INTAMS review 22, 47-62. doi: 10.2143/InT.22.1.3159717 47© 2016 by InTAMS review. All rights reserved

Attilio Danese / Giulia Paola Di nicola

Raïssa Oumançoff and Jacques Maritain: A Couple Take the Path of Love and of Faith*

Introduction1

Jacques and Raïssa followed a path of love and of searching that brought them to their personal conversion and their conversion as a couple. The link between love and the understanding of the faith enabled them to avoid a Christianity that was reduced to moralism, pure otherworldliness, fideism, concentration on their own family, or communitarianism.

As a man and a woman, they experienced the reciprocal attraction of the eros that is inscribed in the law of creation (“Male and female He created them”), but at the same time, they recognized its source in God himself. It was he who attracted them and led them to “divinize” their relationship (agape).

Their history demonstrates that the Spirit pursues in each person a path that is karstic; that both marriage and virginity are oriented to Love and make each other fruitful; that true love is therapeutic and ecological, because it cleanses people’s souls of the dust and the din of the city squares; that fecundity cannot be limited to procreation alone; and that the lay state and the married state are paths of sanctification.

1. The “Grace” of Falling in Love

Raïssa (1882-1960) and Jacques (1882-1973) got to know each other through fortuitous and providential circumstances at the Sorbonne in the winter of 1900.

Raïssa, born in Rostov in Russia on September 12, 1883, had emigrated with her family of Hasidic Jews to Paris when she was ten years old. As she writes in Les grandes amitiés, she could never forget the compassion she felt when her younger sister Vera was born and she saw her father weeping in front of the closed door behind which her mother was about to give birth: “In this way, the earliest

* Translated from Italian by Brian Mcneil.1 This is the revised version of a text first published in the volume of essays by various authors

entitled La reciprocità verginità-matrimonio, Siena: Cantagalli, 2000, and in M. Chiaia/ F. Incampo (eds.): Come Chiara e Francesco, Milan: Ancora, 2007.

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memory I retain is that of my father weeping. The second memory is my desire to erase his suffering.”2

Pieter van der Meer, a Dutch socialist and anarchist, a longshoreman at the harbor and a literary critic who ended his days as a Benedictine monk, was a friend of the Maritains for many years. This is how he describes Raïssa: “Raïssa was a Jewess born in Mariopol near Rostov in southern Russia…They were authentic Israelites, without guile, as Jesus said of nathanael, deeply good people. Although they were not rich, they helped the poor and vagrants. People loved them and warned then whenever any uprising against the Jews was in prepara-tion…They were no Pharisees, formalists of the law. They were true Israelites, children of the chosen people that had produced the patriarchs, the prophets, the judges, the kings, Mary, Joseph, the apostles, and the first Christians…Raïssa was a very intelligent child, and the desire to learn, to know, and to understand manifested itself in her at a very early age.”3

Her parents attached great importance to the education of their daughters, but since there was a numerus clausus in Russia for Jewish students – and especially for women students – they thought of emigrating to America. The father, who was a tailor, was the first to leave, but a casual conversation with a fellow exile made him decide to settle in Paris. Raïssa underwent the separation from her native land and the difficult integration in a country where she was an exile. But France and Paris turned out to be providential: the city was full of intellectual stimuli, and Raïssa knew how to make the most of these. She was a sensitive and intellectually lively woman. She matriculated at the Faculty of natural Sciences, where Jacques, who had already taken his doctorate in philosophy, was also following courses, because “I still believed that the natural sciences possessed the key to all knowledge.”4

Van der Meer gives this description of Raïssa at the time when she met Jacques: “The girl was now eighteen years old. She lived in expectation of some great certitude, but was torn inwardly by problems and doubts. What is the purpose of life? What is the point of the universe? …By now, she was a student at the Sorbonne, and my imagination still sees her like that. She was not tall; her slen-der body reminds one of some beautiful exotic bird. Her eyes are deep, brilliant with intelligence, astonished, inquiring. Her hair is black like ebony, framing her open face, and making her resemble the Rachel of the Old Testament, whose name she bore. An irresistible fascination emanates from her, together with a shadow of light melancholy; but it is the expression of her intelligence that predominates. This fragile young girl is assailed by despair. And it was precisely at this time that Raïssa Oumançoff gets to know Jacques Maritain, who is also a student. Two souls draw near to each other. Raïssa has written very beautiful

2 R. Oumançoff-Maritain: I grandi amici, Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1956, 10. [Translator’s note: Where otherwise unspecified, the texts quoted in this article are translated into English from the Italian translations.]

