Mother Superior Research Articles

ВАДСТЕНСКИЙ ДИАРИЙ И ВАДСТЕНСКИЙ МОНАСТЫРЬ

Diarium Vadstenense, the chronicle of Vadstena Abbey (the principal cloister of the Birgittine order) is one of the most interesting narrative sources of medieval Scandinavia. The present article focuses on the types of entries, their aims and their data. I pay attention to individual cases, to data concerning the health and the diseases of the Birgittines, as well as their age and death. I demonstrate that life expectancy of the Birgittines was high enough. Special attention in my article is paid to the question of the character of Vadstena Abbey. Can we regard Vadstena Abbey as a mixed community of men and women, a so-called double cloister? Or should we treat it as two separate monasteries behind one fence? I demonstrate that Vadstena Abbey must be regarded as a single mixed congregation. The brethren and the sisters lived in proximity. Both communities were subject to Mother Superior. The economy was common. Both parts of the monastery interacted constantly. The usual definitions – brethren (fratres) and sisters (sorores) were of the same type. Both communities are frequently called the same name – a convent, and often the expression “both convents” is used. The level of integration of the two parts of Vadstena Abbey was high; the monastery mentioned must be regarded as a single institution.

The Myth of the Theons

Abstract The reputations of Eliezer Mordechai Bimstein and Mary Ware (aka Theon and Madame Theon) as master occultists took shape during their lifetimes in the absence of accurate biographical information. Best known as leaders of the Cosmic Movement, which attracted a number of adherents during the first decade of the twentieth century, they each had an interesting backstory, Bimstein as a worker in the tobacco trade, then co-founder of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, Ware as Mother Superior of a convent, then poet, actress, and lecturer on occult themes. Their teachings, published in the Revue Cosmique and Tradition Cosmique, influenced such people as Louis Thémanlys and Mirra Alfassa, later the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Biographical material on Bimstein and Ware, brought to light by recent scholars, has led to a deconstruction of the myth of the Theons but this does not necessarily detract from the interest of their writings.

DEVELOPMENT OF A TRACKING TOOL FOR PEOPLE WITH ALZHEIMER’S

This project consists of the creation of a mobile application, implemented on the Android platform that supports the daily activities of patients suffering from Alzheimer’s, the application will allow the real-time location of the patient to be sent, as well as an alert for the development of the mobile application App was used. In this investigation, a descriptive-explanatory analysis was carried out, which allowed us to interpret the events that have arisen, through a field investigation, directed to those in charge of people suffering from Alzheimer’s at the San Agustín nursing home, thus showing through of statistical data, the knowledge of the Managers, and an interview with the Mother Superior, for which the data collection was carried out with a sample population of 30 people. Through this research work, it has become clear that the implementation of the monitoring device is considered reliable and beneficial for the inmates of the San Agustín nursing home, based on the results given by the survey and the interview. At present, wireless technology provides many accessibility such as GPS receivers, which allows new applications to be made, allows measurements to be made in places where cables are not appropriate. To achieve this, it has been studied and analyzed how the GSM/GPRS/GPS technologies interact in the monitoring process. The model describes how the GPS receivers receive the signal from the satellites, calculate the position and through the GSM/GPRS network, the coordinates are transmitted to an App server so that the person who has a problem can be monitored. Alzheimer’s. According to the results obtained, the model is reliable because the correct measurement of the position of the person suffering from Alzheimer’s is obtained, guaranteeing their safety and tranquility of their family.

Handicraft workshop of the Shenkur Holy Trinity maiden monastery of the 18th century

The article is devoted to previously unknown works of pictorial embroidery of the synodal period. The artworks represent the local cultural center of the Russian North and are published for the first time. In the first half and the middle of the 18th century, a unique gold-embroidery workshop, which reached a high artistic level, was formed in the Shenkur Holy Trinity Convent on the Vaga river. The creation of liturgical fabrics in the monastery was carried out not only by nuns, but also by so-called “belitsy”, women who lived in monastic cells without being tonsured, as well as residents of the city of Shenkursk. Mother Superior Euphemia (1727- 1749) and her sister Xenia were famous craftswomen, they embroidered on multi-colored fabrics with gold, silver and silk threads. Shrouds of Christ, intercessions of the Holy Virgin and epigonations made in the Shenkur Monastery are featured in several museum collections, mainly in the North. The handicraft workshop existed in the monastery for only a short period of time: from the beginning of the 18th century until the closing of the monastery in 1764. The Vaga craftswomen created their works on the basis of the ancient Russian gold embroidery tradition. The identification and attribution of liturgical fabrics enabled one to uncover distinctive features of Shenkur products: idiosyncratic technologies, rare iconography and peculiar style dating back to the art of the Baroque era. Liturgical clothing and epigonations made by the Vaga craftswomen were ordered and purchased for the bishops' councils of Arkhangelsk and Kholmogory, they are present in the collections of Nikolo-Korelsky, Antoniev-Siya and Solovetsky monasteries. Correspondingly, Shenkur church textiles and fabrics were used in the churches of the Vologda diocese. The article offers an unprecedented systematization of a completely new unexplored layer of museum objects. A number of conclusions are drawn on account of unknown written and visual sources found in museums and archives of the country. The second half of the nineteenth century saw the revival of women's handicraft in the Shenkursky Monastery. The article is illustrated by works found in the museum collections of the Arkhangelsk region, primarily the Arkhangelsk Museum of Local Lore. The scope of the study includes a completely new significant range of cultural monuments belonging to North Russian tradition. The results can be widely used in identifying and attributing works of pictorial embroidery.

