Louis Martin and Marie-Azélie Guérin

Description

Louis Martin (22 August 1823 – 29 July 1894) and Marie-Azélie “Zélie” Guérin Martin (23 December 1831 – 28 August 1877) were two married Roman Catholic French laypeople and the parents of five Roman Catholic nuns, including Thérèse of Lisieux, a Carmelite nun who was canonized as a saint of the Catholic Church in 1925. On 18 October 2015, the couple were also canonized as saints, becoming the first spouses in the church’s history to be canonized as a couple.

Louis Joseph Aloys Stanislaus Martin was the third of five children of Pierre-François Martin and Marie-Anne-Fanny Boureau. All his siblings died before reaching age 30.

Although Louis intended to become a monk, wishing to enter the Augustinian Great St. Bernard Monastery, he was rejected because he did not succeed at learning Latin. Later he decided to become a watchmaker and studied his craft in Rennes and in Strasbourg

Azélie-Marie Guérin was born in Gandelain, near Saint-Denis-sur-Sarthon, Orne, France. She was the second daughter of Isidore Guérin and Louise-Jeanne Macé. She had an older sister, Marie-Louise, who became a Visitandine nun, and a younger brother, Isidore, who was a pharmacist. Her maternal family was from the Madré, in the neighbouring department of Mayenne, where her grandfather, Louis Macé, was baptised on 16 March 1778.[citation needed]

Zélie wanted to become a nun, but was turned away by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul due to respiratory difficulties and recurrent headaches. She then prayed for God to give her many children and that they would be consecrated to God. She later decided to become a lacemaker, manufacturing Alençon lace. She fell in love with the watchmaker Louis Martin in 1858 and married him, only three months later, on 12 July 1858, at the Basilica of Notre-Dame in Alençon. Zélie’s business became so successful that, in 1870, Louis sold his watchmaking business to go into partnership with her.

Zélie died of breast cancer on 28 August 1877 in Alençon, aged 45, leaving her husband and daughters. Her funeral was held in the basilica where she had married Louis. A few weeks later, Louis sold her lacemaking business and their house along Rue St. Blaise, and moved to Lisieux, Normandy, where Zélie’s brother Isidore Guérin, a pharmacist, lived with his wife and two daughters.

After Zélie’s death, Pauline, Thérèse (Françoise-Thérèse), and Céline all became Carmelite nuns, along with a cousin, Marie Guérin. Léonie became a Visitandine nun at Caen after leaving the Poor Clares.

In 1889 Louis suffered two paralyzing strokes followed by cerebral arteriosclerosis, and was hospitalised for three years at the Bon Sauveur Asylum in Caen. In 1892 he returned to Lisieux, where two of his daughters looked after him until his death on 29 July 1894 at Chateau La Musse near Évreux.