Port-Royal Abbey, Paris

By deed of July 19, 1624, Léon exchanged the Hôtel de Clagny with Angélique Arnauld, member of a prominent family of the noblesse du robe and abbess of Port Royal des Champs, for an annuity of 1,500 livres.

The Chapel of the Très Saint Sacrement was built between 1646 and 1648, based on plans by the architect Antoine Lepautre.

[3] As a result of this purchase, the Cistercian community of nuns was able to leave Port-Royal-des-Champs, thereby alleviating overcrowding and the risks of tuberculosis.

[4] Sébastien Zamet, bishop of Langres, was one of the abbey's major advisors at the time and became its ecclesial protector.

[6] In addition to the urban monastery, the nuns established a further house of prayer, namely the Institut du Saint-Sacrement, which was officially recognized by church and state in 1633.

Both of the Port Royal abbeys were hotbeds of Jansenism, which embodied religious and political beliefs that were thought to be contrary to the interests of the monarchy and of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

In 1661, the powerful Cardinal Mazarin died and Louis XIV seized full control of the government under the influence of his Jesuit confessor, Annat.

The Port Royal religious authorities managed to survive an initial serious controversy in the mid-17th century, when they arrived at a shaky truce with Louis XIV in 1669.

During this controversy, the nuns of Port Royal were seen as stout defenders of their freedom of thought and they produced influential works on religious and philosophical subjects.

Despite their considerable influence, the nuns who refused to disavow their Jansenist beliefs were expelled in August 1664 and replaced by the Visitandines until the French Revolution.

In the end, the Port Royal religious communities were not able to withstand the combined antipathy of the Catholic Church and the French monarchy.

[12] In 1890, the Baudelocque clinic was created by the Faculty of Medicine of Paris and built in the gardens of the Maternité, to the west of the cloister.

During the bombing of Paris, on April 11, 1918, the Baudelocque clinic was hit by a German shell, causing 20 casualties.

[14] In the early 1950s, pediatrician and neonatologist Alexandre Minkowski created the first care center for premature babies at the Baudelocque maternity hospital.

[15] The details of monastic life at the abbey often inspired painters (Philippe de Champaigne[16] and Louise Magdeleine Hortemels[17]) and writers (Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve).