The Lord as Their Portion: The Story of the Religious Orders and How They Shaped Our World (review)

Elizabeth Rapley sets out to recount the story of religious “for those people for whom monks and nuns are only a distant memory, or who have never known them at all” (p. ix). This intended audience determines the mode of her presentation without footnotes or bibliography and only brief recommendations for reading at the conclusion of each chapter. She covers approximately 1500 years of history in six chapters, and includes a helpful glossary and index.

Chapter 1 begins the story in the Egyptian desert; moves to St. Benedict of Nursia; and traces the Benedictine reforms through Cluny, the eremitical reforms, and Cîteaux. The beginnings of the apostolic life movements in the eleventh century, the revival of the canons regular, the origins of military orders, and an overview of monastic women concludes the chapter.

Chapter 2, covering the Middle Ages from 1200 to 1500, chronicles the origins of the mendicants, focusing on the growth of the Franciscan and Dominican orders through the Black Death and the Great Schism. Rapley describes the expansion, the pastoral role in the Western Church (and conflict with secular clergy), and the missions of the Franciscan Order to the Orient through the early-fourteenth century and the crisis of the Spirituals. The Poor Clares are treated briefly, as well as the Cistercian nuns and the Frauenfrage in general. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of the “Third Orders” and the Brothers of the Common Life.

Chapter 3 covers the period of the Reformation and its impact on religious life. The Reformers’ critique of religious life and the turbulent history of the sixteenth century is the backdrop for the origins of the Capuchin reform and the Jesuits in particular, as well as for the Carmelite reform of Ss. Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross. The growth of new women’s orders is presented through the example of St. Angela of Merici and the origins of the Ursulines. This chapter concludes with a description of the missionary endeavors of orders in the Far East and in South America.

The Age of Confessionalism is the subject of chapter 4, in which Rapley describes the role of religious orders in the Catholic regions of Europe, focusing primarily on France. The attempt of religious women to move beyond the requirement of cloister imposed by the Council of Trent is portrayed with the story of Ss. Jeanne de Chantal and Francis de Sales and the foundation of the Visitation. St. Vincent de Paul and the Congregation of the Mission, St. Louise de Marillac and the Daughters of Charity, and St. Jean-Baptiste de la Salle and the teaching brothers demonstrate the importance of the social ministries of charity and teaching. The reform of Armand-Jean de Rancé and the origins of the Trappists conclude the chapter.

Chapter 5 focuses again on France in the eighteenth century. The suppression of the Jesuits is chronicled, as is the preference for the active social works of charity over the contemplative life by the various regimes. The founding of the Montfortian congregations by St. Louis de Montfort and the Redemptorists by St. Alphonsus Liguori are highlighted in this century of revolutions. The final chapter describes the revival of religious life in the nineteenth century. Featured here are St. John Bosco and the Salesians, St. Jeanne Jugan and the Little Sisters of the Poor, the revival of women’s communities in France, and the establishment of orders in the new world.

Given the intended audience, Rapley succeeds admirably in telling the story of religious orders throughout Christian history. As she herself admits, there is much more to this story than she could include, but one learns from her work just how integral to the story of Christianity these women and men were and are who took “the Lord as...