Marguerite Bourgeoys and Montreal, 1640-1665 by Patricia Simpson (review)

598BOOK REVIEWS "blind obedience." Some see the widely used consensual process as more oppressive than the structures of the past, without the canonical safeguards. Though the pressures are more subtle, they may not be less effective. Mrs. Carey's account is largely limited to the American scene. She is not writing about religious life abroad and the International Union of Superiors General is not mentioned. But in fact some groups heavily represented in the United States were affected by the slower and sometimes more considered rate of change preferred in other cultures. On the other hand the generally more articulate and aggressive American delegates often had a disproportionate influence in the chapters of international communities. This reviewer has two convictions about the phenomenon described in this book—that the LCWR leaders, some ofthem personally known to her,were and are sincere in their choice of objectives and that, on some occasions, they have made tragic mistakes. Joan Bland, S.N.D. Educationfor Parish Service Foundation Trinity College, Washington, D.C. Canadian Marguerite Bourgeoys and Montreal, 1640-1665- By Patricia Simpson. [McGill-Queens Studies in the History of Religion, Series 2.] (Montreal: McGUl-Queen's University Press. 1997. Pp. xxvi, 247. $49.95 cloth; $19.95 paper.) Patricia Simpson begins this first of a projected two-volume biography of Marguerite Bourgeoys by describing the restoration, some thirty years ago, of a portrait painted at the time of the latter's death in 1700. Simpson understands her own task as analogous to the restorer's: to permit the life of this educator, founder of North America's first uncloistered religious congregation, and cofounder of a city to be viewed without the accretions which centuries of devotion have added. To that task Simpson brings the fruit of considerable archival and archaeological research, in particular that of Alfred Morin and Sister Mary Eileen Scott. She also brings concerns which did not occupy earlier biographers , notably the way in which Marguerite and other ordinary women lived and related to one another and to men in society and in the Church. Not only is she meticulous in her use of sources (J would quibble only with her assertion that Bishop de S.-Vallier's 1694 Constitutions attempted to impose "solemn vows" on the Congregation), but she displays what Margaret Miles has termed a "hermeneutic ofgenerosity"toward such earlier commentators as Marie Morin, whose annals of the Montreal Hotel-Dieu are mined for their insight into the daily lives of Ville-Marie's women, in spite of numerous factual inaccuracies. BOOK REVIEWS599 When possible, she allows Marguerite Bourgeoys' own voice to emerge, forming each chapter around an initial quotation from her often fragmentary writings and providing context for numerous other citations sprinkled liberally throughout the text. More than half this work serves as preface to its presentation of the period with which it is most concerned, the years from 1653,when Marguerite and the "hundred men" landed in Ville-Marie, to 1665, when Ville-Marie's first governor, Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve, departed. The description of Marguerite's early life in Troyes (1620-1653) includes the educational training she received from Pierre Fourier's Congrégation de Notre-Dame and her efforts to find a communal expression ofreligious life. In Simpson's discussion ofthe French Soci été de Notre-Dame de Montréal and the precarious first eleven years ofVilleMarie 's existence, she shows herself aware of revisionist histories but chooses to give full weight to the founders' stated intention: to recreate the primitive Christian community in the New World. In her view, economic motivations came to the fore only afterwards; "[t]he Montreal that evolved after 1665 was not the settlement of which its founders had dreamed" (p. 10). The final three chapters recount Marguerite's voyage to Ville-Marie, her numerous involvements in its life, especially establishing its first school, and the beginnings of the Congrégation de Notre-Dame of Montreal. Her friendships with Maisonneuve,Jeanne Manee, and Marie Morin, and her involvement with native Americans and with thefilles du roi receive particular attention. For the most part, Simpson allows the events she narrates to speak for themselves, but with regard to this...