The Queen’s Conventa major architectural challenge

The Queen's convent at Versailles, whose two hundred and fifty years of existence are being celebrated this year, is not a building known to the general public. However, it is a major establishment in the city, which was built on the will of Queen Marie Leszczyńska, and whose plan reflects the constraints that Richard Mique had to confront, challenges skillfully taken up by the architect to erect the buildings that became the Hoche high school. 

Florian Audouin, a teacher at the Hoche High School, the referent for historic buildings

In 1766, on the death of her father Stanislas Leszczyński, deposed king of Poland and Duke of Lorraine, Queen Marie Leszczyńska received as an inheritance the sum of 450,000 pounds, which she devoted to fulfilling a wish that she is expensive: that of founding a convent in Versailles, where she wishes to end her days if her husband King Louis XV dies before her. Very pious, she wanted to escape the libertine and hostile climate that then reigned at court.

A royal order

At this time, the Clagny estate and its castle, built for Madame de Montespan in the previous century, were in danger of ruin due to lack of maintenance on the part of the heirs of the marquise. They then returned to the Crown, after an exchange with the Count of Eu, and Louis XV ceded to his wife, for the foundation of his religious establishment, a plot of land of eleven acres on the ancient gardens of Clagny; This land is divided into two plots, a strip of land of two acres, perpendicular to Avenue de Saint-Cloud, and a rectangular plot of nine acres to the north. The queen designates as architect Richard Mique, her father's architect; and in a letter from his Polish confessor, Father Bieganski, dated October 8, 1766, the Nancy architect was called to Versailles to take charge of the construction of the future convent.

The queen's choice for the occupants of the premises falls on the congregation of Notre-Dame, regular canonesses of Saint-Augustin; the order of the canonesses of Saint-Augustin had been founded approximately one hundred and fifty years earlier by Saint Pierre Fourier, a native of the Vosges. The latter is one of the main figures of the Catholic Reformation in Lorraine in the 17th century. Responsible, from 1621 to 1628, for the reform of the order of the canons of Saint-Augustin, he was also at the origin of the creation of the congregation of Notre Dame, the female counterpart of that of the canons, which he directed. with the religious educator Alix Le Clerc. In addition to the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, each future canoness of Saint-Augustin must take a vow to teach. In his work The Constitutions, Pierre Fourier defines the rules of community life as well as the complete regulations for the education of young girls that the canonesses will take charge of; in particular, any establishment of this order must have “small schools” called “external” intended to welcome young girls from the city free of charge, regardless of their social origin.

During Court stays in Compiègne, Marie Leszczyńska frequently met these nuns. She was moved to see them living in dilapidated buildings and appreciated the teaching vocation of this order. The convent she created would have a boarding school intended to permanently accommodate around fifty boarders, daughters of officers of the Queen and then the Crown, as a reward for the services rendered by their parents. The “small schools” fill a gap in Versailles. They will have welcomed up to 500 little girls and the convent, nearly 400 residents. Furthermore, the Notre-Dame church having become too small for the northern district of the city, the convent chapel must accommodate the inhabitants of the city wishing to go to mass, which for Richard Mique implies the establishment within the building of a scholarly distribution of five streams of people who must not meet. But above all, for the congregation to be recognized by Rome, the canonesses and their residents are required to follow the strict rule of enclosure. Hence the responsibility of the architect to arrange the different departments of the convent: that of the nuns and their residents, inside the enclosure; that of the chapel open to the faithful of the city, outside the fence; and that of the day school, accessible directly from avenue de Saint-Cloud, without access to the cloistered enclosure.

In his first project, presented to the queen in 1767, Richard Mique established five distinct domains: to the east, the nuns installed in a U-shaped building around a cloister, the residents then took possession of a symmetrical building to the 'west. To the north, a large central building with three floors, intended for the queen and the novitiate, connecting the two previous ones. To the south, the chapel and the choirs of the nuns and residents. In the main courtyard, the “small schools” opened for the city’s girls.

The queen died on June 24, 1768, without completing her religious and teaching establishment. His daughter Madame Adélaïde continues her work and Richard Mique offers her two new projects, in which the convent buildings are very little altered. In the last project, accepted by the princess, the church and the parlors were redesigned in a sense of softening the primitive austerity characterizing the buildings overlooking the main courtyard. The chapel, according to a Greek cross plan, then enters into perfect harmony with the two square parlors that frame it. The nuns arrived at Versailles at the end of September 1772; the closing ceremony took place at the beginning of the following October. Work on the chapel was completed in 1778. The façade of the Hoche high school, visible from the main courtyard or from the old gardens which have become the “sports courtyard”, today perfectly reflects the achievements of Richard Mique.

