese, the flower seemed a symbol of herself, "destined to live in another soil". Thérèse then renewed her attempts to join the Carmel, but the priest-superior of the monastery would not allow it on account of her youth.

Thérèse at age 15 – For her journey to Mgr Hugonin, Bishop of Bayeux, to seek permission to enter Carmel at Christmas 1887 Thérèse had put up her hair for the first time, a symbol for being "grown-up." A photograph taken in April 1888 shows a fresh, firm, girlish face..The familiar flowing locks are combed sternly back and up, piled in a hard little chignon on the top of her head...her face, vigorous, tensed, concentrated around an invisible core almost tough in its astonishing poise, with a resolute, straight mouth, stubborn chin; but this impression of toughness is contradicted by eyes full of profound life, clear and filled with a secret humour'^[33]

During the summer, French newspapers were filled with the story of Henri Pranzini, convicted of the brutal murder of two women and a child. To the outraged public Pranzini represented all that threatened the decent way of life in France. In July and August 1887 Thérèse prayed hard for the conversion of Pranzini, so his soul could be saved, yet Pranzini showed no remorse. At the end of August, the newspapers reported that just as Pranzini's neck was placed on the guillotine, he had grabbed a crucifix and kissed it three times. Thérèse was ecstatic and believed that her prayers had saved him. She continued to pray for Pranzini after his death.^[34]

Leo XIII - In November 1887 when Thérèse met him, an old man of seventy-seven. 'Thérèse Martin knelt down, kissed the Pope's slipper, but, instead of kissing his hand said Most Holy Father, I have a great favour to ask of you.. Later, that evening, she wrote to Pauline - " the Pope is so old that you would think he is dead."

In November 1887, Louis took Céline and Thérèse on a diocesan pilgrimage to Rome for the priestly jubilee of Pope Leo XIII. The cost of the trip enforced a strict selection, a quarter of the pilgrims belonged to the nobility. The birth, in 1871, of the French Third Republic had marked a decline of the conservative right's power. Forced onto the defensive, the royalist bourgeoisie perceived a strong Church as an important means of safeguarding France's integrity and its future. The rise of a militant nationalist Catholicism, a trend that would, in 1894, result in the anti-Semitic scapegoating and trumped-up treason conviction of Alfred Dreyfus was a development that Thérèse did not at all perceive. Still a sheltered child, Thérèse lived in ignorance of political events and motivations.^[35] She did notice however, the 'social ambition and vanity'. "Céline and I found ourselves mixing with members of the aristocracy; but we were not impressed..the words of the Imitation , 'do not be solicitous for the shadow of a great name', were not lost on me, and I realised that real nobility is in the soul, not in a name." ^[36] The youngest in the pilgrimage, bright and pretty, Thérèse did not go unnoticed. In Bologna a student boldly jostled against her on purpose. Visits followed one after another: Milan, Venice, Loreto; finally the arrival in Rome. On November 20, 1887, during a general audience with Leo XIII, Thérèse, in her turn, approached the Pope, knelt, and asked him to allow her to enter Carmel at 15. The Pope said: "Well, my child, do what the superiors decide.... You will enter if it is God's Will" and he blessed Thérèse. She refused to leave his feet, and the Swiss Guard had to carry her out of the room.^[37]

The trip continued: they visited Pompeii, Naples, Assisi; then it was back via Pisa and Genoa. The pilgrimage of nearly a month came at a timely point for her burgeoning personality. She learnt more than in many years of study. For the first and last time in her life, she left her native Normandy. Notably she, "who only knew priests in the exercise of their ministry was in their company, heard their conversations, not always edifying - and saw their shortcomings for herself." ^[38] She had understood that she had to pray and give her life for sinners like Pranzini. But Carmel prayed especially for priests and this had surprised her since their souls seemed to her to be as pure as crystal. A month spent with many priests taught her that they are weak and feeble men. She wrote later: "I met many saintly priests that month, but I also found that in spite of being above angels by their supreme dignity, they were none the less men and still subject to human weakness. If the holy priests, 'the salt of the earth', as Jesus calls them in the Gospel, have to be prayed for, what about the lukewarm? Again, as Jesus says, 'If the salt shall lose its savour, wherewith shall it be salted?' I understood my vocation in Italy." For the first time too she had associated with young men. "In her brotherless existence, masculinity had been represented only by her father, her Uncle Guérin and various priests. Now she had her first and only experiences - troublesome and tempting ones. Céline declared at the beatification proceedings that one of the young men in the pilgrimage group fell in love with Thérèse ("developed a tender affection for her"). Thérèse confessed to her sister, " It is high time for Jesus to remove me from the poisonous breath of the world...I feel that my heart is easily caught by tenderness, and where others fall, I would fall too. We are no stronger than the others." ^[39]

Soon after that, the Bishop of Bayeux authorized the prioress to receive Thérèse, and on 9 April 1888 she became a Carmelite postulant.

In 1889, her father suffered a stroke and was taken to a private sanatorium, the Bon Sauveur at Caen, where he remained for three years before returning to Lisieux in 1892. He died on 29 July 1894. Upon his death, Céline, who had been caring for him, entered the same Carmel as her three sisters on 14 September 1894; their cousin, Marie Guérin, entered on 15 August 1895. Léonie, after several attempts, became Sister Françoise-Thérèse, a nun in the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary at Caen, where she died in 1941.^[40]

The Little Flower in Carmel[link]

The monastery Thérèse entered was not an old-established house with a great tradition. In 1838 two nuns from the Poitiers Carmel had been sent out to found the house of Lisieux. One of them Mother Geneviève of St Teresa, was still living when Thérèse entered...the second wing, containing the cells and sickrooms in which she was to live and die, had been standing only ten years.. " What she found was a community of very aged nuns, some odd and cranky, some sick and troubled, some lukewarm and complacent. Almost all of the sisters came from the petty bourgeois and artisan class. The Prioress and Novice Mistress were of old Norman nobility. Probably the Martin sisters alone represented the new class of the rising bourgeoisie." The Hidden Face p.193-195, Ida Gorres

Lisieux Carmel in 1888[link]

