The Congregation de Notre-Dame, Superiors, and the Paradox of Power, 1693-1796

ISBN: 9780773532274

出版年: 2007-10

页数: 272

定价: $ 107.35

内容简介

Nuns have often been portrayed as nascent feminists wielding an exceptional amount of power. In this formative study of the Congregation de Notre-Dame, a religious community of uncloistered women established in Montreal in 1657, Colleen Gray presents a more nuanced view of the religious life. Gray's biographical approach in "The Congregation de Notre-Dame, Superiors, and the Paradox of Power, 1693-1796" focuses on the social, spiritual and administrative dimensions of the lives of three Congregation superiors - Marie Barbier, Marie-Josephe Maugue-Garreau, and Marie Raizenne - and situates these women against the backdrop of medieval and Catholic Reformation Europe and seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Canada. She explores the private aspects of power within the convent as well as its public face with respect to the convent's relationship with the wider social, church, and governmental structures to reveal the paradoxes inherent in the position of a female superior within the male-dominated church structure.