A fence under the control of the bishopric of Paris

In the spring of 1772, the enclosure not yet in effect, the sisters could not take possession of the convent. On July 7 of the same year, the Archbishop of Paris sent a delegation made up of archbishopric staff, namely the official Jean-Baptiste de Bois-Basset, the clerk and the attorney general, joined by Mr. Corvisart, representing the community, and eight residents of the Notre-Dame district. The visit is led by Richard Mique. The report, written by the official, confirms the perfect success of the architect's work while respecting the closure for the entire establishment. The commemorations for the 2022-2023 school year correspond exactly to the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the closing of the Queen's Convent.

The fence for “external schools”

Although their teachers are nuns, the little pupils of the “external schools” do not have access to the inside of the enclosure. The complex organization, indicated below, is repeated every day and Richard Mique's plan allows us to understand it.

The little students, entering the main courtyard, head towards the space authorized for them. A two-leaf oak door lined with fir with a window opens onto a first passage into the open air, at the end of which a shed allows them to take shelter on rainy days. A Swiss man closes this first door once the children enter. A second oak door, closed on the inside by a safety lock, is opened by a nun doorkeeper, allowing students to enter the “class yard”, a closed space separated from the rest of the convent. The little girls are then welcomed by the teachers who open the four classrooms overlooking this courtyard to them. When the schoolgirls leave, the opposite process takes place. Thanks to this system, which can be compared to that of a lock, external schools are outside the fence.

The fence in the visiting rooms

The parlors, on either side of the church, allow the nuns to the east, and the residents to the west, to receive visitors. Closure is still required there.

To join her visitor, a nun, leaving a community room or her cell, walks through a long gallery that opens onto the interior gardens and the “kitchen courtyard”. She enters the internal visiting room. The authorized visitor accesses the building through the main courtyard and takes a passage to reach the external visiting room (equipped with a fireplace). The sister and the visitor are separated by a wall with an opening where two grilles are placed, one in wood, the other in wrought iron, sufficiently spaced apart, preventing any contact between people; similarly, a “turn” allows small objects to be brought in or out without direct contact. Two other identical parlors are located upstairs. It is accessed by two separate staircases, one for visitors, and the other for the nuns. On the ground floor, the second wing of the building is used for the passage of large-volume objects and foodstuffs between the interior and exterior of the convent, for which the porters are responsible. It is through an open cart door in the wall of the “kitchen courtyard” that the carts enter the enclosure with their loading of very large volumes of provisions (food and wood).

The fence in the church

The genius of Richard Mique is revealed in particular in the arrangement of the different choirs built in the most sacred parts of the convent. The plan designed by the architect is unique in France. During masses, the priest officiates outside the enclosure, in the church choir. It accesses an exterior sacristy located behind the altar and separated from the interior sacristy where the sisters are placed, isolated by grilles, a "tower", an oak door, and the skylights of the confessionals skillfully installed in the walls. Richard Mique created two other rotunda-shaped choirs on either side of the church choir, one for the nuns and the other for the residents.

The rotundas are separated from the chapel by two very large wrought iron grilles lined with the same wooden grilles, as in the parlors. A wicket pierced in the fence allows hosts to be passed to the nuns and residents at the time of the Eucharist. Twelve years ago, Frédéric Didier, chief architect of Historical Monuments, was in charge of the restoration of the chapel. Thanks to his expertise, these large wrought iron grilles on either side of the altar and that of the gallery initially allocated to the queen, located in the axis of the church, were restored. These had been removed, the openings blocked, replaced by five niches which disfigured the original plan and no longer made it possible to understand the functioning of the building.

The rotundas, which became documentation and information rooms for high school students fifteen years ago, have not yet been restored but the architectural coherence has, happily, been rediscovered. The spirit of Richard Mique once again reigns in these places. His creative genius, his concern for the arrangement of spaces, the harmony of volumes, and the refined aesthetics of emerging neo-classicism are once again fully perceptible in this building which makes the former convent of the Queen a sumptuous setting for the jewel that is its chapel.

This year we are celebrating the two hundred and fifty years of the closing ceremony of the convent, which the canonesses entered on October 2, 1772, after the blessing of the premises and the handing over of the keys to the mother superior, with the seal of the community.