The Carmelite order had been reformed in the sixteenth century by Teresa of Avila, essentially devoted to personal and collective prayer. The times of silence and of solitude were many but the foundress had also planned for time for work and relaxation in common - the austerity of the life should not hinder sisterly and joyful relations. Founded in 1838, the Carmel of Lisieux in 1888 had 26 religious, from very different classes and backgrounds. For the majority of the life of Thérèse, the prioress would be Mother Marie de Gonzague, born Marie-Adéle-Rosalie Davy de Virville. When Thérèse entered the convent Mother Marie was 54, a woman of changeable humour, jealous of her authority, used sometimes in a capricious manner; this had for effect, a certain laxity in the observance of established rules. "In the sixties and seventies of the [nineteenth] century an aristocrat in the flesh counted for far more in a petty bourgeois convent than we can realize nowadays..the superiors appointed Marie de Gonzague to the highest offices as soon as her novitiate was finished...in 1874 began the long series of terms as Prioress." ^[41]

Postulant[link]

Thérèse's time as a postulant began with her welcome into the Carmel, Monday 9 April 1888, the Feast of the Annunciation. She felt peace after she received communion that day and later wrote: "At last my desires were realized, and I cannot describe the deep sweet peace which filled my soul. This peace has remained with me during the eight and a half years of my life here, and has never left me even amid the greatest trials."^[42] From her childhood, Thérèse had dreamed of the desert to which God would some day lead her. Now she had entered that desert. Though she was now reunited with Marie and Pauline, from the first day she began her struggle to win and keep her distance from her sisters. Right at the start Marie de Gonzague, the prioress, had turned the postulant Thérèse over to her eldest sister Marie, who was to teach her to follow the Divine Office. Later she appointed Thérèse assistant to Pauline in the refectory. And when her cousin Marie Guerin also entered, she employed the two together in the sacristy. Thérèse adhered strictly to the rule which forbade all superfluous talk during work. She saw her sisters together only in the hours of common recreation after meals. At such times she would sit down beside whomever she happened to be near, or beside a nun whom she had observed to be downcast, disregarding the tacit and sometimes expressed sensitivity and even jealousy of her biological sisters. "We must apologize to the others for our being four under one roof," she was in the habit of remarking. "When I am dead, you must be very careful not to lead a family life with one another...I did not come to Carmel to be with my sisters; on the contrary, I saw clearly that their presence would cost me dear, for I was determined not to give way to nature."

Though the novice mistress, Sr Marie of the Angels, (Jeanne de Charmontel ), found Thérèse slow, the young postulant adapted well to her new environment. She wrote :"Illusions, the Good Lord gave me the grace to have none on entering Carmel:I found religious life as I had figured, no sacrifice astonished me." She sought above all to conform to the rules and customs of the Carmelites that she learnt each day with her four religious of the novitiate. (Sr Marie of the Angels, 43, Sister Marie-Philomene, 48, 'very holy, very limited'; Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart, her oldest sister and godmother; Sister Marthe of Jesus, 23, an orphan, 'a poor little unintelligent sister' according to Pauline). Later, when Thérèse had become assistant to the novice mistress she repeated how important respect for the Rule was: "When any break the rule, this is not a reason to justify ourselves. Each must act as if the perfection of the Order depended on her personal conduct." She also affirmed the essential role of obedience in religious life: "When you stop watching the infallible compass [of obedience], as quickly the mind wanders in arid lands where the water of grace is soon lacking." She chose a spiritual director, a Jesuit, Father Pichon. At their first meeting, 28 May 1888, she made a general confession going back over all her past sins. She came away from it profoundly relieved. The priest who had himself suffered from scruples, understood her and reassured her.^[43] A few months later, he left for Canada, and Thérèse would only be able to ask his advice by letter and his replies were rare. (On 4 July 1897, she confided to Pauline, 'Father Pichon treated me too much like a child; nonetheless he did me a lot of good too by saying that I never committed a mortal sin.') During her time as postulant Thérèse had to endure some bullying from other sisters because of her lack of aptitude for handicrafts and manual work. Sister St Vincent de Paul, the finest embroideress in the community made her feel awkward and even called her 'the big nanny goat'. Thérèse was in fact the tallest in the family, 1.62 metres {approx. 5'3}- Pauline, the shortest, no more than 1.54m tall {approx.5'0}. During her last visit to Trouville at the end of June 1887, Thérèse was called, with her long blond hair, 'the tall English girl.' ) Like all religious she discovered the ups and downs related to differences in temperament, character, problems of sensitivities or infirmities. After nine years she wrote plainly : " the lack of judgment, education, the touchiness of some characters, all these things do not make life very pleasant. I know very well that these moral weaknesses are chronic, that there is no hope of cure." But the greatest suffering came from outside Carmel. On June 23, 1888 Louis Martin disappeared from his home and was found days later, in the post office in Le Havre. The incident marked the onset of her father's steep physical and mental decline.

Novice (10 January 1889 - 24 September 1890)[link]

Certain passages from the prophet Isaiah (Chapter53) helped her during her long novitiate..Six weeks before her death she remarked to Pauline : "The words in Isaiah: No stateliness here, no majesty, no beauty, as we gaze upon him, to win our hearts. Nay, here is one despised, left out of all human reckoning; how should we recognize that face? - these words were the basis of my whole worship of the Holy Face...I too, wanted to be without comeliness and beauty, unknown to all creatures. (Photograph: fragment of Isaiah found amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls)^[44]