Пастырство в Византии конца VIII — начала IX в. в письмах прп. Феодора Студита

The article examines various aspects of shepherdship mentioned by St. Theodore the Studite in the collection of his letters. The collection contains letters sent to patriarchs, bishops, abbots and abbesses, as well as their flocks. There are few letters to priests and they do not touch on pastoral topics, in contrast to the epistles to the bishops that multiplied after 815. Among them, it is necessary to mention the letter 11 to bishop Anastasius, as a text completely devoted to the episcopal ministry. In total, there are more than fifty letters to the bishops, and a little less than eighty to the heads of the monasteries. The correspondence of St. Theodore with Mother Superior Euphrosyne is especially interesting. Descripting the episcopal ministry, St. Theodore makes extensive use of the teachings of St. Gregory the Theologian, and when talking about pastoral qualities works of St. Maximus the Confessor. Despite not the fact that St. Theodore often uses the word "pastor" simply to designate a ruler, bishop or abbot, it is not just a designation of the holy dignity for him, but the title of shepherd can be received by one owing to his deeds. The basis of shepherding, from the point of view of St. Theodore, there must be a realization in oneself of the image of Christ, the image of a virtuous life, approaching God, the realization of the pastoral logos in the right way, the acquisition of a disposition towards spiritual life. A shepherd who does this is capable of being a legislator for his disciples, capable of raising their souls to God. An important aspect of pastoral ministry for St. Theodora - accepting this service as obedience and service of love.

Nasze naymilsze siestrzyczki... czyli habitki w klasztorze Wizytek Warszawskich w XVII wieku

The sisters of the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary, more commonly known as Visitationists, were brought to Poland from France by Marie Louise Gonzaga (known in Poland as Ludwika Maria) in 1654. Visitationists ran a boarding school for girls and provided education for inner-city girls from less well-to-do backgrounds. In addition, the religious order for women accommodated a novitiate for young girls admitted to this religious order for women – the so-called habitki (from the habit of a member under vows), i.e. candidates for the convent. The present article provides the reader with some detailed information on the mentioned group of candidates in relation the period covering the years from the establishment of the convent to the end of the seventeenth century. Habitki’s cells were located in the part of the convent that also accommodated nuns, wore habits and participated in regular religious services and prayers with nuns. As a rule, they were usually minors up to girls of several years of age or older. They were supervised by a master-nun, appointed by Mother Superior, who took care of them, while a special rule of conduct determined their duties and responsibilities in the convent. The reasons behind a decision to send little girls to the nunnery varied. At times, still unborn babies were sacrificed to God even before delivery, a custom to be found in particular within families where children were long in coming or where successive deliveries were death experiences for parents. Girls in the convent usually had both parents, but oftentimes they were orphans, disabled, hated by their parents or came from large families. By sending a daughter to a convent parents believed that her future was somehow secured. Occasionally, by doing so they simply got rid of a crippled child that often required extra care, or cleared the situation in prospective property settlement agreements in the family. More often than not, the plans conceived by parents, or foster parents, were not in line with intentions or expectations of girls. A decision to stay within the confinement of the convent, however, was up to a candidate, who, after reaching the age of 15, was entitled to seek for admittance to the full novitiate and, at the age of 16, could take simple vows. Between 1658 and 1697, the Warsaw-based convent had 23 habitki. Only 7 of them took vows. At the time, no other religious order and convent had such a specific rule for child.

