Vocation of a Benedictine

Dressed in rough, blue denim work clothes, the Benedictine nuns of St. Louis du Temple were busy one day last week plastering the walls of their new convent at Limon, near Paris. As they worked, a nun in full habit picked her way through the chaos of scaffolding, pipes and plaster, and the others turned to look at her with sharp interest. Even the Mere Abbesse showed special respect. The abbess pointed to the outline of a Gothic window above a freshly mortared chapel wall: "And there, Mere Genevieve, we shall need three large windows."

Intently and seriously, Mere Genevieve studied the space for which she will design the stained glass. The brief journey from her convent at suburban Meudon involved a rare trip into the outside world for the 62-year-old nun who has spent 34 years of her life behind convent walls. Yet in the outside world she is fast becoming a celebrity. Artists and connoisseurs of Paris compare her work with that of Rembrandt, Durer, Goya. French countesses drive out from Paris to the convent at Meudon where she painstakingly turns out her strong, tortured etchings. But Mere Genevieve takes no notice of the sudden fame that might have dazzled her 34 years ago, when she was Marcelle Gallois, Paris art student.

Trying Too Hard. Marcelle Gallois seemed like countless other would-be painters of the day. What brought her to the Benedictines was a combination of esthetic and religious feelings that for years left her vocation in doubt. She describes a memorable Easter-week visit, at the age of 23, to church services at the convent she later entered.

From the shadows came the slow, profound chanting of Jeremiah's lament for Christ. Her attention was riveted on a Benedictine monk who might have been a figure in one of her own drawings today. "He had an air which did not please me, an aspect rough and terrible. He was wearing a strange, black costume--austere, and with lines that recalled an earlier, more primitive age--a pointed hood, a belt of leather. What end was he seeking? I wondered. The austere grandeur of his habit, of that belt which hung from his waist, somehow entangled my heart in a way that was incurable." In 1917 she was admitted to the Benedictines of the Rue Monsieur.

The way she had chosen was not easy for Genevieve (the name she took as a nun, from the patron saint of Paris). Says the abbess: "Genevieve wanted to arrive all at once. She tried too hard." The rigorous austerities of the Benedictines, whose daily Mass begins at 5 a.m., broke her health;for 22 years she remained a novice.

Faith with Terror. Benedictine nuns specialize in making church ornaments, vestments and altar cloths. Genevieve's work was skillful, but it puzzled and confused the sisters by its harsh turbulence. One day an art collector named Dr. Paul Alexandre came upon some of Genevieee's work at a church sale. Impressed, he began to buy it whenever he could; eventually, he slipped a book of Rembrandt sketches for her through the grill of the convent. Later, he sent her a printing press and etcher's tools.

Slowly and laboriously, cramped by rheumatism, Mere Genevieve perfected her technique of etching. Last year she completed her major work to date: a series showing the 14 Stations of the Cross, bound together in parchment with four other etchings. When Modern Painter Marie Laurencin saw the pictures, she was so enthusiastic that she begged the editor of Figaro Litteraire to let her announce her discovery. Her verdict: "[They have] the faith of the great primitives shining in each of their faces, with a terror that recalls only Goya." Almost overnight, Mere Genevieve's name was made, and the convent began to sell more sets of her etchings at around $60 a set. Just as important, the nuns began to accept her work as something more than merely strange and disturbing.

Token of her new status was last month's commission to design the new convent's windows. She is giving the project much thought, but there is no hurrying her. Instead of beginning sketches at once, she went right ahead with her etchings to illustrate the Gospel of St. Luke. "I have ideas, yes," she said. "But I am not ready to begin."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.