The end of Thérèse's time as a postulant arrived on the 10 January 1889 with her taking of the habit. From that time she wore the 'rough homespun and brown scapular, white wimple and veil, leather belt with rosary, woollen 'stockings', rope sandals. " ^[45] Her father's health having temporarily stabilised he was able to attend, though twelve days after her ceremony a particularly serious crisis led to his being put in the asylum of the Bon Sauveur in Caen where he would remain for three years. In this period Thérèse deepened the sense of her vocation; to lead a hidden life, to pray and offer her suffering for priests, to forget herself, to increase discreet acts of charity. She wrote, 'I applied myself especially to practice little virtues, not having the facility to perform great ones.' "In her letters from this period of her novitiate, Thérèse returned over and over to the theme of littleness, referring to herself as a grain of sand, an image she borrowed from Pauline..'Always littler, lighter, in order to be lifted more easily by the breeze of love.' The remainder of her life would be defined by retreat and subtraction." ^[46] She absorbed the work of John of the Cross, spiritual reading uncommon at the time, especially for such a young nun. "Oh! what insights I have gained from the works of our holy father, St John of the Cross! When I was seventeen and eighteen, I had no other spiritual nourishment.." She felt a kinship with this classic writer of the Carmelite Order (though nothing seems to have drawn her to the writing of Teresa of Avila), - and with enthusiasm she read his works, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, the Way of Purification, the Spiritual Canticle, the Living Flame of Love. Passages from these writings are woven into everything she herself said and wrote.^[47] The fear of God, which she found in certain sisters, paralysed her. "My nature is such that fear makes me recoil, with LOVE not only do I go forward, I fly" ^[48]

With the new name a Carmelite receives when she enters the Order there is always an epithet : Teresa of Jesus, Elizabeth of the Trinity, Anne of the Angels. The epithet singles out the Mystery which she is supposed to contemplate with special devotion. "Thérèse's names in religion - she had two of them - must be taken together to define her religious significance." ^[49] The first name was promised to her at nine, by Mother Marie de Gonzague, of the Child Jesus, and was given to her at her entry into the convent. In itself, veneration of the childhood of Jesus was a Carmelite heritage of the seventeenth century - it concentrated upon the staggering humiliation of divine majesty in assuming the shape of extreme weakness and helplessness. The French Oratory of Jesus and Pierre de Bérulle renewed this old devotional practice. Yet when she received the veil, Thérèse herself asked Mother Marie de Gonzague to confer upon her the second name; of the Holy Face. During the course of her novitiate, contemplation of the Holy Face had nourished her inner life. This is an image representing the disfigured face of Jesus during His Passion. And she meditated on certain pasages from the prophet Isaiah, (Chapter 53). Six weeks before her death she remarked to Pauline :"The words in Isaiah: 'no stateliness here, no majesty, no beauty,..one despised, left out of all human reckoning; How should we take any account of him, a man so despised (Is 53:2-3) - these words were the basis of my whole worship of the Holy Face ..I, too, wanted to be without comeliness and beauty..unknown to all creatures." ^[50] On the eve of her profession she wrote to Sister Marie; Tomorrow I shall be the bride of Jesus 'whose face was hidden and whom no man knew' - what a union and what a future!.^[51] The meditation also helped her understand the humiliating situation of her father.

Usually the novitiate preceding profession lasted a year. Sister Thérèse hoped to make her final commitment on or after 11 January 1890 - but, considered still too young for a final commitment, her profession was postponed; she would spend eight months longer than the standard year as an unprofessed novice. As 1889 ended, her old home in the world Les Buissonnets, was dismantled, the furniture divided among the Guérins and the Carmel. It was not until September 8, 1890, aged 17 and a half, that she made her religious profession. The retreat in anticipation of her irrevocable promises was characterized by absolute aridity and on the eve of her profession she gave way to panic. "What she wanted was beyond her. Her vocation was a sham." ^[52] Reassured by the novice mistress and mother Marie de Gonzague, the next day her religious profession went ahead, 'flooded with a river of peace'. Against her heart she wore her letter of profession written during her retreat. " May creatures be nothing for me, and may I be nothing for them, but may You, Jesus, be everything!..let nobody be occupied with me, let me be looked upon as one to be trampled underfoot..may Your will be done in me perfectly..Jesus, allow me to save very many souls; let no soul be lost today; let all the souls in purgatory be saved.." On September 24, the public ceremony followed - filled with 'sadness and bitterness'. "Thérèse found herself young enough, alone enough, to weep over the absence of Bishop Hugonin, Père Pichon, in Canada; and her own father, still confined in the asylum." ^[53] But Mother Marie de Gonzague wrote to the prioress of Tours : "The angelic child is seventeen and a half, with the sense of a 30 year old, the religious perfection of an old and accomplished novice, and possession of herself; she is a perfect nun."

The Discreet life of a Carmelite - (September 1890 - February 1893)[link]

The years which followed were those of a maturation of her vocation. Thérèse prayed without great sensitive emotions, she multiplied the small acts of charity and care for others, doing small services, without making a show of them. She accepted criticism in silence, even unjust criticisms, and smiled at the sisters who were unpleasant to her. She prayed always much for priests, and in particular for Father Hyacinthe Loyson, a famous preacher who had been a Sulpician and a Dominican novice before becoming a Carmelite and provincial of his order, but who had left the Catholic Church in 1869. Three years later he married a young widow, a Protestant, with whom he had a son. After major excommunication had been pronounced against him, he continued to travel round France giving lectures. While clerical papers called Loyson a renegade monk and Leon Bloy lampooned him, Thérèse prayed for her brother. She offered her last communion, 19 August 1897, for Father Hyacinthe.

The chaplain of the Carmel, Father Youf insisted a lot on the fear of Hell. The preachers of spiritual retreats at that time did not refrain from stressing sin, the sufferings of purgatory, and those of hell. This did not help Thérèse who in 1891 experienced, great inner trials of all kinds, even wondering sometimes whether heaven existed. One phrase heard during a sermon made her weep : "No one knows if they are worthy of love or of hate." But the retreat of October 1891 was preached by Father Alexis Prou, a Franciscan from Saint-Nazaire. " He specialised in large crowds ( he preached in factories) and did not seem the right person to help Carmelites. Just one of them found comfort from him : Sister Thèrèse of the Child Jesus..[his] preaching on abandonment and mercy expanded her heart." ^[54] This confirmed Thérèse in her own intuitions. She wrote :" My soul was like a book which the priest read better than I did. He launched me full sail on the waves of confidence and love which held such an attraction for me, but upon which I had not dared to venture. He told me that my faults did not offend God." Her spiritual life drew more and more on the Gospels that she carried with her at all times. The piety of her time was fed more on commentaries, but Thérèse had asked Céline to get the Gospels and the Epistles of St Paul bound into a single small volume which she could carry on her heart. it is especially the Gospels which sustain me during my hours of prayer...I am always gaining fresh insights and finding hidden and mysterious meanings.

