:The Congrégation de Notre-Dame, Superiors, and the Paradox of Power, 1693–1796.(McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Religion, Series Two, number 48.)

Abstract

In 142 pages of text Colleen Gray has produced a compact yet rich volume about French Canadian nuns in the eighteenth century, drawing from an unusually comprehensive set of Canadian and French archival materials for the Congregation of Notre Dame, an uncloistered community in Montreal. Canadian religious history is usually invoked in the United States only to acknowledge a few persons and places, notably the French Canadian mystic, Marie de l'Incarnation, and the Hotel Dieu convent, adjacent to the Notre Dame property in Montreal, the notorious site of the nineteenth-century anti-Catholic exposé written by Protestants about the sordid life of a fictive nun called Maria Monk. Thanks to Gray's meticulous research, however, we can add to that list by following the foundation and growth of a new congregation of Catholic secular sisters who were established in Montreal by Marguerite Bourgeoys in 1657. As “filles seculières,” the women were governed by a community rule but were able to work outside the cloister, in this case as teachers of the children of New France's settlers. (Initial plans to instruct Native Americans were abandoned.) A Catholic school, boarding school, workshop, and numerous missions soon followed up and down the St. Lawrence River. In 1698 the bishop imposed a stricter formal constitution upon the women, drawing to a close this earlier “golden age.” His imposition of dowry requirements meant that only women whose families could support this cost could hope to enter the congregation. Gray finds, however, that the bishop's constitution did not necessary restrict the spiritual potential of these zealous sisters (p. 28). Lists of professed members from 1693–1796 supplied by the author in an appendix suggest that at least some nuns came from fairly humble origins, daughters of bakers, carpenters, farmers, and locksmiths.