Apology in the Form of Autohagiography: Angelique Arnauld's Defense of Her Reform of Port-Royal

In the context of the Jansenist controversy in seventeenth-century France, the nuns at the convent of Port-Royal made an effort to record the history of the convent and its reform by the abbess, Mother Angelique Arnauld (1591-1661). In this project, the nuns employed feminine and monastic genres of writing as a way to defend both the convent and its supporters. This article examines the autobiographical account of Mother Angelique through the lens of the genre of autohagiography, demonstrating how she used this genre in defense of the convent to write an apology for her former confessor, the Abbot of SaintCyran (1581-1643), and a theology of divine providence. In her use of this genre, Mother Angelique expressed her theological ideas in a manner permitted to women in the early modern era.