Marie Guyart de l’Incarnation (1599–1672): le singulier parcours d’une ursuline missionnaire de Tours à Québec. Par Vincent Grégoire

Abstract

In this slim volume, Vincent Grégoire undertakes to tell the story of Marie de l’Incarnation, renowned seventeenth-century mystic and founder of the Ursulines in French North America, as a ‘femme forte’ who surmounted obstacles both social and religious to become ‘la première missionnaire française en Amérique du nord’ (p. 14). Organized around the theme of obstacles, Grégoire’s book advances an interpretation of Marie de l’Incarnation as an active woman, an agent determined not to shrink before challenges but to overcome them. Adversity, argues Grégoire, was Marie’s daily bread, but ‘l’obstacle a fait Marie, n’ayant pu la défaire’ (p. 23). Following an introductory chapter in which he locates Marie and the Ursulines within the context of post-Tridentine Catholicism and early modern missionary movements, Grégoire proceeds to interrogate five different sorts of obstacles that gave shape to Marie’s religious vocation, each explored in its own chapter: demonic temptation; the perilous transatlantic journey of 1639; her maternal obligations towards the son she abandoned for religious life; cultural and linguistic barriers to teaching in New France; and conflicts with her male ecclesiastical superiors. Throughout, Grégoire gives due attention to Marie’s agency, her determination in the face of challenges, her persistence in surmounting them, and her creativity in refiguring them as opportunities to suffer in imitation of Christ. Given the ways in which Marie (as Grégoire affirms in the chapter on ‘Le Fils sacrifié’) interpreted her own life as one lived in subordination to the uncompromising will of God, one does wonder whether Marie would recognize the portrait constructed here — not that it matters to the validity of Grégoire’s interpretation. Readers both new to Marie de l’Incarnation and familiar with her will find much in Grégoire’s study of interest, including a provocative analysis of Marie’s live sense of demonic presence (which is often elided in studies of this Ursuline mystic) and a thorough analysis of her conflicts with Jesuit Father Vimont and Bishop François de Laval over the rules governing the Ursulines of Quebec. Unsurprisingly, given the brevity of the study, Grégoire passes over some aspects of Marie’s biography too quickly and leaves open and unresolved some promising lines of enquiry. For instance, he tantalizingly notes (as have many before him) that, once in New France, Marie no longer experienced demonic assaults and her mystical experiences waned in intensity, while at the same time acknowledging that for Marie, and others of her time, New France was considered ‘une terre essentiellement sous l’influence du diable’ (p. 49) and the Iroquois believed to be instruments of the devil. ­Exactly how — and to what degree — Marie (and her French, Catholic counterparts in New France) assimilated Indigenous Americans to the devil is worth more analysis than Grégoire gives it here, but perhaps one of the yields of a book like this is to stimulate future research.