Prejudice for Profit: Escaped Nun Stories and American Catholic Print Culture

Prejudice for ProfitEscaped Nun Stories and American Catholic Print Culture Kara M. French (bio) During the sweltering summer of 1834, a gang of working-class men—brickmakers, sailors, apprentices, and firemen—surrounded the Ursuline convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts. The crowd, acting on rumor that Sister Mary St. John Harrison "has been secreted or abducted" to Canada against her will, threatened to burn the convent to the ground unless she was released. When Harrison did not come forward, they set fire to the convent and school with "twelve nuns, and fifty-seven female scholars" inside. Newspapers from Maine to Maryland reported how the rioters stole the Mount Benedict ciborium, smashed the sisters' expensive musical instruments, and converted the personal library of Boston's Bishop Fenwick into fuel for a bonfire. As a final act of desecration, the mob "burst open the tomb, and ransacked the coffins" of dead nuns, searching for the bodies of Sister Harrison and the Ursulines' young Protestant pupils, rumored to have been murdered behind the convent walls.1 Tales of illicit sex and abused women rose from the ashes of the Charlestown riot. Just as the Charlestown rioters were being brought to [End Page 503] trial in 1835, ex-novice Rebecca Reed's autobiography, Six Months in a Convent, detailed a life of horrors. According to Reed, the sisters of Mount Benedict heaped slavish devotion on their Mother Superior and were subjected to bizarre and cruel penances. The convent was a place of unmentionable sexual deviance, where confession with the Bishop led to "various improper questions" regarding the novices' sexual habits and where Superior Mary St. George Moffat was inclined to "bestow presents and caress" the sisters who were her "great favorites."2 The burning of the Ursuline convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts was and is a well-known tale, in its own time and in ours. For scholars of the early republic, the burning of the convent represents an object lesson in anti-Catholic prejudice, a perfect storm of religious intolerance, gender trouble, and class conflict. For citizens of the early republic, the event served to confirm their worst fears—either about the nefarious lives of nuns and priests or about the limits of religious toleration. For early republican publishers, it created an opportunity. With the riot at the Ursuline convent in 1834, the relationship between print and protest worked in reverse of what one might expect. Rather than the publication of an explosive text provoking an outbreak of violence, the burning of the convent was an occasion of violence that provoked an outbreak of print. The two anti-Catholic "escaped nun" narratives that became bestsellers in antebellum era, Rebecca Reed's Six Months in a Convent and Maria Monk's Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu, would not be published until more than a year after the convent lay in ashes. While the political, social, and gendered implications of the Charles-town riot have been explored, the way the burning of the convent was exploited by publishers for financial gain deserves closer examination. Though Reed's and Monk's narratives have the distinction of being the best-selling and most well-known "escaped nun" tales, the burning of the convent encouraged the flourishing of an anti-Catholic print genre that promised to expose the secret lives of nuns and priests. A feeding frenzy of anti-Catholic literature ensued at every level of the literary marketplace, from cheaply printed dime novels to ornate gift books. These "escaped nun" stories capitalized on the horror the perceived gender and sexual deviance of nuns provoked in the Protestant imagination. Antebellum publishers spent thousands manufacturing lithograph illustrations of novices cutting their hair to take the veil and mass-printed [End Page 504] stories that featured cross-dressing "female Jesuits" and Machiavellian lady superiors.3 Commercial print and the whims of the publishing marketplace not only drove a boom in anti-Catholic publishing but also sparked American Catholics to mount a vigorous defense in print. Given the ubiquity of print in the early republic, it is perhaps not surprising that a religious minority would develop their own print sphere. As the recent outpouring of scholarship on African American print culture has...

An Untitled Collection of Generalizations That Mobilize the Eye

An Untitled Collection of Generalizations That Mobilize the Eye Katie Farris (bio) My body is a museum:Thirty-three Greek urnsPainted with wrestling boysAnd mythical scenes compriseMy spine. My ribs are theBows of fourteen ancientArchers, pinched from theirGraves—their fingersForever drawing. UnusuallyWell-preserved, my feet are theDelicate slippers of a beloved ChineseWhore, heavily embroidered withVein and shadow. My brain?A lofty sunlit dome, lined with Pietà afterPietà, forty-seven mourningVirgins, each great in their grief andExecution. My organs areThe furniture galleriesEveryone skips, but for you,Carpenter, standingGuilty-fingered beforeMy heart's armoire,Stroking always toward the grain. [End Page 424] Katie Farris katie farris is an award-winning fiction writer, poet, and translator. She is the author of the hybrid-form text boysgirls and the chapbooks Thirteen Intimacies and Mother Superior in Hell. Most recently she is winner of Fairy Tale Review's Flash Fairy Tale Prize, the 2018 Anne Halley Poetry Prize from the Massachusetts Review, and the 2017 Orison Anthology Prize in Fiction. Currently, she is an associate professor at San Diego State University. Copyright © 2019 The Massachusetts Review, Inc.

The Church and Confederacy: The Lynches of South Carolina ed. by Robert Emmett Curran