3 P. van der Meer: Tutto è amore, Milan: Paoline, 1974, 59-62.4 Ibid. 45.

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and moving pages about this meeting…With regard to Jacques, Raïssa is imme-diately conquered by a total trust.”5

This is how Raïssa tells the story: “One day I came out of a lecture, feeling melancholy…and I saw coming towards me a young man with a kind face, with lots of blond hair and a light beard, who was slightly bent over when he walked. He presented himself to me and told me that he was forming a committee of students to organize a protest movement… against the bad treatment inflicted on the socialist Russian students in their countries (at that time, the revolts by university students were being severely crushed by the Tsarist police). He asked me to put my name forward for this committee…We became almost insepara-ble…After the lectures, he accompanied me to my home…The road was long and our conversations were interminable. He forgot the dinner time at his own home, and this worried his mother and annoyed the cook…There was nothing outside of what we had to say to each other, because it was necessary to rethink the entire universe, the meaning of life, the fate of human beings, the justice and the injustice in society. It was necessary to read the contemporary poets and novelists, to go to concerts of classical music, to visit picture galleries…Time passed all too quickly, and we could not waste it on the banalities of life…For the first time, I was meeting someone who suddenly inspired in me an absolute trust; someone who, as I already knew even then, would never disappoint me; someone with whom I could attain such a beautiful harmony on all matters. Another Someone had preordained a sovereign harmony between us, despite such great differences in our temperaments and our backgrounds.”6

Raïssa would come to recognize the hand of God in that “Someone” who was present between two people who were in love.

2. Eager for Knowledge

Raïssa notes: “Jacques Maritain had the same deep preoccupations that I had. He was tormented by the same questions, and he was wholly motivated by the same longing for truth. But he was more mature than I was. He had more knowl-edge and experience, and above all, more genius. He immediately became my great support. Even then, he overflowed with interior activity, with kindness, with generosity, without any prejudices: a soul that was completely new, that seemed constantly to invent all by itself its own law without any respect for other people, because he had the greatest respect for his own conscience. He was wholly able to infuse passion into any discussion, no matter what its subject matter might be…He was always ready to take the initiative for a generous action, if this involved justice or truth. His own artistic culture was already at a very high level

5 Ibid. 65-66.6 R. Oumançoff-Maritain: I grandi amici, 45-46. On the allusion to the “third party,” see

A. Danese/G.P. Di nicola: Perché sposarsi?, Milan: San Paolo, 2014.

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even then, thanks to his innate sensitivity to poetry and to the beauty of sculpture. It was he who revealed to me the immense universe of paintings. It was with him that I went for the first time to the Louvre Museum.”7

The two young people evaluated what they knew in the light of the truth towards which they were making their way with all their soul. Raïssa writes: “Although we had matriculated at the Faculty of natural Sciences, we accompa-nied each other to the philosophy lectures at the Faculty of Liberal Arts, although all we received there was instruction in integral relativism, intellectual skepticism, and – if the professors were logical – of moral nihilism.”8 Dissatisfied with the teaching they were receiving, they decided to attend the lectures of Henri Berg-son, who combated the prejudices of a pseudo-scientific positivism and helped them to free themselves from the materialism of anti-metaphysics.9 They were attracted by art in all its forms and by the literature of all ages: the Enneads of Plotinus, Plato, Pascal…In philosophy, the two young people recognized the murmuring of the Spirit who guided them delicately and united their lives. nor would they ever forget their gratitude to Bergson and to the godfather at their baptism, Léon Bloy (1846-1917). They promoted interest in his writings in various ways and oversaw the English-language edition in 1947. They decided to get married:

Raïssa and Jacques can no longer imagine their existence without each other. It becomes impossible for them to part company…One day, Jacques is sitting at Raïssa’s feet – and later on, even when he will be the celebrated Thomist, this will still be the position he prefers when his friends meet – and he speaks with her about all the things that fill them to overflowing. At one point, Raïssa runs her hand through his full head of hair; he looks up and immerses his eyes in hers. From now on, they both know that they will belong to each other with strength and forever. They get married on november 26, 1904: Jacques, a blond young man with a shock of rebellious hair that he brushes aside all the time with his fine, intelligent hand; Raïssa, a fragile young woman, an Oriental who belongs to the chosen people, descended from the royal Hebrew blood, whose melancholy expression seems to suffer because of the veil that covers her intelligence, which is so eager to see.10

Theirs is a friendship that encompasses everything – bodies, minds, and the Spirit – a friendship that will last all their lives. At the congress held by the Catholic University of Milan to mark the centenary of Jacques’ birth, Maurice

7 R. Oumançoff-Maritain: I grandi amici, 47.8 Ibid. 69.9 “It is not easy today to realize what Bergson’s lectures meant…At the very beginning of the

present century, I too attended some of his lectures, with the aula full to bursting…This was the point of departure of a new orientation of people’s spirits, of a renewal. Raïssa and Jacques feel that they are being reborn to life…Bergson detaches them from despair and from a vul-gar materialism” (P. van der Meer: Tutto è amore, 67).

