Mother Angélique Arnauld's Reflections on Reform: Creating Unity and Managing Dissent at Port-Royal

Port-Royal's history demonstrates how aspects of internal dissent can have negative effects on the well-being of a convent. This challenge appears throughout its controversial history, beginning when Mother Angélique Arnauld (1591–1661) began to implement reform and ending with the destruction of the original convent. This article returns to the roots of this conflict by exploring how Mother Angélique responded to such internal dissent in response to her reforms. By examining her account of her reform and monastic discourses, this article argues that these sources show intentional efforts to maintain unity around reform and a theological understanding of reform.