Marie of the Incarnation (née Marie Guyart; 28 October 1599 – 30 April 1672) was a French Ursuline nun, missionary, mystic, educator, and writer who founded the Ursuline monastery of Quebec and helped establish the first institution devoted to the education of girls in North America. One of the major mystical writers of seventeenth-century French Catholicism, she produced a large body of autobiographical, spiritual, and epistolary writings and also composed catechetical and linguistic works in several Indigenous languages of New France.
Marie of the Incarnation played a central role in the religious, educational, and cultural life of New France. Her correspondence constitutes one of the principal documentary sources for the history of the colony in the seventeenth century. She was canonized by Pope Francis through equipollent canonization in 2014 alongside François de Laval.
Marie Guyart was born in Tours on 28 October 1599, the daughter of the baker Florent Guyart and Jeanne Michelet. She was raised in a devout Catholic household and later recalled having received a “good education” that formed her in Christian belief and conduct.
At the age of seven she experienced the first of a series of mystical visions that would shape her spirituality. In her Relation of 1654 she described seeing Christ descend from heaven toward her in human form and ask: “Do you wish to belong to me?” She answered yes, after which he embraced her and ascended again.
From adolescence Marie desired the religious life and hoped to enter the Benedictines of Beaumont Abbey near Tours. Her parents instead arranged her marriage to Claude Martin, a silk worker of Tours. They married in 1617, and their only child, Claude Martin, was born on 1 April 1619. Six months later her husband died, leaving her widowed at nineteen.
After unsuccessfully attempting to manage her late husband's failing business, Marie returned with her son to her father's household. She refused repeated suggestions that she remarry.
Conversion and spiritual development
On 24 March 1620, while walking through Tours, Marie underwent what she later described as a decisive spiritual “conversion”. She entered the church of the Feuillants of Saint-Louis and confessed to Dom François de Saint-Bernard, who became her first spiritual director. She afterwards adopted a life of intense prayer and ascetic discipline.
Marie moved into the household of her sister Claude and brother-in-law Paul Buisson, a transport merchant whose business she helped administer. Her talents as an organizer and manager became widely recognized, and by 1625 she was effectively directing the enterprise during their absences.
During these years she experienced a series of major mystical states and Trinitarian visions. At Pentecost 1625 she underwent what later commentators described as a mystical “espousal” with God. A second major Trinitarian vision followed in 1627.
Marie also encountered the writings of Teresa of Ávila, whose autobiography profoundly influenced her understanding of contemplative prayer and mystical union.
On 25 January 1631 Marie entered the Ursuline convent in Tours, leaving her son in the care of others. The separation caused lasting emotional pain for both mother and son, later reflected in their extensive correspondence.
At the conclusion of her novitiate in 1633 she professed vows and received the religious name Marie de l’Incarnation. She was soon appointed assistant mistress of novices and became involved in doctrinal instruction.
That same year, during Christmas, she experienced a dream of a distant and unknown country which she later interpreted as a divine summons to missionary work in Canada. She began reading the Jesuit Relations and developed a growing interest in New France.
In 1635 Marie believed she had received further confirmation that she was called to Canada to help establish the Church there. Through the Jesuit Joseph-Antoine Poncet de la Rivière, she met Marie-Madeleine de La Peltrie in 1639. La Peltrie, a wealthy Norman widow, agreed to finance the Ursuline mission.
The Canadian foundation also emerged from the wider devotional and missionary milieu associated with the Hermitage of Caen, a centre of lay and clerical spirituality connected with reform currents in seventeenth-century French Catholicism. The lay mystic and spiritual organizer Jean de Bernieres-Louvigny played an important role in supporting the mission financially, administratively, and spiritually. Bernieres maintained close ties with Madame de La Peltrie and with several missionary initiatives connected to New France, including the Ursuline and Hospitaler foundations at Quebec.
Modern scholars have situated Marie within a broader network of French mystical spirituality linked to figures such as Bernieres, Louis Lallemant, and the circles of contemplative renewal associated with Caen. Although Marie remained distinctly Ursuline in vocation and spirituality, her correspondence reveals significant affinities with the interior spirituality cultivated at the Hermitage, especially its emphasis on purity of heart, abandonment to divine providence, and continual interior recollection.
Madame de La Peltrie reportedly used marriage negotiations involving Bernieres in order to secure greater legal control over her inheritance against family opposition to the Canadian project. Bernieres also assisted the mission practically by helping organize finances and networks of support before the departure to Canada, and he continued thereafter as an important spiritual correspondent of Marie and her associates in New France.