, showing the empty grounds used for the present-day convent and the ruined chapel of Our Lady of the Fright atop Tremor Hill behind it Catholic holdings in
Ottoman Palestine had been limited from 1551 until their establishment as a
millet in 1831. The
Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem was reestablished in 1847, and
French involvement in support of the
Ottoman Empire in the
Crimean War in the 1850s further improved relations. During
this period, the
French Empire frequently supported related Catholic institutions abroad as a way of expanding its local influence. The Nazarene convent of the
Order of Saint Clare was first established by a group of 16 nuns from the Clarissan community at
Paray-le-Monial,
France, in 1884, four years before its sister convent in
Jerusalem. Its first abbess was Elizabeth of Calvary (, ).
StCharles de Foucauld worked at the convent from 1897, living in a small wooden lean-to separate from the nuns' dormitory and previously used only for spare lumber storage. Hearing of "a servant who dressed like a tramp, spoke and wrote as a man of learning, and prayed like a saint", Elizabeth of Calvarynow the abbess of the Jerusalem conventhad him visit in 1888 and thereafter he divided his time between the two communities before returning to France in 1900. It was during this period in Nazareth that De Foucauld studied for the
priesthood and produced most of his spiritual writings. There is now a small museum on the grounds of the monastery to accommodate interested
pilgrims, housing some of the artifacts from his time at the convent. Nazareth Foucauld.png | Another sketch of the original convent by St Charles Charles de Foucauld avec son neveu et filleul Charles de Blic à Barbirey.tif |
St Charles just after returning to Europe in 1900 File:Palestine and Syria - with the chief routes through Mesopotamia and Babylonia - handbook for travellers (1906) (14770427061).jpg | A 1906 map of Nazareth showing the original File:Monastery Saint Claire (Nazareth) and Our Lady of the Fright cropped.jpg|1930s map File:Monastery Saint Claire (Nazareth) and Our Lady of the Fright.png|1940s map At the outbreak of
World War I, the French nuns of the convent were deported from the
Ottoman Empire, the two countries being parts of opposing alliances. The nuns of Nazareth moved to a convent on
Malta, while those in Jerusalem moved to
Egypt. The Maltese community was first established at
Żabbar before moving to
St Julian's in 1920. The Nazarene convent reopened in 1949, the year of the establishment of modern Israel. It was not reestablished at its former ruined location on the main road to
Haifa, however, but on the monastery grounds about a third of a kilometer ( mile) further south at the foot of Tremor Hill. It is now usually overseen by a
Franciscan priest selected by the Latin Patriarch in addition to its own
abbess. In 1974, the
Guanelliano Ugo Sensi selected the former convent as the site for a new
special education school. After repairs and refurbishing, the Holy Family School opened its doors to its first four students a year later in 1975; it now cares for over 170
learning disabled students between the ages of 4 and 21. The three elderly sisters from
Abidjan,
Ivory Coast, who cared for the Clarissan monastery from around 1999 were supplemented by eight from
Zacatecas, Mexico, in 2015. The Poor Clares of Nazareth now speak French and Spanish to one another, English to visitors, Arabic to neighbors,
Hebrew for government purposes, and Italian for their daily services with the town's Franciscan brothers at the nearby
Church of the Annunciation supposedly built on the site of Mary's former home. The nuns are chiefly concerned with prayer and religious life but also play volleyball, make
olive rosaries, and
dry local flowers for inclusion in cards sold to pilgrims. ==Our Lady of the Fright==