Jacqueline-Marie-Angélique Arnauld or Arnault, called La Mère Angélique (September 8, 1591 in Paris – August 6, 1661 in Port-Royal des Champs) was abbess of Port Royal, a center of Jansenism.
She was the third of the twenty children of the lawyer Antoine Arnauld, and one of six sisters of the philosopher Antoine Arnauld.
While she was being raised by Cistercians in Port-Royal des Champs, abbess Johanna von Boulehart selected Angélique as her successor at the age of seven. Months before her twelfth birthday, Angélique became abbess of Port-Royal on July 5, 1602. She was better known thereafter as La Mère Angélique.
Mère Angélique reformed her convent shortly after becoming abbess, and she was instrumental in the reforms of several other convents.
In 1635, she came under the influence of Jean du Vergier de Hauranne, the abbot of Saint-Cyran, one of the promoters of a Christian tradition that the Jesuits called Jansenism. During the 17th-century formulary controversy and the persecution of Port-Royal (1648–1652)[1], she was forced to sign a document condemning the five propositions of Jansenism.
Her niece Angélique de Saint-Jean and her nephew Antoine Le Maistre persuaded Arnauld to write an autobiography, which was mostly the story of her community's heroic resistance in the face of its religious tribulations.[2]