More and more Thérèse realised that she felt no attraction to the exalted heights of great souls. She looked directly for the word of Jesus, which shed light on her prayers and on her daily life. Thérèse's retreat in October 1892 pointed out to her a downward path. If asked where she lived, she reflected, must not she be able to answer with Christ : The foxes have their lairs, the birds of heaven their nests, but I have no place to rest my head. (Matthew 8:20). She wrote to Céline, (letter October 19, 1892): "Jesus..raised us above all the fragile things of this world whose image passes away. Like Zacchaeus, we climbed a tree to see Jesus...and now..Let us listen to what he is saying to us : Make haste to descend, I must lodge today at your house. Well, Jesus tells us to descend?" 'A question here of the interior,' she qualified in her letter, lest Céline think she meant renouncing food or shelter. "Thérèse knew her virtues, even her love, to be flawed:flawed by self, a mirror too clouded to reflect the divine." She continued to seek to discover the means, 'to more efficiently strip herself of self..' ^[55] "No doubt, [our hearts] are already empty of creatures, but, alas, I feel mine is not entirely empty of myself, and it is for this reason that Jesus tells me to descend.." ^[56]

Election of Mother Agnes[link]

On February 20, 1893 Pauline was elected prioress of Carmel and became Mother Agnes. Pauline appointed the former prioress novice mistress and made Thérèse her assistant. The work of guiding the novices would fall primarily to Thérèse. Over the next few years she revealed a talent for clarifying doctrine to those who had not received as much education as she. A kaleidoscope, whose three mirrors transform scraps of coloured paper into beautiful designs, provided an inspired illustration for the Holy Trinity. "As long as our actions, even the smallest, do not fall away from the focus of Divine Love, the Holy Trinity, symbolized by the three mirrors, allows them to reflect wonderful beauty. Jesus, who regards us through the little lens, that is to say, through Himself, always sees beauty in everything we do. But if we left the focus of inexpressible love, what would He see? Bits of straw..dirty, worthless actions." ^[57] "Another cherished image was that of the newly invented elevator, a vehicle Thérèse used many times over to describe God's grace, a force that lifts us to heights we can't reach on our own." ^[58] Her sister Céline's memoir is filled with numerous examples of the teacher Thérèse: "Céline: - 'Oh! When I think how much I have to acquire!' Thérèse: - 'Rather, how much you have to lose! Jesus Himself will fill your soul with treasures in the same measure that you move your imperfections out of the way..' And Céline recalled a story Thérèse told about egotism. 'The 28 month old Thérèse visited Le Mans and was given a basket filled with candies, at the top of which were two sugar rings..'Oh! How wonderful! There is a sugar ring for Céline too!' On her way to the station however the basket overturned, and one of the sugar rings disappeared. 'Ah, I no longer have any sugar ring for poor Céline!' Reminding me of the incident she observed; 'See how deeply rooted in us is this self-love! Why was it Céline's sugar ring, and not mine, that was lost?' ^[59] Martha of Jesus, a novice who spent her childhood in a series of orphanages and who was described by all as emotionally unbalanced, with a violent temper, gave witness during the beatification process of the 'unusual dedication and presence of her young teacher. "Thérèse deliberately 'sought out the company of those nuns whose temperaments she found hardest to bear.' What merit was there in acting charitably toward people whom one loved naturally? Thérèse went out of her way to spend time with, and therefore to love, the people she found repellent. It was an effective means of achieving interior poverty, a way to remove a place to rest her head." ^[60]

In September 1893, Thérèse, having been a professed novice for the standard three years, asked not to be promoted but to continue a novice indefinitely. As a novice she would always have to ask permission of the other, full sisters: she would never be elected to any position of importance. Remaining closely associated with the other novices, she could continue to care for her spiritual charges.

The nineteenth century rediscovered Joan of Arc. In 1841 Jules Michelet devoted the major part of the fifth volume of his History of France to a favourable presentation of the epic of the Maid of Orleans and Felix Dupanloup worked relentlessly for the glorification of Joan who on May 8, 1429 had liberated Orléans, the city of which he became bishop in 1849...Thérèse wrote two plays in honour of her childhood heroine, the first about Joan's response to the heavenly voices calling her to battle, the second about her resulting martyrdom.

The year 1894 brought a national celebration of Joan of Arc. On January 27 Leo XIII authorized the introduction of her cause of beatification, declaring Joan, the shepherdess from Lorraine 'venerable'. Thérèse used Henri Wallon's history of Joan of Arc - a book her uncle Isidore had given to the Carmel - to help her write two plays, 'pious recreations', "small theatrical pieces performed by a few nuns for the rest of the community, on the occasion of certain feast days." The first of these, The Mission of Joan of Arc was performed at the Carmel on January 21, 1894, and the second Joan of Arc Accomplishes her Mission on January 21, 1895. In the estimation of one of her biographers, Ida Görres, they "are scarcely veiled self-portraits." ^[61]

On July 29, 1894 Louis Martin died. Sick, he had been cared for by Céline. Following his death, and supported by Thérèse's letters and the advice of her other sisters, she entered the Lisieux convent on 14 September 1894. With Mother Agnes' permission, she brought her camera to Carmel, and developing materials . "The indulgence was not by any means usual. Also outside of the normal would be the destiny of those photographs Céline would make in the Carmel, images that would be scrutinized and reproduced too many times to count. Even when the images are poorly reproduced, her eyes arrest us .Described as blue, described as gray, they look darker in photographs..Céline's pictures of her sister contributed to the extraordinary cult of personality that formed in the years after Thérèses death." ^[62]

At the end of December 1894 and perhaps prompted by their fear that she was dying, her older sisters requested that Thérèse write about her childhood.

