The Congregation de Notre-Dame, Superiors, and the Paradox of Power, 1693-1796 (Mcgill-Queen's Studies in the History Og Religion, Series 2)

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 foundations and exercise of power within the convent. Gray focuses on the social, administrative, political, and spiritual dimensions of the lives of three Congregation superiors - Marie Barbier, Marie-Josephe Maugue-Garreau, and Marie Raizenne.By exploring the implications of the hierarchies of power within the convent and providing a thorough analysis of the convent's relationship with the social, religious, and governmental structures that surrounded it - taking into account both medieval and Catholic Reformation Europe and seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Canada - Gray reveals the paradoxes inherent in the position of a female superior within the male-dominated sphere of both the church and the larger secular community. "The Congregation de Notre-Dame, Superiors, and the Paradox of Power, 1693-1796" not only reconstructs a vanished world but also provides great insight into the organization of institutional structures and the complex aspects of power within them.