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Profiles of Convent Society in Ancien Régime France ElizabethRapley University of Ottawa What are we to make of Diderot's famous images of female religious life?1 Were thé nuns of thé eighteenth century really thé victims of an archaic System, pining away their lives in frustrated and stérile idleness? Weretheir cloisters really dungeons and places of torture, vast tombs without openings to thé world? Even worse: were they sometimes thé scènes of sexual orgies, where young women were induced to gratify thé lusts of their superiors? There can be no sweeping déniai. Real scandais did occur. Some girls were forced into religious life. Thèse were, however, exceptions to thé rule.2 A more général problem was parental persuasion —apersistentconditioning from early childhood, which left thé subject with only thé appearance of choice.3 Furthermore, even where thé initial calling had been genuine enough, thé 1 Denis Diderot's work, La Religieuse, was written around 1760, and published posthumously, in 1796. 2 A study of appeals for annulment of vows in one diocèse (Langres) shows thé number of alleged forced vocations to hâve been infinitésimal —" quinze cas pour un siècle ... et des milliers de professions!" Surprisingly, thé appellants were more ukely to be mâle than female. See Dominique Dinet, "Les insinuations ecclésiastiques", Histoire Économie et Société II (1989):208. But this raises thé question: hpw easy was it for cloistered nuns to bring their cases to thé attention of thé authorities? See Geneviève Reynes, Couventsde femmes (Paris: Fayard, 1987), 42-46. 3 This type of victimization was condemned not only by secular writers, but also by thé preachers of thé Church. According to Vincent de Paul, such nuns had no true vocation, "ayant été mises là par leurs parens et y étant demeurées par des respects humains." See his Correspondance,14 vol. (Paris: LibrairieLecoffre, 1923), V:563-564. For other négative judgments by churchmen, see Louis Châtellier, L'Europe des dévots (Paris: Rammarion, 1987), 158-159; Jean de Viguerie, "La vocation religieuse et sacerdotale en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: la théorie et la réalité", dans La vocation religieuse et sacerdotale en France, Rencontre de Fontevraud, Université d'Angers, 19/9, 27; Reynes, Couventsdes femmes, 42-43. 130 ELIZABETH RAPLEY irrévocable character of solemn vows could tum thé original commitment into a life sentence, a total loss of freedom. To enlightened minds, thé way of life appeared, at best, outdated and unnatural. "They seem thoroughly satisfied with their lot," wrote an English visiter of a convent which she had visited; but she added: "The poor women certainly deserve pity."4 This was a view shared by many other up-to-date people. Obviously, no real appraisal can be made of thé private state of mind of thèse women long dead. What we can try to measure, however, is thé health of thé religious life in général. And hère, conventional historical wisdom has it that as thé seventeenth century gave way to thé eighteenth, fervour declined, and this décline was reflected in thé dropping numbers, size, and wealth of religious houses.5 Of quantitative décline there can be no doubt. In thé early eighteenth century, of thé approximately 2,000 female monasteries in France, one quarter were miserably poor. In thé following years, many of them were closed down by order of thé Crown, either for reasons of poverty orbecause of insuffîcient numbers.6 Virtually ail communities suffered a drop in membership, to one-half or twothirds of thé numbers they had once enjoyed. But what were thé causes, and what was thé nature, of this décline? A good argument can be made that —at least where religious women were concerned —material difficultés were thé root of thé problem, and that failure of morale, where it occurred, was generally a secondary effect. 4 Somerset RO/DD/SH/67/19c/2480; quoted in John Lough, France on thé Eve ofthe Révolution (Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1987), 20-21. 5 See L.J. Rogier, Le Siècle des Lumières et la Révolution, vol. IV in Nouvelle Histoire de l'Eglise (Paris: Seuil, 1963), 122-123: "Au XVIIIe siècle, les ordres monastiques donnent une impression générale de stagnation et de défaitisme ... L'important n'est pas dans les mesures pnses au détriment des monast...

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