[edit] The discovery of the little way

Thérèse entered the Carmel of Lisieux with the determination to become a saint. But, by the end of 1894, six full calendar years as a Carmelite made her realize how small and insignificant she was. She saw the limitations of all her efforts. She remained small and very far off from the unfailing love that she would wish to practice. She understood then that it was on this very littleness that she must lean to ask God's help. Along with her camera, Céline had brought notebooks with her, passages from the Old Testament, which Thérèse did not have in Carmel. (The Louvain Bible, the translation authorized for French Catholics, did not include an Old Testament). In the notebooks Thérèse found a passage from Proverbs that struck her with particular force. If anyone is a very little one, let him come to me. (Proverbs,9,4) And, from the book of Isaiah (66:12-13), she was profoundly struck by another passage: As a mother caresses her child, so I shall console you, I shall carry you at my breast and I shall swing you on my knees. She concluded that Jesus would carry her to the summit of sanctity. The smallness of Thérèse, her limits, became in this way grounds for joy, more than discouragement. It is only in Manuscript C of her autobiography that she gave to this discovery the name of little way, petite voie. Echoes of this way however are heard throughout her work. From February 1895 she would regularly sign her letters by adding very little, toute petite, in front of her name. According to the writer Ida Gorres, however, this language should always be measured against the 'unfailing, iron self-conquest of her whole life.' "We know how intensely her life was given to the performance of duty, to the pursuit of good works, to the cultivation of all the virtues...[yet] she rejected all ascetic efforts which were directed not towards God but toward ones own perfection. It was on this view then, that she based her extraordinary refusal to consider her daily faults important.. because of her lack of illusions in her view of human beings, she assigned to these things, no more significance than they deserved." " I have long believed that the Lord is more tender than a mother. I know that a mother is always ready to forgive trivial, involuntary misbehaviour on the part of her child..Children are always giving trouble, falling down, getting themselves dirty, breaking things - but all this does not shake their parents love for them. " ^[63]

Offering to merciful love[link]

At the end of the second play that Thérèse had written on Joan of Arc the costume she wore almost caught fire. The alcohol stoves used to represent the stake at Rouen set fire to the screen behind which Thérèse stood. Thérèse did not flinch but the incident marked her. The theme of fire would assume an increasingly great place in her writings.^[64] On June 9, 1895, during a mass celebrating the feast of the Holy Trinity, Thérèse had a sudden inspiration that she must offer herself as a sacrificial victim to merciful love. At this time some nuns offered themselves as a victim to God's justice. In her cell she drew up an 'Act of Oblation' for herself and for Céline, and on June 11, the two of them knelt before the miraculous Virgin and Thérèse read the document she had written and signed. In the evening of this life, I shall appear before You with empty hands, for I do not ask you lord to count my works.. According to biographer Ida Gorres the document echoed the happiness she had felt when Father Alexis Prou, the Franciscan preacher, had assured her that her faults did not cause God sorrow. In the Oblation she wrote : "If through weakness I should chance to fall, may a glance from Your Eyes straightway cleanse my soul, and consume all my imperfections-as fire transforms all things into itself."

In August 1895 the four Martin sisters were joined by their cousin, Marie Guerin, in religion, Sister Marie of the Eucharist. In October 1895 a young seminarian and subdeacon of the White Fathers, Abbé Bellière, asked the Carmel of Lisieux for a nun who would support - by prayer and sacrifice - his missionary work, and the souls that were in the future to be entrusted to him.^[65] Mother Agnes designated Thérèse. She never met Father Bellière but ten letters passed between them.

In 1896 Father Adolphe Roulland of the Society of Foreign Missions asked the Carmel of Lisieux for a spiritual sister. Thérèse was assigned the duties - she answered questions, consoled, warned, and instructed the priest in the meaning of her little way. As everywhere in her doctrine it is based on the scriptures :"I rejoice in my littleness, because only little children and those who are like them shall be admitted to the Heavenly Banquet." Letter to Père Roulland,, 9 May 1897

A year later Father Adolphe Roulland (1870–1934) of the Society of Foreign Missions requested the same service of the Lisieux Carmel. Once more Thérèse was assigned the duties of spiritual sister. "It is quite clear that Thérèse, in spite of all her reverence for the priestly office, in both cases felt herself to be the teacher and the giver. It is she who who consoles and warns, encourages and praises, answers questions, offers corroboration, and instructs the priests in the meaning of her little way. " ^[66]

The final years, disease and night of faith[link]

Thérèse's final years were marked by a steady decline that she bore resolutely and without complaint. Tuberculosis was the key element of Thérèse's final suffering, but she saw that as part of her spiritual journey. After observing a rigorous Lenten fast in 1896, she went to bed on the eve of Good Friday and felt a joyous sensation. She wrote: "Oh! how sweet this memory really is!... I had scarcely laid my head upon the pillow when I felt something like a bubbling stream mounting to my lips. I didn't know what it was."

St Thérèse working with other Carmelite nuns, from left to right, Sr. Marie of the Trinity, Sr. Thérèse, Sr. Geneviève (Céline), and Sr. Martha of Jesus. 1895, sometime before the end of July.^[67]

The next morning she found blood on her handkerchief and understood her fate. Coughing up of blood meant tuberculosis, and tuberculosis meant death.^[68] She wrote:

"I thought immediately of the joyful thing that I had to learn, so I went over to the window. I was able to see that I was not mistaken. Ah! my soul was filled with a great consolation; I was interiorly persuaded that Jesus, on the anniversary of His own death, wanted to have me hear His first call!"

Thérèse corresponded with a Carmelite mission in what was then French Indochina and was invited to join them, but, because of her sickness, could not travel.

As a result of Tuberculosis, Thérèse suffered terribly. When she was near death “Her physical suffering kept increasing so that even the doctor himself was driven to exclaim, ‘Ah! If you only knew what this young nun was suffering!’”^[69] During the last hours of Therese’s life, she said, “‘I would never have believed it was possible to suffer so much, never, never!”^[70]

In July 1897, she made a final move to the monastery infirmary. On August 19, 1897, Therese received her last communion. She died on 30 September 1897 at the young age of 24. On her death-bed, she is reported to have said:"I have reached the point of not being able to suffer any more, because all suffering is sweet to me."

Her last words were, "My God, I love you!"

Thérèse was buried on October 4, 1897 in the Carmelite plot in the municipal cemetery at Lisieux, where Louis and Zelie had been buried. In March 1923, however, before she was beatified, her body was returned to the Carmel of Lisieux, where it remains.

