Preparing for Religious Life: The Training of Aspirants, Postulants and Novices in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Raftery, Deirdre

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-46201-6_2

Deirdre Raftery⁶

Part of the book series: Global Histories of Education ((GHE))

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Abstract

This chapter provides an in-depth discussion of the stages of preparation for religious life that were undertaken by young women who wanted to become professed nuns/sisters. It is argued that an important stage was the informal preparation that took place at home and in school. Formal preparation took place in aspirancies and in novitiates. The chapter draws on Canon Law, and on directories written for novices, that show how their preparation was rigidly proscribed. The chapter contains many examples drawn from archives that illustrate the experience of being ‘formed’ as a novice, and how ‘formation’ was supposed to help the newly professed nun throughout her life.

‘When young in the Franciscan house in Calais

She complained to the dentist, I have a pain in our teeth.’

‘J’ai mal à nos dents’. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

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Notes

1.
Phil Kilroy, Madeleine Sophie Barat, a Life (Cork: Cork University Press, 2000), 29.
2.
For a full discussion of this, see Kilroy, Madeleine Sophie Barat, 28–31.
3.
Coleridge, Henry James, The life of Mother Frances Mary Teresa Ball: foundress in Ireland of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (London: Burns and Oates, 1881), 34.
4.
Manuscript Life of Teresa Ball, TB/LIV 22, Loreto Congregation Institute and Provincial Archives, Dublin (hereafter LCIPA).
5.
M. Teresa Ball, 14 July 1842, Copybook of the letters of M. Teresa Ball, TB/COR/8, LCIPA.
6.
Copy of a letter from Dr Murray to Mother Coyney, 13 Apr. 1814. TB/COR/9/1. Original in the Bar Convent Archives, York (hereafter IBVM GPAD).
7.
Dr Daniel Murray to M. Teresa Ball, 20 Oct. 1820, TB/COR/9/3, LCIPA.
8.
Dr Daniel Murray to M. Teresa Ball, 14 May 1834, TB/COR/9/6, LCIPA. Murray indicated that he wanted both a full-length portrait, and a series of smaller ones, as a series of ‘abbesses of Loreto’.
9.
Joseph Patrick Haverty RHA (1794–1864) was born in Galway, though he later resided in Dublin. One of his best-known paintings is ‘The Blind Piper’, which hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland. Haverty painted many portraits and historical pieces, and was elected a Member of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1829.
10.
Murray spent part of every year at the country home of Anna Maria Ball O’Brien and her husband, John O’Brien, and often went there for short periods of recuperation if he became ill or tired. He died in the presence of Anna Maria. See Thomas J. Morrissey, The Life and Times of Daniel Murray, Archbishop of Dublin, 1823–1852 (Dublin: Messenger Publications, 2018), 272.
11.
M. Teresa Ball to M. Regis Ball. 16 Dec. 1834, UCB/00849, Ursuline Congregational Archives Cork (hereafter UCAC); M. Teresa Ball to M. Regis Ball, 30 Dec. 1834, UCB/00871, UCAC.
12.
In 1791, Teresa Mulally made a foundation at George’s Hill, Dublin, which became a Presentation convent. While Mulally did not become a nun, she retained a close relationship with Nagle and with the George’s Hill community.
13.
Letters of M. Teresa Ball to M. Teresa Dease, IBVMCPA; M. Teresa Ball Papers, LCIPA. Many of their letters are cited in Raftery, Teresa Ball and Loreto Education.
14.
Life of Mother Gertrude Bodkin (n.n., n.d., published by the Society of the Sacred Heart, Roehampton), 2.
15.