10 P. van der Meer: Tutto è amore, 67-86.

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Maurin spoke about a moment they had shared in Paris in the botanical garden, after the death of Raïssa:11

Without paying any attention to the photographer who was getting on with his own work, Jacques walked along a path in the garden, looking around calmly, with his sweet and direct gaze. At that moment, we knew, without any need to tell each other in words, that Jacques was giving thanks to God and to Raïssa for the seventy years that had passed since he had gone for a walk in these same places with the young Raïssa. At that time, they were not yet twenty years old, and they despaired of finding a meaning in the word ‘truth’…Three months later, Jacques passed away in peace to the other life.12

3. Léon Bloy

Getting to know the writer Léon Bloy played a fundamental role. He had converted from a violent anticlericalism to Catholicism, and he attracted to his house persons of various faiths. Pieter van der Meer asked Léon Bloy to help him spiritually: “I shall not only help you. I shall also give you a brother and two sisters, Jacques, Raïssa, and Vera…”13

Bloy relates how he met the two young people: “Is it you, Saint Barnabas, who are sending these souls to me? There is a mysterious affinity between this apostle and myself!… two persons (who very soon became neighbors of paradise, so to speak), a young husband and a young wife, suddenly presented themselves to tell about their ambition to be useful, to become our friends!”14 And after that day, he also noted: “What a supernatural adventure, what a blessing these two friends are…The man is one of those young idealists who do not know God, but who let themselves be drawn upwards over the stairs of light by their hair, and maybe even by their feet. The woman is a Russian Jewess, small. She reminds me of a woodland lily of the valley, which could be bent on its stalk by a ray of sunlight that was too strong. In this person, so fragile and enchanting, there lives a soul capable of bending oak-trees. Her intelligence disconcerted me from the very first day…Dear little Samaritan woman, you who had pity on the traveler

11 The “botanical garden” was a pleonastic name that was given to a number of “solitary and fascinating” places that were popular among the Left Bank Parisians.

12 Jacques Maritain, Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1983, 142.13 P. van der Meer: Tutto è amore, 59.14 L. Bloy: L’invendable, Paris: Mercure de France, 1909, 98, cited in P. van der Meer: Tutto

è amore, 69. And in fact, it was on the feast of Saint Barnabas, June 11, 1906, that the two young people received baptism in an intimate and enchanted atmosphere. L. Bloy noted: “June 11, feast of Saint Barnabas, at 11 o’clock. J.M. abjures heresy, then his baptism, then the baptism of his young wife Raïssa, and the nuptial blessing. Her sister too was baptized…So now I am the godfather of these three souls of God, who were conquered by my books and who were sent to me last year by the same great lord of paradise, Saint Barnabas, my protec-tor. Their good will, their loving candor, are inexpressible…This day is the equivalent of eternity.” (ibid. 186)

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who was pierced through, may you in your turn be aided by that Other Traveler whom your ancestors crucified.”15

Jacques tells about the supernatural force of the encounter with Bloy: “When we crossed the threshold of his house, we could see that all our values were mis-placed. One knew, or one supposed, that there existed only one sadness: namely, the sadness of not being saints. Everything else was thrown into nothingness. It was unreal.”16

Raïssa, thanks to her fragile state of health, read a great deal, and she was the first to read Saint Thomas, in September 1910: “At last, thanks to Raïssa”, Jacques writes, “I am beginning to read the Summa Theologica. Just as it was for her, so for me too it is a liberation, an inundation of light. The intellect finds its native land.”17

The encounter with Saint Thomas transformed Christianity into solid intel-lectual knowledge. Free from fideistic temptations, they understood that the theo-logical virtue of faith implies a rational assent and a solid doctrinal preparation that permits one to combat relativism and atheism. They found confirmation in the perennial newness of Christian thought, and their confrontation with moder-nity was based on logic.

Even before she read Saint Thomas, Raïssa had perceived the presence of God along the aesthetic path, when she was enchanted by the cathedral of Chartres as a reflection of the uncreated Beauty. The same was true of nature: she tells about a train journey where she looked out of the carriage window and saw the woods fleeing past:

“I was looking, I was not thinking about anything specific. All at once, a profound change took place in me. It was as if I had passed from the perception by the senses to a percep-tion that was wholly internal. The trees that were in flight had suddenly become larger than themselves. They had acquired a prodigious dimension of depth. It seemed that the entire forest was speaking, and was speaking of Another; it seemed that it had become a forest of symbols, and it seemed to me that it had no other function than to point out the Creator to me.”18

With Raïssa’s support, Jacques overcame the difficulty of having to accept, not only the faith, but also the anti-Gospel “ballast” of a widespread and intoler-able conservatism: “If it has pleased God to conceal the truth under this heap of manure, well then, we shall go and look for it there. There is no other path, no other reality, no other possible path.”19

15 P. van der Meer: Tutto è amore, 98.16 R. Oumançoff-Maritain: I grandi amici, 91.17 J. Maritain: Ricordi e appunti, Brescia: Morcelliana, 1967, 98.18 R. Oumançoff-Maritain: I grandi amici, 120.19 P. van der Meer: Tutto è amore, 74-75.

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4. From Communion to a Wider Fecundity

The two young people gave themselves to one another without reservations. They intensified their faith commitment and experienced their harmony, founded on the rock of the Gospel, as a “vocation”. They fought against super-ficiality, against tradition, against the Parisian din that consumed objects, time, and words: “That which is exterior has now become established in the very interior of existence.”20 They had no children, and they understood that their fecundity had to widen out towards those whom the Lord would let them meet along their path. They began to bring together intellectuals and artists in a spirit of friendly dialogue and a “smithy” of culture and spirituality: Rouault, Ghéon, Massis, Fumet, Garrigou-Lagrange, C. Journet, J. Froissart, Berdiaev, Stravinsky, G. Marcel, J. Cocteau… The link between their conjugal and their intellectual experience gave birth to a new kind of cultural activity that refused to tolerate rhetoric, empty proclamations, or aprioristic and ideological definitions, whether on the part of secular persons or of Catholics. The search for unity and distinc-tions (“To distinguish in order to unite” is Maritain’s formula)21 is the rule of life, with respect for differences.