Spiritual legacy[link]

At fourteen, Thérèse had understood her vocation to pray for priests, to be "an apostle to apostles." In September 1890, at her canonical examination before she professed her religious vows, she was asked why she had come to Carmel. She answered "I came to save souls, and especially to pray for priests." Throughout her life she prayed fervently for priests, and she corresponded with and prayed for a young priest, Adolphe Roulland, and a young seminarian, Maurice Bellière. She wrote to her sister "Our mission as Carmelites is to form evangelical workers who will save thousands of souls whose mothers we shall be."[3]

Thérèse was devoted to Eucharistic meditation and on February 26, 1895 shortly before she died wrote from memory and without a rough draft her poetic masterpiece "To Live by Love" which had composed during Eucharistic meditation. During her life, the poem was sent to various religious communities and was included in a notebook of her poems.^[71][72]

The Child Jesus and the Holy Face[link]

A depiction of the Holy Face of Jesus as Veronica's veil, by Claude Mellan c. 1649. St. Thérèse wore an image of the Holy Face on her heart.

Thérèse entered the Carmelite order on 9 April 1888. On 10 January 1889, after a probationary period somewhat longer than the usual, she was given the habit and received the name: Thérèse of the Child Jesus. On 8 September 1890, Thérèse took her vows; the ceremony of taking the veil followed on the 24th, when she added to her name in religion, "of the Holy Face", a title which was to become increasingly important in the development and character of her inner life.^[73] In his "A l'ecole de Therese de Lisieux: maitresse de la vie spirituelle," Bishop Guy Gaucher emphasizes that Therese saw the devotions to the Child Jesus and to the Holy Face as so completely linked that she signed herself "Therese de l'Enfant Jesus de la Sainte Face"--Therese of the Child Jesus of the Holy Face. In her poem "My Heaven down here", composed in 1895, Therese expressed the notion that by the divine union of love, the soul takes on the semblance of Christ. By contemplating the sufferings associated with the Holy Face of Jesus, she felt she could become closer to Christ.^[74]

The devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus was promoted by another Carmelite nun, Sister Marie of St Peter in Tours, France in 1844 and then by Leo Dupont, also known as the Apostle of the Holy Face who formed the "Archconfraternity of the Holy Face" in Tours in 1851.^[75][76] Thérèse, who was a member of this confraternity,^[77] was introduced to the Holy Face devotion by her blood sister Pauline, known as Sister Agnes of Jesus.

Her parents, Louis and Zelie Martin, had also prayed at the Oratory of the Holy Face, originally established by Leo Dupont in Tours.^[78] Thérèse wrote many prayers to express her devotion to the Holy Face. She wrote the words "Make me resemble you, Jesus!" on a small card and attached a stamp with an image of the Holy Face. She pinned the prayer in a small container over her heart. In August 1895, in her "Canticle to the Holy Face," she wrote:

"Jesus, Your ineffable image is the star which guides my steps. Ah, You know, Your sweet Face is for me Heaven on earth. My love discovers the charms of Your Face adorned with tears. I smile through my own tears when I contemplate Your sorrows".

Thérèse emphasised God's mercy in both the birth and the passion narratives in the Gospel. She wrote:^[79]

"He sees it disfigured, covered with blood!... unrecognizable!... And yet the divine Child does not tremble; this is what He chooses to show His love."

She also composed the Holy Face prayer for sinners:^[80]

"Eternal Father, since Thou hast given me for my inheritance the adorable Face of Thy Divine Son, I offer that face to Thee and I beg Thee, in exchange for this coin of infinite value, to forget the ingratitude of souls dedicated to Thee and to pardon all poor sinners."

Thérèse's devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus was based on painted images of the Veil of Veronica,^{[clarification needed]} as promoted by Leon Dupont fifty years earlier. However, over the decades, her poems and prayers helped to spread the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus.^[81]

The Little Way[link]

Thérèse in July 1896

In her quest for sanctity, she believed that it was not necessary to accomplish heroic acts, or "great deeds", in order to attain holiness and to express her love of God. She wrote,

"Love proves itself by deeds, so how am I to show my love? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love."

This little way of Therese is the foundation of her spirituality:^[82] Within the Catholic Church Thérèse's way was known for some time as "the little way of spiritual childhood," but Thérèse actually wrote "little way" only once,^[83] and she never wrote the phrase "spiritual childhood." It was her sister Pauline who, after Thérèse's death, adopted the phrase "the little way of spiritual childhood" to interpret Thérèse's path.^[84] Years after Thérèse's death, a Carmelite of Lisieux asked Pauline about this phrase and Pauline answered spontaneously "But you know well that Thérèse never used it! It is mine." In May 1897, Thérèse wrote to Father Adolphe Roulland, "My way is all confidence and love." To Maurice Bellière she wrote "and I, with my way, will do more than you, so I hope that one day Jesus will make you walk by the same way as me."

"Sometimes, when I read spiritual treatises in which perfection is shown with a thousand obstacles, surrounded by a crowd of illusions, my poor little mind quickly tires. I close the learned book which is breaking my head and drying up my heart, and I take up Holy Scripture. Then all seems luminous to me; a single word uncovers for my soul infinite horizons; perfection seems simple; I see that it is enough to recognize one's nothingness and to abandon oneself, like a child, into God's arms. Leaving to great souls, to great minds, the beautiful books I cannot understand, I rejoice to be little because 'only children, and those who are like them, will be admitted to the heavenly banquet.' "

Passages like this have left Thérèse open to the charge that her spirituality is sentimental, immature, and unexamined. Her proponents counter that she developed an approach to the spiritual life that people of every background can understand and adopt.

This is evident in her approach to prayer:^[85]

"For me, prayer is a movement of the heart; it is a simple glance toward Heaven; it is a cry of gratitude and love in times of trial as well as in times of joy; finally, it is something great, supernatural, which expands my soul and unites me to Jesus. . . . I have not the courage to look through books for beautiful prayers.... I do like a child who does not know how to read; I say very simply to God what I want to say, and He always understands me."

