Narratives of Suppression and Refoundation: The Demoiselles of la Retraite in Post-Revolutionary Europe

Barthélemy, Sarah
(2022) The Twelfth Triennial Conference on the History of Women Religious. Diversity and Dignity Across Time and Place — Location: Notre Dame (South Bend) (26.June.2022)

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  • Barthélemy, Sarahorcid-logoUSL-B
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In the period following the French Revolution, the Catholic Church entered a period of confrontation with the European states, whose political culture sought to clearly delimit the action of ecclesiastical institutions. The Church had to face the challenges of the progressive loss of its temporal authority and redefine its role in society. It was a context of new experiences of religious life for women, with steps forward and backward – these experiences are useful places of comparison when considering a transnational history of the evolution of women's religious models. Although founded in seventeenth-century France, the demoiselles of La Retraite, whose main characteristic was to offer the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius to women, reorganised themselves in the 19th century – the famous siècle des bonnes sœurs – by diversifying their activities. They added teaching to their initial apostolate of preaching retreats. However, the years following the French Revolution was not only made up of martyrdom, evictions and confiscations: it was also a period of refoundation (with figures such as Louise-Marie du Cléguer and Jeanne de Kertanguy). The aim of the paper will be to analyse the narratives and sources produced by the demoiselles on this pivotal moment, in order to understand how the history written after the refoundation sheds light on the current writing of the history of the congregation of La Retraite.
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Barthélemy, S. (2022). Narratives of Suppression and Refoundation: The Demoiselles of la Retraite in Post-Revolutionary Europe. The Twelfth Triennial Conference on the History of Women Religious. Diversity and Dignity Across Time and Place, Notre Dame (South Bend). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/165083