In order to remain firmly established on the rock, their love must fly on high, towards the light. Raïssa writes: “My wish is that we should be detached from everything, free of every prejudice, free of duty, uninterested in merit, without any illusion and without any weakness. My wish is that we should find in our-selves the strength to exist, to exist for Beauty! To be alone, but nevertheless to be strong.”22

Jacques’ intellectual production cannot be divorced from the whole culture of reciprocal love that van der Meer praises: “What a splendid marriage…From this love was born an indestructible union, a shared thought, one single emotion, one single suffering, one single consolation: the shared search for the truth, the dis-covery of God and of the Church, and then a path taken side by side with an uninterrupted dialogue, a mutual influence, a clarification and a continuous enrichment. Raïssa and Jacques did not use a great quantity of words to speak of this harmonious richness of the life they led in the sacrament of matrimony. They scarcely allude to it in their books. But I can testify that Raïssa was never absent from her husband’s intellectual work, and that Jacques was always present in Raïssa’s spiritual life…There was always an extraordinary movement of osmo-sis, although each of them had a very distinct and strongly marked personality, and they were very different in terms of their background, disposition, tempera-ment, character, and attitudes…One cannot separate Raïssa from Jacques; at most, one can distinguish her from him. I remember that it was precisely Raïssa

20 R. Oumançoff-Maritain: I grandi amici, 146.21 See J. Maritain: Distinguer pour unir, ou Les degrés du savoir, Paris: Desclée De Brouwer,

1932.22 R. Oumançoff-Maritain: I grandi amici, 140.

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who gave the subtitle – “to distinguish in order to unite” – to her husband’s fundamental work, Les degrés du savoir. I do not believe that I have ever met another couple who were so close-knit, with such a perfect dialogue of such a high quality, and with such a complete harmony.”23

Raïssa herself confirms this (April 12, 1934): “As far as everything that is in Jacques’ œuvre is concerned, we saw it first…each of us, in keeping with his or her own nature and with the grace of God. (It was through experience that we began to know the absence of the truth. And then we began to suffer because of this absence…).”24 Jacques was aware of the debt he owed to Raïssa, on whom his happiness and his identity depended, as he wrote from the Palazzo Farnese in Rome: “I wander through this immense palace in search of my identity as a philosopher! I wait impatiently for Raïssa, so that I can rediscover myself.”25

At the close of the Second World War, De Gaulle charged him to head the French embassy to the Holy See, and the couple began a completely new expe-rience.26 In the three years his diplomatic mission lasted, from 1945 to 1948, Jacques often met Pope Pius XII and the principal members of the Curia, where he had a privileged relationship with Giovanni Battista Montini. He was a suc-cessful advocate of the interests of France, and he followed the political affairs of the new Italian republic, sending detailed reports on the division of Germany, on the fate of the Catholics who were being persecuted in the communist coun-tries, and on the international protection of the Vatican. Raïssa was informed about everything. She made suggestions, drew up reports, and acted as hostess.

Their fidelity to the Gospel had become integrated in a definitive manner into their mutual love and into their search for the truth. This allowed the promise in the Gospel to become incarnate in their relationship: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matthew 18,20)

5. Savoring the Lay State

The Spirit opened up doors that permitted them to penetrate the great tradi-tion of Christian thought. They compared this with her Hebrew and his Protes-tant roots and with European culture, disclosing both continuities and disconti-nuities and looking at the seeds of the future that they felt they were called to build. We can borrow one of their own expressions and say that they “brought the soul and life to visible existence.”

Jacques relates a remarkable episode that evokes the experience of heaven that Augustine and Monica had: “After reading Maeterlinck, Raïssa and I felt clearly, once we had gone back into the room and stood at the window, caressed by a

23 P. van der Meer: Tutto è amore, 60-61.24 R. Oumançoff-Maritain: Diario di Raïssa, Brescia: Morcelliana, 2000, 226.25 Ibid. 81.26 See R. Fornasier: Jacques Maritain ambasciatore – La Francia, la Santa Sede e i problemi del

dopoguerra, Rome: Studium, 2010.