Reviewed by: The Church and Confederacy: The Lynches of South Carolina ed. by Robert Emmett Curran Adam L. Tate The Church and Confederacy: The Lynches of South Carolina. Edited by Robert Emmett Curran. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2019. 456 pp. $69.99. In 1972, Yale University Press published The Children of Pride: A True Story of Georgia and the Civil War, a massive collection of wartime letters from the family of Rev. Charles Colcock Jones, a chief promoter of the religious mission to the slaves. Robert Manson Myers, the editor of the collection, arranged the correspondence to tell the story of the Civil War through the experiences of one large family. The effect was stunning as readers gained both multiple and intensely personal perspectives on the war. Robert Emmett Curran, professor emeritus at Georgetown University, credits The Children of Pride for inspiring his project on the correspondence of the Lynch family of South Carolina, the most prominent and influential Catholic family in the state during the nineteenth century (xi). Their letters, skillfully edited and introduced by Curran, provide a Catholic perspective on the fall of the Old South. In many ways, the Lynches were a nineteenth-century southern success story. They acquired education, land, and slaves, markers of economic success in the antebellum South. Conlaw and Eleanor Lynch left Ireland in 1818, eventually settling in the small upcountry town of Cheraw, South Carolina. There they raised twelve children. The eldest, Patrick, served as the bishop of the Diocese of Charleston, which included the states of North and South Carolina, from 1858 until his death in 1882. Two of the Lynch daughters joined the convent. Ellen (1825–1887) joined the Ursuline order and became Mother Superior of their convent in Columbia, South Carolina in 1858. Other Lynches worked as physicians, entrepreneurs, and farmers. Curran, using letters from 1858 to 1865, allows the Lynches to illustrate the many challenges Catholics experienced in the Deep South. Diseases such as yellow fever made South Carolina a dangerous place in the nineteenth century. Several of the Lynch siblings succumbed to tuberculosis as well. In addition, as a distrusted religious [End Page 88] minority, Catholics had to fight for respect from their neighbors and possessed few institutions of their own to support Catholic communities. Ellen—Sister Baptista—perceived this problem acutely as she built her convent and school in the midst of the war. The Lynch letters also demonstrate that southern Catholics, spread throughout the vast rural expanse of the region, networked with each other constantly. A number of letters served to introduce Catholics who had arrived in South Carolina to their local coreligionists. Sister Baptista often asked her brother Patrick about information on various Catholic families when vetting potential nuns for her convent. Building institutions in the Deep South, especially for the Lynches, was part of a program of converting their neighbors and anchoring Catholicism in the region. Baptista, for example, welcomed Episcopalian young women to her school and expressed hopes of converting them to Catholicism. Moreover, the Lynches’ commitment to place made them patriotic South Carolinians. While their family letters rarely discussed politics, most of the political sentiments expressed in the volume demonstrated support for the Confederacy, slavery, and the war. The gem of the volume is Sister Baptista, who deserves a biography of her own. A prolific writer, she constantly pressed her brother, the Bishop, for news. Patrick’s letters were rare, and few seem to have survived. Sherman’s troops, in burning Columbia, South Carolina, destroyed Baptista’s Ursuline convent and school. Combined with Patrick’s unsuccessful voyage to Rome to solicit official recognition from Pope Pius IX for the Confederacy, the burning of the convent demonstrated the tragedy of the war for the Lynches. All they had tried to build had been destroyed. Curran notes that after the war, Sister Baptista wished to rebuild, but her brother the bishop seemed enervated by the vast destruction the war brought (364–365). Curran has done students of American Catholicism and nineteenth-century South Carolina a tremendous service by publishing this volume. It deserves a wide readership among those interested in southern religion and southern Catholicism in particular. Thankfully, it is much...

Musical Events at the Prague Convent of Elizabethan Nuns in 1776

Abstract In 1776, the convent of Elizabethan Nuns in Prague’s New Town was commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of two events: the profession of the former Mother Superior M. Deodata a Presentatione B. V. Mariae OSE (née Anna Justina von Klausniz) and the laying of the foundation stone of the convent building. The celebrations of this dual anniversary were also reflected in the institution’s musical life. There was a performance at the convent of a congratulatory cantata with a libretto by the ex-Jesuit Rochus Elinger, and music was composed for it by the local choirmaster M. Juliana a Septem BB. Patribus OSE. On Holy Saturday, there was a performance of the sepolcro Der verlorne Sohn (The Prodigal Son), composed by Emilián Rickert OCist. from the monastery in Zbraslav. That same year, Jáchym Štěpanovský, the cantor from České Budějovice, also dedicated his works to the Mother Superior.