The concept of a ‘devotional revolution’ is analysed in Emmet Larkin, ‘The devotional revolution in Ireland 1850–75’, The American Historical Review 77, no. 3 (1972), 625–52. The work of Caitriona Clear and of Mary Peckham Magray has explored in some depth the changing devotional practices of Irish women, expanding and even contesting the view of Emmet Larkin that this ‘revolution’ was driven by Churchmen. See Catriona Clear, Nuns in Nineteenth Century Ireland (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1987); Mary Peckham Magray, The Transforming Power of the Nuns: women, religion, and cultural change in Ireland, 1750–1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
16.
See Colm Lennon (ed.), Confraternities and sodalities in Ireland: Charity, Devotion and Sociability (Dublin: Columba Press, 2013).
17.
Hasia Diner, Erin’s Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 27.
18.
Biographical records, Society of the Sacred Heart, discussed in Deirdre Raftery, ‘“Je suis d’aucune Nation”: the recruitment and identity of Irish women religious in the international mission field, c. 1840–1940’, Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education 49, no. 4 (2013), 518.
19.
R. P. Loret, ‘The Discernment of Vocations’, in Anon. [A.P. Ple OP], Religious Sisters, Being the English Version of Directoire des Supérieures and Les Adaptations de la Vie Religieuse (Maryland: Newman Press, 1952), 211–12.
20.
Ibid.
21.
Loret, ‘The Discernment of Vocations’, 214.
22.
Ibid.
23.
Loret, ‘The Discernment of Vocations’, 212.
24.
Annals of Loreto Abbey Rathfarnham, 1821–60, p. 9, RATH/LAC/1/1, LCIPA.
25.
Ibid.
26.
Loret, ‘The Discernment of Vocations’, 214–15.
27.
See for example Annals of South Presentation Convent Cork, 14 Feb 1842, Presentation Sisters Congregational Archives, Cork (hereafter PSCA). Annals of Drishane Convent, Co. Cork, 2 Feb 1926, Infant Jesus Sisters Archives, Dublin (hereafter IJSA).
28.
See Louise Callan, Philippine Duchesne, Frontier Missionary of the Sacred Heart, 1769–1852 (Maryland: Newman Press, 1957) and The Society of the Sacred Heart in North America (London, New York and Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co., 1937); see also Margaret Williams, The Society of the Sacred Heart: a History of a Spirit, 1800–1975 (London: Dartman, Longman and Todd, 1978).
29.
Vie de la Révérende Mère Anna Josephine Shannon: Religieuse du Sacré-Coeur 1810–1896 (Roehampton: privately published by the RSCJ, 1920), 42. Trans. Catherine KilBride, 2012. The term ‘aspirancy’ also referred to a kind of boarding school in which young aspirants were educated before being accepted as a postulant.
30.
See Vie de la Révérende Mère Anna Josephine Shannon. For a discussion of Mother Shannon and Mother Duchesne see Deirdre Raftery, ‘“Je suis d’aucune Nation”’, 522–28.
31.
Loret, ‘The Discernment of Vocations’, 214–18.
32.
Suellen Hoy, Good Hearts: Catholic Sisters in Chicago’s Past (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 29.
33.
Bishop of Salford [Herbert Vaughn] to M. Teresa Comerford, 27 Jan 1879, Administration Records, 1855–1889, Presentation Archives San Francisco (hereafter PASF).
34.
‘Irish Missioners in California’, Kilkenny Journal, 2 March 1867 and ‘Irish Nuns in California’ idem., 30 March 1867. Cited in Hoy, Good Hearts, 74.
35.
M. Teresa Comerford to Cardinal Simeone, 25 January 1878, Mother Mary Teresa Comerford’s Kilcock Correspondence, Administration Records, 1855–1889, PASF.
36.
Ibid. For an account of Comerford and the Presentation foundation in San Francisco see Deirdre Raftery, Catriona Delaney and Catherine Nowlan Roebuck, Nano Nagle: The Life and the Legacy (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2019, 186–9).
37.
