Margaret Mary Alacoque

Alacoque, Margaret Mary (1647–90), Visitandine nun. Born at Janots (Burgundy) the fifth child of a notary, Margaret had an unhappy childhood, especially after the death of her father, which was followed by relatives virtually taking over her home. In 1671 she became a nun at the Visitation convent of Paray-le-Monial. As a novice she was patient and charitable, but also clumsy and impractical. She made her profession in 1672 and from 1673 to 1675 experienced a series of visions of Christ, who also, she thought, spoke to her. These experiences, although subject to human error, were valuable for reminding contemporaries and others of truths forgotten or neglected. In 17th-century France both irreligion and Jansenism had in different ways obscured the doctrine of Christ's love for all men, sinners included. John Eudes, Margaret Mary, and others were the providential instruments of recalling this basic truth to the people. This was done in and through devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, adumbrated in the Middle Ages by Gertrude, Mechtild, and others, but made more explicit by Margaret Mary and her director, the Jesuit Claude de la Colombière, through whom her experiences became known.

Margaret Mary met with plenty of contradictions, patiently borne, from her religious superiors and others. Eventually she won the confidence of her critics and became mistress of novices and assistant-superior. Devotion to, and a feast of the Sacred Heart were eventually approved by the papacy and very widely celebrated. Margaret died at the age of only forty-three, on 17 October, which became her feast. She was canonized in 1920.

Bibliography
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• Critical edition of her Autobiography and 133 letters by L. Gauthey (3 vols., 1915), Eng. tr. by V. Kerns (1961); Lives by A. Hamon (1907), P. Blanchard (1962), and G. Tickell (1969); B.T.A., iv. 134–8; see also J. B. O'Connell, The Nine First Fridays (1934)