Nicolas Barré

Nicolas Barré was born on 21 October 1621 in Amiens, in Picardy, in the Kingdom of France, into a bourgeois family engaged in trade. He received his schooling at the Jesuit college in Amiens. Drawn to a life of prayer and penance, he entered the Order of Minims in 1640. That order, founded in the fifteenth century by Saint Francis of Paola, was known for a severe rule, a perpetual Lenten diet, and an emphasis on humility. After profession and theological study he was ordained a priest. He taught philosophy and theology, including at the Minim convent of the Place Royale in Paris, and became known as a preacher and spiritual director.

From 1659 he was assigned to the Minim house in Rouen in Normandy. There he was struck by the poverty and almost total lack of schooling among children of the labouring poor, especially girls. Parish and charitable structures of the time did not meet this need, and existing schools were few and often fee-paying. About 1662 he began to gather lay women willing to teach without charge. He formed them to live simply, to keep the schools free for the poorest, and to combine elementary literacy with Christian doctrine and practical skills. This work is the origin of the Institute of the Sisters of the Infant Jesus, also known historically as the Dames de Saint-Maur after a later Parisian house.

Barré also encouraged a parallel effort of charitable schools for boys under male teachers, though that branch did not develop into a lasting religious congregation on the same scale. He wrote on the spiritual and pedagogical formation of teachers, stressing interior recollection, trust in Providence, and preference for the most neglected. His outlook belongs to seventeenth-century French Catholic reform and was marked by devotion to the mystery of the Infant Jesus, which gave the sisters their name. In later years he was again based in Paris, where the educational work continued and from which the institute later took one of its familiar designations. He remained a professed Minim throughout, combining conventual life with this apostolate.

He died in Paris on 31 May 1686. The sisters’ congregation survived later crises, including the French Revolution, and in time spread beyond France. Nicolas Barré was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 7 March 1999. His liturgical memorial is kept on 31 May. He is remembered as a pioneer of free popular education and of apostolic congregations of women dedicated to the schooling of the poor in early modern France.