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light breeze and by the soft colors of the mountain and of the pale, continuous, and lively ribbon of the street – both of us clearly perceived our truth, with a happy spirit and in a definitive manner. I am writing it down here in order to fix the delightful picture and the external situation in my memory; but what happened within us is unutterable and divine. The absolute sincerity, the profound harmony of our souls filled us with an infinite happiness. Life appeared to us, our life, as it must be. And in the silence, we made promises to each other with irrevocable oaths. Strength, a luminous and clear school, a school of life, of sin-cerity, a school in which we shall animate people’s souls, where we will bring the soul and true life to visible existence by means of summons, songs, and rays of light. The school from which there will go forth men and women of truth and of harmony. The school in which we shall do divine things, the necessary expres-sion of our life and of the constant power that animates it. This is clear!”27

It is against the background of this “vocation” that they savor the lay state.28 Together with Raïssa’s sister Vera who lived with them, shared their faith, and helped them in every way, they wanted to found a “smithy” of love and of prayer in the heart of the world, like a secret convent made up of lay persons whose hearts were totally turned to God. Van der Meer comments: “Their existence has something of the peace of a monastery: an intense and tranquil fire.”29 This aspiration to community life initially tended to a servile imitation of monastic communities, as Jacques notes:

All three of us understood decisively that our lay community formed a unit by its own. There was something in the heart of the world that was not of the world…To begin with, we looked on ourselves to some extent as lay monks and nuns…But these illusions quickly vanished. We were lay persons, committed unreservedly to the state of lay life. As the years passed, we felt ourselves more and more to be such: lay persons like ordinary people. But this little flock of three belonged to Jesus.30

They understood that they were not to attach any importance to their juridi-cal status in the Church. Their task was to animate living Churches with Jesus, allying themselves with persons who were ready to let themselves be loved and to love Jesus, taking his love as the measure of their own. Raïssa was happy to open their home to their friends in France, Italy, and the USA, in continuity with the great family tradition of her grandfather, who was known as “Solomon the wise”: “My grandparents’ hospitality was proverbial. It often happened that

27 J. Maritain/R. Maritain: Œuvres complètes, Fribourg: Éditions universitaires – Paris: Éditions Saint Paul, 1961-1995, vol. 12, 145.

28 At that period, there was a very strong distinction between consecrated persons and those whom I. Giordani jokingly called “unconsecrated”. Lay persons experienced a kind of inferi-ority: “I saw that there was not one single married saint in the calendar or in the martyrology, apart from widows and martyrs … We seemed to be the spiritual proletariat.” (I. Giordani: Memorie d’un cristiano ingenuo, Rome: Città nuova, 1981, 147.)

29 P P. van der Meer: Tutto è amore, 77.30 J. Maritain: Ricordi e appunti, 297.

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travelers, on whom the night had fallen while they were still on the road, knocked at their door. My grandfather got up very quickly and woke my grandmother with great joy. It was as if God himself had come to visit them, and the unknown guest was welcomed as far as their modest means allowed.”31

The spiritual fecundity remains striking even today. Experience showed them that the gifts of intelligence, of love, and of faith stagnate if they are not redis-tributed, since they have been bestowed for the benefit of everyone. P. Viotto has commented: “This work of intellectual promotion was a part of their vocation. It was no easy task, because they knew that they had to fight against the devil, the prince of this world (to use the title Raïssa gave one of her books), in the fields of literature and art. Famous conversions, such as that of the American-French novelist Julien Green, took place in their house…Above all, however, their principal interest was in making the philosophy of Saint Thomas better known in the various fields of knowledge, from politics to aesthetics…the Maritains were friendly with Chagall in the field of art, and with Stravinsky, Arthur Lourié, and nabokov in the field of music. Some of Raïssa’s poems were illustrated by Chagall; others were set to music by Lourié.”32

For those who attended Thomistic circles, the Maritains jointly – something very rare at that time – wrote a spiritual guide in 1922 entitled Vie et Prière, with some methodological suggestions about how the intellectual life could be trans-formed into a spiritual life. We read in the preface: “They understood that it was necessary to be contemplatives in the world…on the roads, among people…The spirituality of the twentieth century is characterized by a widespread and growing awareness that the vocation to holiness is addressed to all Christians. Its conse-quence is the sanctification of daily life. Jacques and Raïssa not only lived this reality: they also examined in depth its theological foundations.”33

Jacques concludes the prefatory note to the Journal by summing up this task: “At my age, one is not afraid to speak the truth. When I look back at our past, one thing about our life seems clearer to me…It is, to put it candidly, that the work we undertook consisted, in reality…of attacking the devil on his own terrain…Whether they are religious or lay persons, all founders dream of found-ing for eternity. But the Holy Spirit does not work only in those institutions that last…he is at work also in the adventures that have no tomorrow, the adventures that have to be started anew again and again. nothing has ever been founded without doubt; one sees everything going up in smoke. But one is satisfied with one’s own hard work on behalf of what is best in the world, this miracle of the friends whom God raises up and of the pure fidelities that he inspires. They are a mirror of the gratuitousness and generosity of his own love.”34

31 R. Oumançoff-Maritain: I grandi amici, 12.32 “La contemplzione vissuta per strada”, interview with Pioro Vioto by M. Maltese, 15.11.2010,

available online at http://www.cittanuova.it/contenuto.php?idContenuto=29095&Tipo-Contenuto=web; retrieved 13.04.2016.