“Mother Superior”: Maternity and Creativity in the Work of Yoko Ono

“Mother Superior”Maternity and Creativity in the Work of Yoko Ono Elizabeth Ann Lindau (bio) Hours before his assassination on December 8, 1980, John Lennon posed for Annie Leibovitz’s camera. Just as he had on the newly released album Double Fantasy, Lennon insisted that his wife and artistic collaborator, Yoko Ono, participate in the photo shoot with him. In the iconic image that appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone’s tribute to the slain ex-Beatle a month later, he appears naked, curling around his fully clothed wife in a fetal position. Ono appears indifferent to the fervent kiss Lennon plants on her cheek. Her eyes gaze past him. Her arms, casually crossed behind her head, do not return his embrace. She appears cool and in control, he fragile, clinging, and vulnerable. Lennon told Leibovitz, “You’ve captured our relationship exactly,” suggesting a childlike dependence on his wife.1 Indeed, Lennon once said of Ono, “I occasionally call her Mother because I used to call her Mother Superior—remember ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun.’ She is Mother Superior, she is Mother Earth, she is the mother of my child, she’s my mother, she’s my daughter. . . . The relationship goes through many levels.”2 Ono’s maternal role in Lennon’s life is often the subtext of vitriolic attacks against her as “the woman who broke up the Beatles.” In some analyses of their marriage, she wielded a sinister power over him, smothering his creative impulses to single-handedly dissolve the world’s most beloved rock band. During a cameo appearance in Justin Timberlake’s 2013 single “Murder,” Jay-Z names Ono as the epitome of the dangerous seductress described throughout the song: “Know that shit gotta be lethal / If that pussy broke up The Beatles.”3 [End Page 57] Despite such portrayals of her as rock’s mortal enemy, Ono has gained wider appreciation over the past two decades. She has earned belated respect as a godmother of punk and “world” music thanks in part to rock journalists such as Jonathan Cott, one early defender of what Lennon called her “sixteen-track voice.”4 Fellow musicians from Ornette Coleman to Thurston Moore to Lady Gaga have also recognized her importance through collaborations and tributes. (Moore’s 1995 song “Ono Soul” begins with the lyric: “Bow down to the queen of noise.”)5 Ono’s work as both musician and visual artist was institutionally recognized in 2001 with the acclaimed yes Yoko Ono retrospective and in 2015 with the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition of her early work, Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960–1971.6 In the past decade, she has attracted the attention of prominent music scholars. Tamara Levitz reads her collaborations with Lennon as expressions of gender and racial equality.7 Barry Shank explains her incorporation of aesthetics and singing techniques from the Japanese traditions of Noh and Kabuki.8 As part of her ongoing work on “migrant cosmopolitanism,” Brigid Cohen documents Ono’s friendship with composer Stefan Wolpe, with whom she bonded over their shared experiences of displacement in 1950s New York City.9 This essay explores what Lennon identified as Ono’s polyvalent role as mother, tracing the maternal as a recurring topic in her music, art, and biography. Ono’s portrayals of motherhood in different media begin in the early 1960s and extend to recent work with the newly re-formed Plastic Ono Band. Some pieces contain heart-rending depictions of lost or absent children, while others suggest that childrearing is the ultimate act of artistic creativity. These divergent, sometimes contradictory portrayals of maternity reflect the range of Ono’s personal experiences and of contemporary second-wave feminist discussions of motherhood, which depict the womb as both the root of woman’s subjugation and the source of her power. Ono aligns the exclusively female experience of birthing and the historically feminine work of mothering with creativity and avant-garde artistic production. Ono articulated her ideas about motherhood through the unlikely idioms of avant-garde art and rock music (and hybrids of these two). Neither creative realm is known as a platform for feminist positions. The avant-gardes’ aesthetic [End Page 58...

Dietro i ritratti religiosi di Tamara de Lempicka. Alla ricerca delle identità nascoste: Mère Supérieure (I)

The following work reveals the identity hiding behind the painting Mere superieure (1935) by Tamara de Lempicka. The portrayed character is Sister Therese Delphine, at that time Mother Superior of the Sanvitale Convent in Parma. Thanks to the accurate review of biographic sources, the careful check of places and times, and the contribution of some meaningful testimonies it was possible not only to retrace the context in which the work originated but also to finally identify the protagonist of the painting. In 1935, during a trip to Italy, Tamara looked for a convent where she could finally be heard in order to ease her pain. At that time the painter was suffering from serious physical disorders and deep depression both hindering her artistic work. She mentioned the meeting with Sister Therese. That encounter was so meaningful to her that it left a deep mark in both her private life and artistic production. She decided to portray immediately the face that had struck her so much and she will always have a very special bond with that painting.

Timing Out: The Politics of Death and Gender in Almodóvar’s Volver

From the pistol-packing Mother Superior of Entre tinieblas to the neo-noir thrills of La mala educación (and a host of other films in between), death has long been a staple of Pedro Almodóvar’s filmic oeuvre. But so often death is read as a finalizing dead end, the overwhelmingly negative result of bad health, bad circumstances, or bad luck, when it has the potential to be read as productive and engendering possibility. This article claims that Almodóvar resists the foreclosing negativity of death in order to create a politics out of lack and loss. This is seen most notably in his 2006 film Volver, which ultimately provides new ways of thinking about family, gender, and life itself.

