Congregation of Mary. Commonly called founder of that order, although it was actually instituted by Fourier, a Jesuit father. Born of a noble family at Remiremont, in Lorraine, in 1576; died Jan. 9, 1622. In her youth she was fond of dancing and of worldly amusements. Being at a country place called Hymont, near Mataincourt, on three successive Sundays, while she was attending Mass, her thoughts were distracted by the sound of a drum. The third time, giving her whole attention to the sound, she was absorbed in a vision, and saw the devil beating the drum, and followed by a number of gay young people. She forthwith resolved not to be one of them, adopted the white veil of the peasant girls of the place, and took a vow of celibacy, which greatly alarmed her parents, and scandalized the inhabitants of Mataincourt, where piety was not in fashion. She placed herself under the direction of Father Fourier, curate of Mataincourt, and afterwards became superior of a house of canonesses under his direction. While building the first monastery at Nancy, in 1615, Alix went to Paris, to the Ursulines of the Faubourg S. Jacques, to learn their method of combining their clôture with the instruction of little day scholars. She worked as a novice there for two months. The regulations of the new order were finished some years later. Meantime the nuns had several houses before they obtained permission to make them into monasteries. At length, all difficulties being overcome, and their novitiate finished, Alix and her companions took the solemn monastic vows in 1618; after which she redoubled her austerities, and thereby shortened her life. She was honoured as a saint immediately after her death, and many persons invoked her intercession with success. Helyot, Hist. des Ordres Monastiques, ii. chap. 64.
B. Aliz la Bourgotte, June 29 (Aletha, Alexia, Aleza, Alix, Aloysia). 1466. O.S.A. In the hospital of St. Catherine at Paris, in 1328, there were brothers and sisters hospitallers who served the poor; their duties were to receive for three days any poor women or girls who came to Paris, and to bury prisoners who died in the Chastelet or Fort l'Évesque, and persons found assassinated in the streets or drowned in the river. They had the right to bury, in the cemetery of the Holy Innocents, the poor who died in their house. In course of time, only sisters remained in the hospital, and in 1558, as there were no brothers, a secular priest, appointed by the archbishop of Paris, was the superior of the sisters. In this hospital, early in the 15th century, a holy maid, Sister Alix, or Aliz la Bourgotte, lived for some years in the service of the poor. By-and-by, desiring to lead a more retired life and have no intercourse with her fellow-creatures, she was shut up in a room at the top of the house to try isolation for a year; after which she went to the cemetery of the Holy Innocents, and was walled up in a cell adjoining the church; she had a window, through which she could hear Mass and services. Here she lived for forty-six years, with so much holiness that at her death, in 1466, Louis XI. raised a bronze tomb to her memory, with a rhymed epitaph, in which she was called "Sœur Aliz la Bourgotte." Helyot, Ordres Monastiques, ii. 294, says she was of the Order of St. Augustine. The Ordenskalendar of the Franciscans claims her as a member of their third order, and calls her Aloysia Burgotta. She is called, in the appendix to Saussaye, Mart. Gallicanum, B. Aletha, recluse at Paris. The Bollandists say that although she is claimed by both these orders, she has no worship and no proper day.
St. Alkalda, March 28, Oct. 27 (Alkeld, Alkilda), a Saxon virgin, martyred by Danes. Represented in a window of the old church of Middleham, in Yorkshire, being strangled by two women. So little is known of her, that some archæologists suppose there was no saint of this name, which means a fountain. St. Alkold's Well is still believed to have healing virtues. Her church, at Giggleswick, in Yorkshire, was founded in the 12th century. Parker, Calendar. Arnold Forster, Dedications.
St. Alla, or Abba, May 7, M. in Africa. AA.SS.