33 Preface to Vita di preghiera, Rome: Città nuova, 2007.34 J. Maritain/R. Maritain: Œuvres complètes, vol. 15, 164-165.

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6. One Single Goal, Two Languages

Jacques and Raïssa attained great heights of spirituality not despite their marriage, but thanks to it. Over the course of time, they optimized and altered the modalities of their interpersonal communication, until they felt that their unity lasted even without physical contact. They cast a veil of silent modesty over the choice that they made. Raïssa expresses this choice in poetic words:

The God of hearts effaces the dust of the years and the traces of time. And he bears you without wrinkles and without spot, from love to the Love that knows no sunset.35

Their vow of complete chastity, after only six years of married life, was at first provisional, and was later pronounced in secret in the cathedral of Versailles on October 2, 1912, when he was thirty years old and she twenty-nine. This vow, based on an evaluation that they shared, was taken in accordance with the sug-gestions of the Church, but also at the request of Raïssa. This is confirmed by Father H. Clérissac, O.P., who was their spiritual point of reference from 1908 until his death in 1914, when his place was taken by another Dominican, Father T. Dehau. Although one cannot say that Jacques found it easy to renounce the union of their bodies, the vow was certainly in keeping with what the couple felt intimately.36

Jacques writes: “It was only after consulting Father Clérissac over a long period and receiving his approval that we decided by a common accord to renounce not only the element in matrimony that satisfies the deep needs of the human person, flesh and spirit, but…at the same time, to renounce the hope of living on in sons or daughters. I do not say that this decision was easy to take. It did not entail even the shadow of a contempt for nature…we wanted to make space for the riches of contemplation and of union with God. For the sake of this pearl of great price, we were prepared to sell good things that per se are excellent. The hope of attaining such a goal lent us wings. We also had a presentment – and this was one of the great graces in our life – that the strength and the depth of our mutual love would be infinitely increased.”37 P. Viotto comments: “This vow, which was unknown even to their most intimate friends, is the hidden root of all the cultural, political, and spiritual activities that they would go on to promote. But it was not a renunciation of the conjugal state…It was thus not an anti-conjugal choice, but a heroic perfecting of their life as a couple.”38

35 R. Oumançoff-Maritain: Poesie, ed. G. Galeazzi, Milan: Massimo-Jaka Book, 1990, 114.36 See R. Mougel: “A propos du mariage des Maritains: Leur vœu de 1912 et leur témoignage”,

in: Cahiers Jacques Maritain 22 (1991), 5-44.37 J. Maritain/R. Maritain: Œuvres complètes, vol. 12, 145.38 P. Viotto: “Le ‘tre conversioniʼ de Raïssa Maritain”, 05.11.2010, available online at http://

www.cittanuova.it/contenuto.php?idContenuto=27792&TipoContenuto=articolo; retrieved 13.04.2016.

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In a note Jacques made on “Amore e amicizia” (“Love and friendship,” a chapter in the journal Ricordi e appunti) in 1963, he exposes the snares of the romantic love of fusion and of the passionate love that tends to overwhelm the other. He draws a distinction between cupidity and love, interpreting the path taken by the couple as an ascetic path (as Benedict XVI was to do in Deus caritas est):

I believe that the truth is that love as desire or passion, and romantic love – or at least, an element of it – ought to be present in marriage as a first incentive, as a point of depar-ture…Secondly, the principal goal of marriage is not in the least to bring romantic love to perfection, but rather to carry out a completely different work in human hearts: an infinitely deeper and more mysterious alchemy, that is to say, the transformation of romantic love…into a true and genuine human love that is genuine and indestructible, a love that is truly disinterested. Certainly, this love does not exclude sex, but it becomes ever more independent of sex, and in its most elevated forms, it can indeed be completely free of sexual desire and turbulence, since its nature is essentially spiritual: a complete and irrevocable gift of self from the one to the other, out of love for the other.39

This reveals the task of mutual care and salvation: “Each one can become a kind of guardian angel of the other: prepared and ready, just as a guardian angel must be, to forgive the other much. For I believe that the Gospel law of recipro-cal pardon expresses well a fundamental need that is valid not only in the super-natural order, but also in the earthly order of things… Each one…can thus become genuinely dedicated to the well-being and the salvation of the other.”40

They both had a strong sense of the sacredness and the primacy of the conscience, irrespective of the barriers between believers and non-believers. In complete accordance with her husband’s nine lectures on Scholasticism and Politics (1940), Raïssa wrote: “Every spirit is in living contact with God through the moral conscience, which is present in all the ages of the human race. In its essence and also in its value, the conscience is independent of the explicit knowl-edge of all the moral laws…This is why there are strict observances that are not pharisaical, and apparent cases of ignorance or disobedience that are holy.”41

In general, a poetical and contemplative attitude tends to be attributed to Raïssa, and philosophical rigor to Jacques. They both sought the same God, the one primarily through beauty, and the other through the truth. Raïssa wrote a number of articles, poems, prefaces, book reviews, and translations, which docu-ment her contribution to the cultural life of the twentieth century.42 Jacques projected outwards the same thinking, of which Raïssa was the root and the soul: “It was she who bore the greater weight of the combat, in the invisible depths of

39 J. Maritain: Reflections on America, new York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958 [translated here from Riflessioni sull’America, Brescia: Morcelliana, 1960, 109-110].