The requirement for Irish nuns for San Francisco ended with the appointment of Patrick William Riordan as Archbishop; he required that women born in America should supply the needs of convents there. For a study of the Presentation Sisters in San Francisco, see Mary Rose Forest PBVM, With Hearts of Oak: the Story of the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in California, 1854–1907 (San Francisco: Sisters of the Presentation, Masonic Avenue, 2004).
38.
Copy of ‘St Brigid’s Missionary School, Callan’, Catholic Directory, 1895, Mercy Congregational Archives Dublin (hereafter MCAD).
39.
Bishop Moran was a loyal supporter of the Mercy Convent, Callan, and also made financial donations at intervals. See Accounts of the Sisters of Mercy, Callan, C45-1, Callan Papers, MCAD.
40.
Dr James Murray to M. Michael Maher, 6 April 1883, TS in Hoy Papers, Women and Leadership Archives, Loyola University, Chicago (hereafter WLA).
41.
Dr James Murray to Mother M. Michael, 14 April 1884, TS in Hoy Papers.
42.
M. Joseph Rice to M. Berchmans Commins, 8 Oct. 1892, copy in Hoy Papers.
43.
Dr Murray had requested Sr Joseph to send the aspirants to Australia ‘under the care or in the company of one or two priests’ from All Hallows College, a seminary for the preparation of missionary priests. Dr James Murray to Mother M. Michael, 16 April 1887, typescript in Hoy Papers.
44.
Dr James Murray to M. Michael Maher, 16 June 1888, typescript in Hoy Papers.
45.
See Hoy, Good Hearts, 26.
46.
See ‘Apostolic School for Women’, 201.
47.
Copy of ‘St Brigid’s Missionary School, Callan’, Catholic Directory, 1895, MCAD.
48.
Transcript of MS Note on St Brigid’s Mission School [n.d.], in Hoy Papers.
49.
Ibid.
50.
Data of entrants to St Brigid’s Missionary School, MCAD. In her research on St Brigid’s, Suelllen Hoy calculated that the mean age of entrant to this aspirancy was nineteen, while the median age was twenty. Aspirants came from all over Ireland, including counties Waterford, Wicklow, Clare, Tipperary, Cavan, Offaly and Roscommon. MS notes, St Brigid’s Missionary School, Register of Aspirants, Hoy Papers.
51.
Studies of Mary MacKillop and the RSJs include Sheila McCreanor, Mary MacKillop and her Early Companions, 1866–1870 (Sydney: Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart, 2013); Marie Crowley, Women of the Vale: Perthville Josephites, 1872–1972 (Victoria: Perthville Publications, 2002).
52.
Mary of the Cross MacKillop to her community, 9 July 1874, AP/91 [8], Sisters of St Joseph Archives, New South Wales (hereafter SSJAS).
53.
Mary of the Cross MacKillop to her community, 30 August 1874, AP/91 [13], SSJAS.
54.
Ibid.
55.
Mary of the Cross MacKillop to Cardinal Allesandro Franchi, 30 October 1874, AP/91 [17], SSJAS.
56.
For a discussion of this, see Raftery et al, Nano Nagle, 161–2.
57.
Hoy, Good Hearts, 25. About 430 aspirants at St Brigid’s did not continue in religious life.
58.
See for example the work of Diner, Erin’s Daughters in America, 130–5. Diner notes that nuns made up the second largest group of women of Irish origin in the 1910 American Catholic Who’s Who. For a discussion of Irish immigrant women who became nuns, see Raftery, ‘“Je suis d’aucune Nation”’, 522–8.
59.
The Sisters of St Joseph of Carondolet (CSJ) originated in Le Puy, France, in 1650. After the Revolution, they were reorganised by Mother St John Fontaine, and six sisters were sent to Carondolet, Missouri. By 1962, there were 30,000 CSJs worldwide, of which 17,000 were in the US. In that same year, the Irish Sisters of Mercy had 14,000 nuns in the US alone. Some indication of the size of female congregations and the scale of their work can be gleaned from Thomas P. McCarthy, Guide to Catholic Sisters in the United States (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1962; reprinted 2002).
60.