Autobiography – The Story of a Soul[link]

The crypt of the Basilica of St. Therese in Lisieux

St. Thérèse is known today because of her spiritual memoir, L'histoire d'une âme (The Story of a Soul), which she wrote upon the orders of two prioresses of her monastery, and because of the many miracles worked at her intercession. She began to write "Story of a Soul" in 1895 as a memoir of her childhood, under instructions from her sister Pauline, known in religion as Mother Agnes of Jesus. Mother Agnes gave the order after being prompted by their eldest sister, Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart. While Thérèse was on retreat in September 1896, she wrote a letter to Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart which also forms part of what was later published as "Story of a Soul." In June 1897, Mother Agnes became aware of the seriousness of Thérèse's illness; she immediately asked Mother Marie de Gonzague, who had succeeded her as prioress, to allow Thérèse to write another memoir with more details of her religious life. With selections from Therese's letters and poems and reminiscences of her by the other nuns, it was published posthumously. It was heavily edited by Pauline (Mother Agnes), who made more than seven thousand revisions to Therese's manuscript and presented it as a biography of her sister. (Aside from considerations of style, Mother Marie de Gonzague had ordered Pauline to alter the first two sections of the manuscript to make them appear as if they were addressed to Mother Marie as well).

Saint Therese' had written her autobiography under obedience. While on her deathbed the Saint made many references to the book's future appeal and benefit to souls.

Since 1973, two centenary editions of Thérèse's original, unedited manuscripts, including The Story of a Soul, her letters, poems, prayers and the plays she wrote for the monastery recreations have been published in French. ICS Publications has issued a complete critical edition of her writings: Story of a Soul, Last Conversations, and the two volumes of her letters were translated by John Clarke, O.C.D.; The Poetry of Saint Thérèse by Donald Kinney, O.C.D.; The Prayers of St. Thérèse by Alethea Kane, O.C.D.; and The Religious Plays of St. Therese of Lisieux by David Dwyer and Susan Conroy.

Recognition[link]

Canonization[link]

Interior of the Basilica of St. Thérèse

In 1902, the Polish Carmelite Father Raphael Kalinowski (later Saint Raphael Kalinowski) translated her autobiography The Story of a Soul into Polish.

Her autobiography has inspired many people, including the Italian writer Maria Valtorta.

Pope Pius X signed the decree for the opening of her process of canonization on 10 June 1914. Pope Benedict XV, in order to hasten the process, dispensed with the usual fifty-year delay required between death and beatification. On 14 August 1921, he promulgated the decree on the heroic virtues of Thérèse and gave an address on Thérèse's way of confidence and love, recommending it to the whole Church.

There may, however, have been a political dimension to the speed of proceedings: partly to act as tonic for a nation exhausted by war, or even a retort from the Vatican against the dominant secularism and anti-clericalism of the French government.

According to some biographies of Edith Piaf, in 1922 the singer — at the time, an unknown seven-year-old girl — was cured from blindness after pilgrimage to the grave of Thérèse, at the time not yet formally canonised.

Thérèse was beatified on 29 April 1923 and canonized on 17 May 1925, by Pope Pius XI, only 28 years after her death. Her feast day was added to the Roman Catholic calendar of saints in 1927 for celebration on 3 October.^[86] In 1969, 42 years later, Pope Paul VI moved it to 1 October, the day after her dies natalis (birthday to heaven).^[87]

Thérèse of Lisieux is the patron saint of aviators, florists, illness(es) and missions. She is also considered by Catholics to be the patron saint of Russia, although the Russian Orthodox Church does not recognize either her canonization or her patronage. In 1927, Pope Pius XI named Thérèse a patroness of the missions and in 1944 Pope Pius XII named her co-patroness of France alongside St. Joan of Arc.

By the Apostolic Letter Divini Amoris Scientia (The Science of Divine Love) of 19 October 1997, Pope John Paul II declared her one of the thirty-three Doctors of the Universal Church, one of only three women so named, the others being Teresa of Avila (Saint Teresa of Jesus) and Catherine of Siena. Thérèse was the only saint to be named a Doctor of the Church during Pope John Paul II's pontificate.

Beatification of St. Therese's Parents[link]

A movement is now underway to canonise her parents, who were declared "Venerable" in 1994 by Pope John Paul II. In 2004, the Archbishop of Milan accepted the unexpected cure of a child with a lung disorder as attributable to their intercession. Announced by Cardinal Saraiva Martins on 12 July 2008, at the ceremonies marking the 150th anniversary of the marriage of the Venerable Zelie and Louis Martin, their beatification as a couple [4] (the last step before canonization) took place on Mission Sunday, 19 October 2008, at Lisieux.^[88][89] In 2011 the letters of Blessed Zélie and Louis Martin were published in English as A Call to a Deeper Love: The Family Correspondence of the Parents of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, 1863-1885.^[90]

Some interest has also been shown in promoting for sainthood Thérèse's sister, Léonie, the only one of the five sisters who did not become a Carmelite nun. She entered religious life three times before her fourth and final entrance in 1899 at the Monastery of the Visitation at Caen. She took the name Sister Françoise-Thérèse and was a fervent disciple of Thérèse's way. She died in 1941 in Caen, where her tomb in the crypt of the Visitation Monastery can be visited by the public.[5]

Influence[link]

Together with St. Francis of Assisi, St. Thérèse of Lisieux is one of the most popular Catholic saints since apostolic times. As a Doctor of the Church, she is the subject of much theological comment and study, and, as an appealing young woman whose message has touched the lives of millions, she remains the focus of much popular devotion.

Relics of St. Thérèse on a world pilgrimage[link]

For many years Thérèse's relics have toured the world, and thousands of pilgrims have thronged to pray in their presence. Although Cardinal Basil Hume had declined to endorse proposals for a tour in 1997, her relics finally visited England and Wales in late September and early October 2009, including an overnight stop in the Anglican York Minster on her feastday, 1 October. A quarter of a million people venerated them.^[91]

On 27 June 2010, the relics of St. Thérèse made their first visit to South Africa in conjunction with the 2010 World Cup. They remained in the country until 5 October 2010.^[92]

With more than two million visitors a year, the Basilica of St. Thérèse in Lisieux is the second largest pilgrimage site in France, after Lourdes

Religious congregations[link]

The Congregation of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux was founded on 19 March 1931 by Mar Augustine Kandathil, the Metropolitan of the Catholic St. Thomas Christians, as the first Indian religious order for brothers.^[93]

Places named after St. Thérèse[link]

Tomb in the Basilica of St. Thérèse, Lisieux.