40 Ibid. 110.41 J. Maritain: Il principe di questo mondo: Storia di Abraham, Milan: Massimo, 1978, 64.42 R. Maritain: Situation de la poésie, Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1938. See P. Viotto: Raïssa

Maritain: Dizionario delle opere, Rome: Città nuova, 2005.

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her prayer and of her self-oblation.”43 There was no jealousy or envy between them; neither of them laid claims to authorship at the expense of the other. What mattered was the work that they shared in their joint research laboratory. Each appreciated the other’s work. Raïssa regarded Jacques’ political philosophy as the response to Machiavellianism: “He has created the political philosophy that has been fashioned in order to fight that of Machiavelli.”44

Jacques revered art: “Artistic creation does not imitate God’s creation – it continues it. And just as the traces and the image of God appear in his creatures, so the human mark is imprinted upon the work of art: the integral mark, not only of the hand, but of the entire soul.”45 This is his verdict on Raïssa’s poetry:

In one sense, Raïssa has said everything in her poems, for were they not born in that place where…the creative experience of the poet is the pure mirror of the mystical experience? It is enough to justify the comparison with…Saint John of the Cross, although the two models are very different. Saint John of the Cross is a master and a doctor of the Church, whose poetry…translates by means of symbols and allegories what he has suffered inef-fably in contemplation. Although Raïssa’s poetry is stripped of every formal research, it is no less refined, and no less wise, but its knowledge is more secret and more humble. This knowledge makes it wholly one with the grace of femininity, in which the only thing that now exists is the pure consonance of the accord with that which the heart feels…it no longer has any need of symbols and allegories.46

He was deeply grateful to her: Above all else, there was a concern with regard to my philosophical work and to the kind of perfection that she expected of this work. notwithstanding…an almost complete lack of strength, she succeeded with a movement of her will in reading through the manuscripts of everything that I have written and published, both in French and in English, because she saw the collaboration that I always asked of her as a sacred duty.47

In the case of this married couple, it is wrong to separate something that is inextricably united (as is so often done, when the “great ones” are separated from the context by which they are nourished). François Mauriac, who belonged to the Meudon circle, commented on Les grandes amitiés as follows: “This book makes me aware of a truth that I have always known, but that strikes me more and more forcibly every day, as I move step by step towards the end of my life: namely, that the true history of the human race has not been written. I would like to give this work the Balzacian subtitle: ‘The reverse side of contemporary history’.”48

43 J. Maritain/R. Maritain: Œuvres complètes, vol. 15, 164; see P. Viotto: “Amicizia, amore e contemplazione”, in: R. Oumançoff-Maritain: I grandi amici, 513-529.

44 R. Oumançoff-Maritain: I grandi amici, 851.45 Ibid. 234.46 J. Maritain/R. Maritain: Œuvres complètes, vol. 15, 157-158.47 Ibid. 157-158, 163-164.48 R. Oumançoff-Maritain: I grandi amici, 513.

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7. Mutual Praise

Jacques often confirmed his love and esteem for Raïssa. He writes in the prefatory note to the Journal: “Raïssa hid her deep life well. All who knew her saw the graciousness of her welcome, her joyfulness, her vivacity, her exquisite delicacy, her ardor for the things of the spirit, the compassion and kindness with which she listened to people, her intuitive grasp of matters, and the enchanting fascination of her conversation. But few had any idea of what she suffered, or of the interior recollection in which her heart lived. Indeed, she moved with an extraordinary ease and lightness from these profound solitudes to those regions that are illuminated by the ordinary sun. She was one of those souls – I believe that the highest example is Saint Philip neri – who move freely between the two levels of activity, which are amazingly distant from each other.”49

This is how he recalled her amiability in her relationships with her friends – a gift that is indispensable for the formation of a community: “Up to the very end of her life, she found help and comfort in the precious dialogues that she enjoyed in conversation with her friends, and in the chats that she led and animated in such a masterly fashion, from her position in the angle of the blue sofa in the living room in Princeton. I can still see her sitting there, and I cannot dream of this without tremendous pain.”50

Raïssa was God’s own gift to Jacques. He had given himself to her without reserve, and she revealed to him the perfume of an exquisite spirituality. It was thanks to her that he developed an esteem for femininity that was rather unusual at that time, as we see in his inaugural lecture at Hunter College in new York in 1941, entitled The education of women:51

Essentially, culture is the interior formation of the human being…The power of the soul is an immaterial strength that cannot be demolished with bullets and machine guns. The soul yields only when it wants to yield…Permit me to say that the mission of the soul with regard to culture is so very important, and in one sense even more important for teaching girls than for teaching boys. The men have many things to do…The women have slightly more ease of being, and they will preserve this to a slightly greater degree. This is both a great privilege and a great duty for them. When they love the truth, they love it with the intention of bringing it into life itself. When they love philosophy, it is because it helps them to discover their own nature and the meaning of existence; and they understand perfectly well Plato’s principle that we must philosophize with the whole of our soul.

