Martial d'Étampes

Jean Raclardy was born at Étampes on 22 July 1575, the son of François Raclardy and Michelle Benoist, a family described in later Capuchin sources as artisans and devout Catholics.^[2] According to Willibrord-Christian Van Dijk, some earlier sources state that he had been a priest and had studied at the Sorbonne before entering the Capuchins, but Van Dijk considers this unlikely in view of the circumstances of his admission to the order.^[1]

Raclardy entered the Capuchin novitiate at Orléans on 20 July 1597. He received the habit from Benoît de Canfield, who was then guardian of the house, and made profession on 29 June 1598 in the hands of Honoré de Paris, taking the religious name Martial.^[1][2] He later served as guardian at Troyes in 1611 and at Meudon in 1613–1614, but his principal work was the formation of novices. He served as master of novices at Meudon, Paris, Troyes, and Amiens.^[2]

Martial was also confessor and spiritual director to Capuchin nuns. He served the Capuchin nuns in Paris from about 1628 or 1630, and then those of Amiens from 1631 until his death.^[2] The Capuchin necrological tradition describes him as austere, charitable toward the sick and afflicted, and highly regarded as a man of prayer. It also attributes to him healings and premonitions, while modern accounts tend to treat these reports as part of the hagiographic memory surrounding him.^[1][2]

He died at Amiens on 19 June 1635. Accounts preserved in the Capuchin necrology describe popular devotion at his funeral and the reverence in which he was held in the Paris province of the order.^[2]

Martial d'Étampes is chiefly known as a teacher of oraison, or interior prayer. His doctrine stands within the Capuchin and Franciscan ascetical tradition, but it also belongs to the wider mystical renewal of seventeenth-century France. Modern editors describe him as a representative of the second generation of French Capuchin mystics after Benoît de Canfield.^[2][3]

His teaching on prayer begins with a correction of merely emotional notions of devotion. In the Traité très facile pour apprendre à faire l'oraison mentale, devotion is defined not as a sentiment, but as an act of the will by which the soul is promptly borne toward the service of God.^[2] The method of prayer presented in this work is divided into preparation, meditation, and affection, but Martial's practical direction tends toward increasing simplicity. Meditation is not rejected, but it is ordered toward affective recollection and a simple loving attention to God.^[2]

The Exercice du silence intérieur gives his most characteristic doctrine. It teaches a silence of thought, word, and action by which the soul may become united and absorbed in God alone.^[2] The text grounds this silence in a theological reflection on the divine Word: God speaks one Word eternally, the Son, and divine life is presented as simple, inward, and peaceful. The soul therefore seeks to pass beyond multiplicity, agitation, and anxious self-motion into a quiet and loving recollection before God.^[2]

The Exercice des trois clous amoureux et douloureux shows the Christological and Franciscan side of his spirituality. It is a long exercise for imitating Jesus Christ fastened to the Cross and for union with him. The three nails are interpreted in relation to conformity, uniformity, and deiformity, and the work develops a spirituality of abandonment, indifference, self-annihilation, compassion, and perseverance at the foot of the Cross.^[2][4]

Although Martial's language includes silence, abandonment, annihilation, and passive prayer, his teaching is ascetical and practical rather than quietist in the later condemned sense. His prayer is bound to mortification, obedience, humility, charity, and imitation of the crucified Christ.^[2]

The bibliography of Martial d'Étampes is not entirely simple, since some works circulated anonymously, some were printed after his death, and some attributions are uncertain. Modern scholarship usually regards the following as his principal writings:^[1][2]

• Traité très facile pour apprendre à faire l'oraison mentale, first published at Saint-Omer in 1630, with later Paris editions.
• Exercice du silence intérieur de pensée, de parole et d'œuvre pour être toute unie et absorbée en Dieu seul, added to the 1639 edition of the Traité très facile and later reworked in the 1722 edition.
• L'Exercice des trois clous amoureux et douloureux, pour imiter Jésus-Christ attaché sur la Croix au Calvaire et pour nous unir à lui, Paris, Jean Camusat, 1635.
• La Croix spirituelle, incorporated in later editions of the Traité très facile.
• Spiritual letters, some of which were edited by Raoul de Sceaux in 1964.^[5]

Older Capuchin bibliographies list him under the Latin form Martialis Stampensis or Martialis Stampensis Parisinus.^[6]

Martial d'Étampes exercised influence chiefly through his work as novice master and director of Capuchin nuns. His spirituality was transmitted within the Capuchin milieu rather than through broad literary fame.^[2] He is associated with the formation of later Capuchins of the Paris province; Paul de Lagny, for example, made his novitiate at Meudon under Martial's direction.^[7]

Modern attention to Martial has been limited. Van Dijk's article in the Dictionnaire de spiritualité remains one of the principal scholarly summaries of his life and writings.^[1] The 2008 edition by Joséphine Fransen and Dominique Tronc made several of his spiritual texts accessible to modern readers, including the Exercice du silence intérieur and the Exercice des trois clous amoureux et douloureux.^[2] Irénée Noye reviewed the edition in the Revue d'histoire de l'Église de France, placing it among modern recoveries of early modern French spiritual texts.^[4]