Blessed Marta Le Bouteiller

Aimée-Adèle Le Bouteiller (2 December 1816 - 18 March 1883) was a French religious sister of the Sisters of Marie Madeleine Postel. She assumed the religious name Marthe and became noted for her work for the congregation in a range of capacities. She was close friends with Placide Viel who was her novice mistress; this would bring her into conflict with Viel's elder cousin who was at odds with Viel. Nevertheless, the religious attempted to live a model life based on the tenets of the Gospel. She was beatified in 1990. Aimée-Adèle Le Bouteiller was born on 2 December 1816 as the third of four children to Andrea Le Bouteiller (1788-1827) and Maria Francesca Morel who were farmers and linen weavers. Her mother became widowed and had to care for her four children with the death of Andrea on 1 September 1827 to tuberculosis. This prompted Bouteiller to help her mother manage the farm and seek out work and was all the more important when two of her brothers married in 1837. She attended school as a child and one of her teachers was the Carmelite Maria Farcy. In 1836 - at the age of 20 - she went to find work as a housemaid in order to provide for her mother. Bouteiller volunteered at her local parish school and travelled with her parish to annual pilgrimages to the Marian shrine of Cheppelle-sur-Vire. On one such pilgrimage in 1841 she visited a dilapidated convent and was resolved to enter it after having explored it. On 19 March 1841 she joined the order of the Sisters of the Christian Schools in Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte and made her solemn profession as a religious on 14 September 1842 in the name of "Marthe". Her novice mistress at the time was Placide Viel. Bouteiller worked in the kitchens and the fields while also tending to the wine cellar. She became skilled at making cider and was known in the convent as "Sister Cider".