A number of locations, churches, and schools throughout the world are named after Saint Thérèse.

The Basilica of St. Thérèse in her home town of Lisieux was consecrated on 11 July 1954; it has become a centre for pilgrims from all over the world. It was originally dedicated in 1937 by Cardinal Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII. The basilica can seat 4,000 people.^[94]

Devotees of St. Thérèse[link]

Over the years, a number of prominent people have become devotees of St. Thérèse. These include:

• Albino Luciani – Pope John Paul I
• Henri Bergson – Nobel prize winner
• Padre Pio – Italian saint
• Ada Negri – Italian poet
• Giuseppe Moscati – Italian saint
• Maria Valtorta – Catholic mystic
• Paul James Francis Wattson - Founder of the Atonement Friars^{[citation needed]}
• Francis Bourne – British Cardinal
• Thomas Merton – monk and writer
• Dorothy Day – founder of the Catholic Worker movement
• Georges Bernanos – French author
• Jack Kerouac – American author
• St. Maximilian Kolbe – Polish martyr of Auschwitz
• Jean Vanier – founder of l'Arche
• Edith Piaf - French singer
• Blessed Teresa of Calcutta - Foundress of the Missionaries of Charity

Bibliography[link]

• Thérèse of Lisieux: a biography by Patricia O'Connor, 1984 ISBN 0-87973-607-0
• Thérèse of Lisieux: the way to love by Ann Laforest, 2000 ISBN 1-58051-082-5
• The Story of a Soul by T. N. Taylor, 2006 ISBN 1-4068-0771-0
• Thérèse of Lisieux by Joan Monahan, 2003 ISBN 0-8091-6710-7
• Thérèse of Lisieux: God's gentle warrior by Thomas R. Nevin, 2006 ISBN 0-19-530721-6
• Therese and Lisieux by Pierre Descouvemont, Helmuth Nils Loose, 1996 ISBN 0-8028-3836-7
• St. Thérèse of Lisieux: a transformation in Christ by Thomas Keating, 2001 ISBN 1-930051-20-4
• Thérèse of Lisieux: Through Love and Suffering, by Murchadh O Madagain, 2003 ISBN
• 15 Days of Prayer with Saint Thérèse of Lisieux by Constant Tonnelier, 2011 ISBN 978-1-56548-391-0

See also[link]

Saints portal

• Carmelite Rule of St. Albert
• Book of the First Monks
• Constitutions of the Carmelite Order
• Byzantine Discalced Carmelites
• Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites
• National Shrine of the Little Flower

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Thérèse of Lisieux

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Thérèse de Lisieux

• Web site of the Pilgrimage Office at Lisieux
• Web site about the life, writings, spirituality,and mission of Saint Therese of Lisieux
• The miraculous intercession of St Therese in the lives of four Mystics
• Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux, biographie
• The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Âme): The Autobiography of St. Thérèse (early edition heavily edited by Thérèse's sister)
• http://www.saintetherese.org (Sainte Thérèse – Mansourieh / Liban) Parish site in the Lebanese language
• Pope John Paul II's Divini Amoris Scientia in English
• Catholic Encyclopedia article
• Works by Thérèse de Lisieux at Project Gutenberg early 20th century editions, heavily edited by Therese's sister
• Second Class Relic of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
• Saint Thérèse Memorial Page at FindaGrave
• St. Thérèse's relics at Hungary
• A collection of pictures of Thérèse, on the Lisieux Sanctuary website
• Archives [6]

v t e Catholic Church Organizations, papacy, teachings and liturgical traditions History Jesus Twelve Apostles Early Christianity History of the Papacy Ecumenical Councils Missions Great Schism of East Crusades Great Schism of West Protestant Reformation Counter-Reformation Catholic Church by country Hierarchy Pope Cardinals Patriarchs Major Archbishops Primates Metropolitans Archbishops Diocesan Bishops Theology Body and Soul Divine Grace Dogma One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church Original sin Salvation Sermon on the Mount The Ten Commandments Trinity Worship Sacraments Anointing of the Sick Baptism Confirmation Eucharist Holy Orders Matrimony Penance Mariology Roman Catholic Mariology Assumption History of Mariology Immaculate Conception Mariology of the popes Mariology of the saints Mother of God Perpetual Virginity Veneration Doctors of the Church Albertus Magnus Ambrose Anselm of Canterbury Anthony of Padua Thomas Aquinas Athanasius of Alexandria Augustine of Hippo Basil of Caesarea Bede Robert Bellarmine Bernard of Clairvaux Bonaventure Petrus Canisius Catherine of Siena Peter Chrysologus John Chrysostom Cyril of Alexandria Cyril of Jerusalem Peter Damian Ephrem the Syrian Francis de Sales Gregory of Nazianzus Gregory the Great Hilary of Poitiers Isidore of Seville Jerome John of Damascus John of the Cross Lawrence of Brindisi Leo the Great Alphonsus Maria de Liguori Teresa of Ávila Thérèse of Lisieux Pope Benedict XVI Conclave Theology Works Dominus Iesus Sacramentum Caritatis Deus Caritas Est Summorum Pontificum Spe Salvi Caritas in Veritate Preceding popes Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul I Pope Paul VI Pope John XXIII Pope Pius XII Pope Pius XI Pope Benedict XV Pope Pius X Pope Leo XIII Pope Pius IX Religious institutes and similar Assumptionists Augustinians Benedictines Capuchin Order Carmelites Carthusians Congregations of Holy Cross Dominican Order Franciscan orders Jesuits Oratory of Saint Philip Neri Vatican II Definition of the Church Dei Verbum Gaudium et Spes Lumen Gentium Nostra Aetate Sacrosanctum Concilium Particular Churches and liturgical rites Alexandrian Coptic Ethiopic Antiochian Maronite Syriac Syro-Malankara Armenian Armenian Byzantine Albanian Belarusian Bulgarian Croatian Greek Hungarian Italo-Albanian Macedonian Melkite Romanian Russian Ruthenian Slovak Ukrainian East Syrian Chaldean Syro-Malabar Latin Roman Anglican Use Sarum Ambrosian Mozarabic Catholicism portal Pope portal