Introduction: New perspectives on female religious communities in Canada

• Published in: Histoire sociale 2014-05, Vol.47 (93), p.1-4
• Main Author: Frenette, Yves
• Format: Article
• Language: fre
• Subjects: Canada; Females; Historians; Historiography; Nuns; Priests; Religious Cultural Groups; Sex; Social History
• ISSN: 0018-2257
• DOI: 10.1353/his.2014.0008

By some stroke of serendipity, Histoire sociale / Social History recently received three submissions on female religious communities in Quebec and Ontario. We felt that it would be of interest to group these texts in a thematic section, since the two articles and the research note in question reflect the progress being made in the historiography of female religious orders -- a field itself at the forefront of the historiography of gender and religion. Although this field was for many years the domain of nuns and priests striving to produce hagiographic work and make nuns' contribution to society better known, the historical perspective on female French-Canadian communities experienced a tectonic shift starting in 1980 as part of the trends occurring in women's history. Works then appeared that almost entirely extracted nuns from the context of the Church, transforming them into agents of their own destiny. Like career women and the daughters of good families, the members of religious communities acquired independence -- through the writings of talented female historians -- in a world dominated by men, be they the local vicar, the archbishop, or the small town priest. Indeed, these historians painted a picture of strong-minded negotiators who resisted the forces opposing them. The same trends emerged in English Canada but with a certain lag, undoubtedly due to the minority nature of Catholicism there and its more marginal role within a largely Protestant society. In short, two perspectives emerged on the history of religious communities, namely one written from the inside that lacked a critical sense, and another based on social history that analyzed the nuns' relationship with the broader society and emphasized gender relations. The nuns' spirituality was central to the first and absent from the second. Over time, however, these two perspectives converged. Adapted from the source document.