Richard Mique

Richard Mique was born in 1728 in Nancy. His father is an architect-entrepreneur from Lunéville, aide and successor to Emmanuel Héré to whom we owe the great places of Nancy. Chief engineer of the bridges and roads of Lorraine and Barrois, first architect and general director of the Buildings of the King of Poland Stanislas Leszczyński (father of Marie Leszczyńska, future queen of France), Richard Mique rebuilt the Saint-Stanislas and Sainte gates -Catherine, entrance to the city of Nancy, and raised the Sainte-Catherine barracks there for the grenadiers of France. In 1722, he perfectly organized the Nancy and Malgrange celebrations offered to Mesdames Adélaïde and Victoire, while they were going to Plombières to take the waters. As a reward, King Louis XV made him a knight of the Order of Saint-Michel. On the death of Stanislas Leszczynski, Richard Mique was called to Versailles by Marie-Leszczyńska on the advice of her Polish confessor Bieganski, to build the future “Convent of the Queen”. His reputation at court was such that Marie-Antoinette subsequently became attached to him and commissioned numerous works from him at Versailles in her apartments and interior cabinets (salon des Nobles, Cabinet doré, cabinet de la Méridienne), as well as in Trianon (Temple of Love, belvedere, theater, Hamlet) and Saint-Cloud in particular. In 1774, Mique became intendant and controller of the Queen's Buildings and then replaced Ange-Jacques Gabriel as the first architect to King Louis XVI in 1775. Honest, and trustworthy, he is also an intelligent man and a hard worker. In 1776, he was appointed director of the Royal Academy of Architecture.

The Revolution was fatal to him: arrested as “accused of conspiring” to save the queen, he was condemned on July 7, 1794, by the Revolutionary Tribunal and guillotined two days later.

Richard Mique, the great defender of the neoclassical style, drew his inspiration from the works of the Italian Renaissance and more particularly those of the architect Andrea Palladio. His constructions bear witness to his perpetual concern for the adaptation of each building to its use and functional use in architecture.

History of the convent fence

In the 6th century AD, in the East, there were mixed monasteries of men and women, which did not have a good reputation. Thus in 529, Emperor Justinian imposed a strict separation of the sexes, which did not prohibit nuns from leaving their convent or lodging outside. It is the concern to separate monks and nuns which is at the origin of the rule of enclosure. At the same time, in the West, the ad virgins rule of Caesarius of Arles established the so-called “passive” enclosure which prohibited non-religious women from entering a female monastery. The “active” enclosure, which prohibited nuns from leaving the convent, was imposed in 755 at the Council of Worm. With the Periculoso decree of Pope Boniface VIII in 1298, the enclosure became papal and universal: all nuns must henceforth remain in their monastery under a perpetual enclosure (only lifted in the event of contagious illness or fire in the convent). This is what the Council of Trent took up in the 16th century, in addition to the ipso facto excommunication of any person who entered a monastery without permission. In the following years, the implementing texts of the Council moved in the direction of increasing severity and rigidity. All women, regardless of their order of belonging, must take solemn vows and enter their convent ad vitam aeternam. In the 18th century, restrictions even applied to visitors: double gates in the parlor, and veiled nun. Any nun who leaves the convent without permission is ipso facto excommunicated, as well as those who welcome her outside the convent. Until the beginning of the 20th century, the rules of enclosure were more and more restrictive: the nuns must neither be visible from the outside nor see anything themselves: the windows become opaque, and the parlor grills are sealed in the wall.

The Second Vatican Council, in the decree Perfectae Caritatis of 1965, reduced the scope of strict papal enclosure: “The papal enclosure for nuns of a purely contemplative life will be maintained, but once the opinions of the monasteries themselves have been collected same, we will adapt it to the circumstances of time and place, removing obsolete uses. » This relaxation was confirmed in 1983 in the new code of canon law: any religious community must simply have a “reserved space” taking into account the character and particular mission of the religious institute.

From the beginning, the purpose of the fence has been the separation between the exterior world deemed impure and dangerous, and the interior world close to the divine. In this way, it provides protection and security and allows us to create a privileged meeting place with God. The physical barrier of the material fence is today, probably, to be put in second place compared to the spiritual fence. It’s the interior cloister that counts. The separation of the profane world and the sacred world must always be present in religious apostolic life, even in different ways. Saint Vincent de Paul already addressed the Daughters of Charity in these terms: “You will have as a monastery the rooms of the sick, to cloister the streets of the city, to guard the fear of God, to veil holy modesty. »

The festivities of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the closing of the Queen's convent

It seemed appropriate to the management of the Hoche High School and the Association of the Historical Museum of the Hoche High School to celebrate, during the 2022-2023 school year, the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the closing of the Queen's convent (in October 1772), the arrival of boarders (January 1773) and the opening of “small external schools” (July 1773). The high school students were able to discover in depth the origins of their establishment through visits to the chapel and convent buildings. A laurel tree was planted for the occasion on Friday, November 18 in front of the old “external schools”; it symbolizes the success and distinction of the schoolgirls and boarders whose education was supported by the Augustinian sisters in the 18th century, as well as of all the students of the Hoche high school since its opening in 1807. A cycle of new conferences was organized and general and in-depth visits led by members of the Museum Association are offered free of charge to anyone who wishes them. Information: www.amismuseehoche.fr.