The Matiushin Case by Oleg Pavlov

lingers long after the book has been set aside. Indeed, the conceit of a neighbor’s cat who happens to spontaneously “adopt” a different “owner” is really little more than an expedient for extended metaphysical ruminations on the vicissitudes of life in the face of uncertainty. This is a situation not unfamiliar to most readers, and it is, perhaps, the greatest strength of this slim novel, for no answers are provided: only hints of what may be possible. Erik R. Lofgren Bucknell University Scholastique Mukasonga. Our Lady of the Nile. Melanie Mauthner, tr. Brooklyn. Archipelago Books. 2014. isbn 9780914671039 Our Lady of the Nile (Notre-Dame du Nil, 2012) won the Prix Renaudot, the French Voices Award, as well as the 1994 Ahmadou Kourouma Prize. Scholastique Mukasonga lived the ethnic conflicts in Rwanda and lost twenty-seven of her family members as a result of the Tutsi genocide, while being forced to take refuge in France. The novel reflects glimpses of a tensionfilled past and slowly moves to uncover racial strife and the increase of genocidal actions against the Tutsi minority in Rwanda through the eyes of lycée girls enrolled at a Catholic boarding school that stands isolated on the Ikibira mountaintop by the river Nile, gated and guarded. The lycée was built by the Belgium colonizers in Africa and encompasses an isolated, delineated area above the poor village of Nyaminombe, with an exotic garden, a guest bungalow, and foreign teacher villas. When the lycée opens, luxurious cars travel to the mountain to bring daughters of businessmen, governors, and the country ’s elite. They will all be trained accordingly to maintain status, increase their chances of an advantageous marriage, and make a fortune. The only Tutsi girls in the lycée, Virginia and Veronica, are a minority (the yearly quota is two Tutsi students for twenty of other origins). Veronica accepts the veneration of Mr. de Fontenaille (a former plantation owner who discovered the shrine of a local queen and is fascinated by the idea of Tutsi Egyptian roots), and she participates in ritualistic performances centering on the image of Isis. Virginia draws away from the pagan rites and searches out the advice of a witch doctor in her aunt’s village; she is determined to put the discovered shrine remains to rest and perform a traditional ritual cleansing of Fontenaille’s desecrated burial site. She is driven by the apparitions of former local queens in her dreams. The chain of authority reverses toward the end of the novel: at the beginning, Mother Superior maintains the religious place of authority, seconded by Father Hermenegilde , but toward the end of the novel Gloriosa, one of the lycée’s students, takes advantage of her father’s political influence and status to become the feared head of racial persecution in the school. She orders beatings, rapes, and executions. Gloriosa not only represents the feared militant political youth ready to commit atrocities against the Tutsi but also the abusive force that eventually destroys the religious symbol of the Lady of the Nile’s statue in order to make sure it does not have a Tutsi nose and reflects only Hutu facial features. The destruction of the statue’s head under Gloriosa’s hammer blows signifies the decimation of faith and the dominance of the New Man, tormented by racist thoughts and extreme violence. Andreea Gabudeanu Bristow, Virginia Oleg Pavlov. The Matiushin Case. Andrew Bromfield, tr. London. And Other Stories. 2014. isbn 9781908276360 In his novel The Matiushin Case, author Oleg Pavlov delves deep into the psyche of a troubled young man during the last years of the Soviet Union. The book explores trauma, fear, and belonging against the backdrop of a military family and the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Full of dark humor and dark characters, this book, while not for the faint of heart, is nevertheless an intriguing view into a life that experiences much pain and hardship with very little that is positive or beautiful to relieve its characters of the cruelty of their world. World Literature in Review 60 WLT MARCH / APRIL 2015 Pavlov’s main character, Vasilii Grigorievich Matiushin, is one of the most interesting , if...

Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga

lingers long after the book has been set aside. Indeed, the conceit of a neighbor’s cat who happens to spontaneously “adopt” a different “owner” is really little more than an expedient for extended metaphysical ruminations on the vicissitudes of life in the face of uncertainty. This is a situation not unfamiliar to most readers, and it is, perhaps, the greatest strength of this slim novel, for no answers are provided: only hints of what may be possible. Erik R. Lofgren Bucknell University Scholastique Mukasonga. Our Lady of the Nile. Melanie Mauthner, tr. Brooklyn. Archipelago Books. 2014. isbn 9780914671039 Our Lady of the Nile (Notre-Dame du Nil, 2012) won the Prix Renaudot, the French Voices Award, as well as the 1994 Ahmadou Kourouma Prize. Scholastique Mukasonga lived the ethnic conflicts in Rwanda and lost twenty-seven of her family members as a result of the Tutsi genocide, while being forced to take refuge in France. The novel reflects glimpses of a tensionfilled past and slowly moves to uncover racial strife and the increase of genocidal actions against the Tutsi minority in Rwanda through the eyes of lycée girls enrolled at a Catholic boarding school that stands isolated on the Ikibira mountaintop by the river Nile, gated and guarded. The lycée was built by the Belgium colonizers in Africa and encompasses an isolated, delineated area above the poor village of Nyaminombe, with an exotic garden, a guest bungalow, and foreign teacher villas. When the lycée opens, luxurious cars travel to the mountain to bring daughters of businessmen, governors, and the country ’s elite. They will all be trained accordingly to maintain status, increase their chances of an advantageous marriage, and make a fortune. The only Tutsi girls in the lycée, Virginia and Veronica, are a minority (the yearly quota is two Tutsi students for twenty of other origins). Veronica accepts the veneration of Mr. de Fontenaille (a former plantation owner who discovered the shrine of a local queen and is fascinated by the idea of Tutsi Egyptian roots), and she participates in ritualistic performances centering on the image of Isis. Virginia draws away from the pagan rites and searches out the advice of a witch doctor in her aunt’s village; she is determined to put the discovered shrine remains to rest and perform a traditional ritual cleansing of Fontenaille’s desecrated burial site. She is driven by the apparitions of former local queens in her dreams. The chain of authority reverses toward the end of the novel: at the beginning, Mother Superior maintains the religious place of authority, seconded by Father Hermenegilde , but toward the end of the novel Gloriosa, one of the lycée’s students, takes advantage of her father’s political influence and status to become the feared head of racial persecution in the school. She orders beatings, rapes, and executions. Gloriosa not only represents the feared militant political youth ready to commit atrocities against the Tutsi but also the abusive force that eventually destroys the religious symbol of the Lady of the Nile’s statue in order to make sure it does not have a Tutsi nose and reflects only Hutu facial features. The destruction of the statue’s head under Gloriosa’s hammer blows signifies the decimation of faith and the dominance of the New Man, tormented by racist thoughts and extreme violence. Andreea Gabudeanu Bristow, Virginia Oleg Pavlov. The Matiushin Case. Andrew Bromfield, tr. London. And Other Stories. 2014. isbn 9781908276360 In his novel The Matiushin Case, author Oleg Pavlov delves deep into the psyche of a troubled young man during the last years of the Soviet Union. The book explores trauma, fear, and belonging against the backdrop of a military family and the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Full of dark humor and dark characters, this book, while not for the faint of heart, is nevertheless an intriguing view into a life that experiences much pain and hardship with very little that is positive or beautiful to relieve its characters of the cruelty of their world. World Literature in Review 60 WLT MARCH / APRIL 2015 ...

