The Congrégation de Notre-Dame, Superiors, and the Paradox of Power, 1693–1796 (review)

This work is an exploration of the ways eighteenth-century leaders of the Montreal-based Congrégation de Notre-Dame exercised power in economic, social, and religious arenas. The three brief chapters of the first part describe the way the congregation functioned as an institution internally and in connection with the surrounding society, while the three chapters of the second part focus on three of the women who served as superior from 1693 to 1796. Many of the congregation's documents from this period have been destroyed by fire, but Colleen Gray mines the archival material available to her carefully and creatively. Two appendices provide lists containing biographical data for the congregation's 217 members and twelve superiors during this period.

A detailed description of the congregation sisters' living space in the first chapter reveals that while not fully cloistered, they kept well-guarded private space that permitted them to cultivate a deeply personal spirituality. This supported what Gray calls their "spiritual mission in the public world": the education of children in its schools and the spiritual formation of women through confraternities and retreats. While the sisters' intent was spiritual, Gray notes that these activities also served the political function of supporting the society's stability. The final chapter of this first part explores how the congregation came to acquire and manage Île Saint-Paul, using these business transactions to illustrate the sisters' economic ties with the French and later British colonial governments, as well as with donors, merchants, workers, and church officials, in particular the bishop of Quebec and the Sulpicians of Montreal.

In Gray's view, typical of the twelve women who became superior in the period under consideration was Marie Raizenne, who served from 1778 to 1784 and 1790 to 1796. Born into a farming family from the vicinity of Montreal, she appears to have been elected because of talent, rather than social position. Indeed, she would have needed considerable talent to exercise all her responsibilities as superior: spiritual and moral guidance of the sisters, oversight of their educational endeavors in Montreal and throughout Quebec, management of the Montreal house, and financial responsibility for the entire enterprise. Gray illustrates all these dimensions of the superior's role through the correspondence between Marie-Josèphe Maugue-Garreau, superior from 1766 to 1772, and the bishop of Quebec, Jean-Olivier Briand. The letters, which concern the flight of two sisters from the convent, reveal some of the tensions within the community and Maugue-Garreau's leadership style and prejudices, as well as the complexity of her interactions with the bishop.

Gray's exploration of the superiors' exercise of power is carefully nuanced and shows familiarity with feminist theory. Unwilling to reduce these women to victims of male power, Gray searches out instances of their agency in, for example, "breaches in formality" in Maugue-Garreau's correspondence with the bishop that suggest her dissension from actions he had taken. At the same time, Gray refuses to portray the eighteenth-century women uncritically as prototypical feminists, remarking in one instance on Maugue-Garreau's class-based disdain for the two women who left the congregation while she was superior. Moreover, Gray insists throughout the book on taking her subjects' religious motivation seriously. As a result, she finds some feminist approaches to work and other issues inadequate to account for the behavior of the congregation sisters.

The book's final chapter illustrates the superiors' spiritual power through a biography of the Congregation's second superior, Marie Barbier, who served from 1693 to 1698. The author was the Sulpician Étienne Montgolfier, Marie's spiritual director and, in Gray's words, "companion on her spiritual journey." Gray concludes that because of their mutual respect, Montgolfier is unlikely to have altered his...