49 J. Maritain/R. Maritain: Œuvres complètes, v. 15, 162.50 Ibid. 163.51 J. Maritain: “Antologia di scritti pedagogici”, in: D. Gallagher/I. Gallagher (eds.):

The Education of Man, notre Dame, In: University of notre Dame Press, 1962, 154-158. [The passage is translated here from the Italian translation quoted by P. Viotto in Prospettiva Persona 9-10 (1994), 17-20.] Maritain returned to femininity in the article “Faisons-lui une aide semblable à lui”, in: Nova et vetera 4 (1967), 241-254, where he emphasized that spiritu-ality and culture must be understood in terms of complementarity.

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This esteem was an extension of the esteem he felt for Raïssa, whom he describes as follows, in words rich with intensity and wonder: “Goodness, purity. Raïssa never does anything by halves. She goes to the root of things with a well-directed intention and an integral will: her courage scorns calculation, and her piety is without defenses. Where there is no beauty, she feels that she is suffocat-ing – she cannot live. Raïssa has always lived for the truth, she has never resisted the truth. Her spirit has never recoiled, and her pain has never been denied. She gives everything…Her thinking and her nature tend to be intuitive; since she is a creature who is wholly spiritual, she is wholly free. Her reason will be satisfied with nothing other than what is real; her soul is satisfied only with what is absolute.”52

When Jacques decided to publish Raïssa’s Journal, he was completely unper-turbed by any ideas of success. His desire, in keeping with the Gospel, was to bring to light that which is hidden, and to do justice to her: “I want justice to be done to Raïssa. If there is anything good in my philosophical work and in my books, the deep source and the light must be sought in her prayer and in the offering of herself that she made to God.”53

Jacques admired her spiritual life in the period in which she was unable to speak, and all communications were interrupted for several weeks: “She retained her peace of soul, her astonishing lucidity, her humor, her care for her friends, her concern not to give other people trouble, and her wonderful smile – that unforgettable smile with which she thanked Father Riquet after receiving extreme unction – and the dazzling light of her wonderful eyes. She always gave something to those who drew near to her, with a surprising silent expansion during the great peace of her two last days, when there was nothing left in her but a breath of love. There was an undefinable, impalpable love that emanated from the mystery in which she was enclosed. During all this time, the work of destruction proceeded implacably upon her, as with hatchet strokes. This came from the God who loved her in his terrible way, and whose love is ‘sweet’ only to the eyes of the saints or of those who do not know what they are talking about…He has taken the tunic, let us give him the mantle too. Everything has been broken; what can we still salvage for ourselves?”54 He also writes about his wife: “I have never experienced in anyone else (and certainly not in my own self) such strength of mind and such an inflexible courage of the will, nor such lucidity.”55

And here is a note that Raïssa wrote about Jacques: “His tenderness for me is shocking, his care knows no limits. He thinks that I am continuously subject to suffering, and he would give his life to save me even from a slight unease. – He is a soul without defenses. His entire defense is the defense of the truth – he never defends himself. For the doctrine that he believes to be true and salvific,

52 R. Maritain: Ricordi e appunti, 4.53 J. Maritain/R. Maritain: Œuvres complètes, vol. 15, 160.54 Ibid. 160.55 Ibid. 156.

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he is endowed with a wonderful, admirable, brilliant strength of spirit. He expounds things elegantly when he teaches, his style is elegant when he writes, and his writing has a beauty as if it were designed, simple, ‘of the Gospel’ – like his voice.”56

She noted, when they were in the USA: “Jacques’ second lecture at the Uni-versity of Princeton. How moving it is! An entirely pure soul at work in handing on the truth – a pure soul – clothed with suffering and purified until it becomes a true image of Jesus. This is the impression I had as I listened to him today, looking at him while he spoke and taught. This is a certain impression, sweet and profound, that takes hold of my heart and fills it with tears. Today, he gave the proof of his holiness, and I believe that I was not the only one to perceive it. Whether or not they were aware of this, his hearers are undergoing an influence from his person that is unlike that of any other professor (as far as I know), and this is quite apart from the exceptional value of his teaching itself.”57

Summary Raïssa Oumançoff and Jacques Maritain:

A Couple Take the Path of Love and of FaithThis article discusses the love between Raïssa and Jacques Maritain, two persons with

very different origins and education: she a Russian Jewess in exile, he a bourgeois Prot-estant. Their meeting at the Sorbonne, their shared involvement on behalf of human rights, the search for the truth, the friendship with Léon Bloy, the meetings at Meudun, and the periods in America and in Rome are presented primarily from the perspective of the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual union between the couple. The article empha-sizes out the mutual care, praise, and gift of self.

56 Ibid. 852.57 Ibid. 852.

Giulia P. Di nicola is a retired professor of social policy and family sociology at the Universities of Teramo and Chieti, Italy. Her husband, Attilio Danese, was a professor of political sciences at the University of Teramo and of philosophy at the Auxilium in Rome before his retirement. They run the Centro Ricerche Personaliste di Teramo and edit the review Prospettiva Persona. They have published numerous books together, among which Perdono…per dono: Quale risorsa per la società e la famiglia, Torino: Effatà, 2009; Perché sposarsi? Viaggio tra obblighi, convenienze e scelte liberanti, Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo, 2014; Un mese con Zelia e Luigi: Un pensiero e una preghiera al giorno con i beati Martin, genitori di Santa Teresina, Torino: Effatà, 2014.

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