Spiritual Assessment in a Patient With Lung Cancer

CASE STUDY Mr. G., an 82-year-old retired European man, was diagnosed with stage 4 non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and recently enrolled on a phase II clinical trial. He is married and has two adult children, who are very supportive. He and his wife described themselves as nonpracticing Catholics. He had never smoked, and there was no personal or family history of cancer. Fatigue was the main side effect from the clinical trial drugs, necessitating frequent periods of rest throughout the day and ultimately requiring dose reduction. His left leg was edematous and painful, and he was diagnosed with and treated for deep-vein thrombosis. Over time, these symptoms resolved, and Mr. G. enjoyed a fairly normal quality of life (QOL). He continued to do well for almost a year, but then his cancer progressed and his performance status began to decline. When offered treatment options, he elected to discontinue the clinical trial, take a break, and then initiate single-agent chemotherapy. Mr. G. was enrolled in a palliative care research study that provided patient-tailored education by an advanced practitioner (AP). The education addressed each QOL domain: physical, psychological, social, and spiritual. When the AP connected with Mr. G. during one of his clinic appointments, he appeared very concerned. He shared that he previously had lived in a communist country and now that he was in the United States, he was afraid of losing his insurance and having to stop treatment. The conversation was interrupted as he was called in for his appointment, yet he consented to talk about the matter further by telephone. The AP contacted Mr. G. the next day. He shared a glimpse of his childhood and experience in his homeland to try to explain his current fears. After reassuring him that his insurance would not be withdrawn, the AP asked whether he would be willing to talk about his life before coming to the United States more than 50 years ago. She wanted to assess where he was spiritually as a self-described nonpracticing Catholic. Mr. G. began by stating that he knew he was going to die of his lung cancer. He added that he did not know whether he was afraid of dying or believed in an afterlife, as he felt ambivalent about faith and religion. The AP learned that what gave his life meaning was his family. His "boys" were everything to him, and he did not want to be a burden to them or his wife. The AP listened and then encouraged Mr. G. to tell his whole story. As a child, he had lived in an occupied country in Eastern Europe during World War II. Mr. G. and his family spent over a year in a concentration camp. They slept on straw, their heads were shaved, and they all had lice. Men aged 18 to 40 were shipped to Russia to work in the copper mines, where many died of exhaustion. Most older men were killed, and he watched his grandfather die beside him. Horse-drawn buggies took dead bodies to mass graves, where lime was poured over them. Mr. G. had boils over his entire body from lack of nutrition. Though technically Catholic, Mr. G. did not ask God to save him; he had seen too much to believe that God would be involved. One day, he escaped with two other boys. With the help of a stranger, they crossed at night into Romania. They walked for miles into Hungary, where they found shelter in a convent for several weeks. The Mother Superior collected money so he could take the train to Budapest and arranged for him to stay in a Catholic home. From Budapest, he went to Austria, living in refugee camps until moving into an apartment of his own. Mr. G. attended college in Austria and later moved with his wife to the United States, where they raised two boys and owned a successful business.

Działalność patriotyczna i wychowawcza Urszuli Ledóchowskiej

Julia Ledóchowska was born on April 17, 1861 in Loosdorf. When she was 21, she joined a monastery in Cracow and took the new monastery’s name – Ursula. As she graduated school in France, she was allowed to teach French language. In the Ursuline School she taught natural sciences and mathematics. As a Mother Superior, she funded a boarding house for a girls in 1905. Two years later in 1907 she started to run the boarding house for girls in Petersburg. In years 1911–1914 she has organized cottage in Merentahti and gymnasium with catholic chapel. When the First world war has started, the nun Ursula went to Stockholm and she stayed there till 1915. In Sweden she helped with popularizing Committee For Help War Victims in Poland. She raised money, as well as organized lectures on polish history for Scandinavian people. On June 1, 1916 she formed Committee by herself. In years 1916–1918 the nun Ursula has established a foreign language school for a girl in Djursholm – Sprakinstut which was the first language school in whole Scandinavia. In Djursholm she was a editor of the first catholic period Solglimtar (meaning sunrays). In Scandinavia, she took part in many conferences and gave a lot speeches. She also published her book entitled Polonica, in which she presented articles about polish history, art and literature in a Scandinavian language. In Denmark situation of polish child was very bad. The mortality among Polish workers left many homeless child. The nun Ursula has organized for the orphanage for then. On 10 September, 1918 she funded economic school in Aalborg. When the WWI finished, Ursula Ledóchowska returned to independent Poland. She established a new section of the Ursuline Sister of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus. On 7 June, 1920 the monastery got permission for the canonical erection. In Pniewy by the monastery, there was a school for a girl, which was changed into the 3-yearschool for economy teachers. it was took change for 3 years economy teachers. Sister Ursula established several Female Boarding School Houses in Warsaw, Poznań and Wilno. She brought Eucharistic Crusade to Poland. Sister Ursula died on May 29, 1939. She became blessed on June 20, 1983, and was canonized by pope John Paul II on May 18, 2003.

Reunion

Reunion Thomas Reiter (bio) My name is Mary Denise Bartholomew of the Sisters of Charity and Mercy. This fiftieth anniversary, men approach me in the Peach Orchard, on Little Round Top, some weeping but all as bent as I am, our backs curved like a colonel’s sword. Because they fell here, because they went on to Cold Harbor, Shenandoah, the Wilderness, they press ribbons and medals into my hand. (They falter at the thought of attaching them.) Do they remember me, or do I serve as a representative angel? I was nineteen when our wagonload of nuns had to stop again and again where Tanneytown Road entered Gettysburg. We pulled the dead to the side as gently as we could. We clutched our rosaries to our smocks, sobbing among the Hail Marys. We arrived wearing black shawls, white smocks, and white habits, colors standing for all my thinking before I saw Gettysburg. I am an old woman living with my vows. We bandaged and sutured; we buried limbs. I had a fancy that no one else had ever breathed air that hot with fumes from wounds. Operating tables and beds? We had pews. We knelt facing those men and boys and not the altar where endless waves of praying and raving broke. I turned my back on the tabernacle in doubt and sorrow. A hundred and sixty-five thousand soldiers [End Page 586] came to Gettysburg, and no God was there but the God each side called down. Was thinking that a sin? If so I keep a secret sin. I have made peace. I refused Mother Superior when she ordered us back to the convent. Fasts and Kyrie, eleisons! These hands had work yet at Gettysburg. We held the hands of the dying, so many sightless, concussion-deaf, deranged from pain. I wondered who they thought we were— mother, wife, lover? There was one young man I found myself returning to. Blue or butternut, his uniform had been cut away—a beautiful boy. Every hour I swathed his head in fresh dressings. Then this I would not have thought possible: he raised himself up and embraced me. I know what I felt. I was a young girl. He left a blood spot on my smock, on my breast where the nipple was. He whispered, “Do you love me?” He died unanswered by this bride of Christ. We nuns shaved one another’s heads to rid them of lice our wounded gave us. Medals and ribbons, such colors and insignias and mottoes— now that I am Mother Superior I am going to have them with me in the winding sheet. [End Page 587] Thomas Reiter Thomas Reiter’s poems have appeared in Poetry, the Georgia Review, the Hudson Review, Shenandoah, and other journals. His most recent collection is Catchment, published by LSU Press in 2009. Copyright © 2011 University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, 37383

ORGANIZED AND UNSOLICITED COLLABORATION IN THE HOLOCAUST

The lethal intentions of the Nazi Final Solution to the Jewish Question through mass murder adds a special dimension to the common and banal phenomenon of collaboration between sections of the popu...

Cloistered Bodies: Convents in the Anglo-American Imagination in the British Conquest of Canada

Working within the new historiography of the body, this essay argues that convents served as a convenient metaphor for Canada in the mid-eighteenth century English and Anglo-American imagination: They were French, Catholic, feminized, and most disturbingly, closed to Protestant men. In describing French Canada and its convents, they used language that suggests their fascination with opening and penetrating this new addition to the empire, despite the fact that the Quebec Ursulines were in fact very open to visitors, even to Protestant men. Esther Wheelwright, the Ursulines' New England-born Mother Superior, played a large role in English-language fictional and historical representations of the convent in the 1750s and 1760s.