The founding group who were prepared at the rue St Jacques comprised Eleanor Fitzsimons, Elizabeth Coppinger, Margaret Nagle, and Mary Kavanagh. See Raftery et al., Nano Nagle, 28.
61.
Catherine McAuley, foundress of the Sisters of Mercy, together with Mary Ann Doyle and Mary Elizabeth Harley, took her vows at the Presentation Convent, George’s Hill, Dublin, on 12 December 1831. See Sullivan, Catherine McAuley and the Tradition of Mercy, 13.
62.
Arthur Devine, Convent Life or the Duties of Sisters (1889; this issue reprinted by Palala Press, 2015), 45.
63.
Ibid., 44.
64.
See Raftery, Teresa Ball and Loreto Education, 109.
65.
In most, though not all, of the orders in this book, the choir nuns were given the name Mary, followed by the name of a saint. Mary was usually indicated by the initial ‘M’. Some orders, such as the RSCJ, did not take the name Mary.
66.
See Ann M. Little, The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelwright (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 116–7.
67.
Notebook, ‘Benefactors to Loretto’ [sic], 1–3, GEN/FIN/8/1, LCIPA.
68.
Mother M. Teresa Ball, ‘Customs’ notebook, 22, TB/CUS, LCIPA.
69.
For a study of the dress of women religious see Veronica Bennett and Ryan Todd, Looking Good: a Visual Guide to the Nun’s Habit (UK: GraphicDesign&, 2018).
70.
Devine, Convent Life, 50.
71.
Ibid., 47.
72.
Ibid., 61.
73.
Ibid., 61–2.
74.
Daily Duties, An Instruction for Novices of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Toronto: Loreto Novitiate, 1897), 9.
75.
Ibid.
76.
MS fragment [Mother Magdalene Lalor, 1839], TB/LIV 12, LCIPA. The formation of Mother M. Teresa Ball is discussed in detail in Teresa Ball and Loreto Education: Convents and the Colonial World, 1794–1875 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2022), Chapter 4.
77.
Daily Duties, 10.
78.
Ibid., 25.
79.
See for example Daily Duties (1897); Directory for the Professed of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Calcutta: Catholic Orphan Press, 1919); A Directory for Novices of the Ursuline Order (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1927); Preparatory Exercises for the Religious Profession … translated from the French by a member of the Ursuline Community, Cork (Dublin: James Duffy, 1863).
80.
Directory for Novices of the Ursuline Order, iii.
81.
Ibid., iv.
82.
See for example The Choir Manual for Community Use in the Convents of the Sisters of Mercy (London: Burns and Oates, 1895); The Nun: her Character and Work (London: Kegan Paul, 1914), and The Sisters of Mercy’s Daily Round (Dublin: M.H. Gill and Son, 1927).
83.
Helen Short, Sisters of St Joseph of Cluny, Ferbane: Celebrating 100 Years of Apostolate (Published in Ireland by the Sisters of St Joseph of Cluny, 1996), 52.
84.
Preparatory Exercises for the Religious Profession, 102.
85.
See the detailed payments concerning a novice who entered in 1822, as listed in Noviceship Register of the Ursuline Convent Cork, UCD/00678, UCAC.
86.
Devine, Convent Life, 57.
87.
Ibid., 73.
88.
Melanie Hayes, The Best Address in Town: Henrietta Street, Dublin and its First Residents, 1720–80 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2020), 233. For a fuller discussion of dowries in convents, see Raftery, Teresa Ball and Loreto Education, 64–7.
89.
For a fuller discussion of this see Deirdre Bennett, The Founding and Funding of Presentation Convents and Schools in Ireland, 1775–1875 (Unpublished PhD Thesis, University College Dublin, 2022).
90.
Indenture between Cecilia Ball and Mable Clare Ball, 11 Jul. 1805, Sherlock & O’Brien papers, MS 50, 814/9/2, National Library of Ireland (hereafter NLI), and Last will and testament of Cecilia Ball, UCD/00869, UCAC, cited in Raftery, Teresa Ball, Chapter Four, passim.
91.
For a discussion of changing marriage patterns and inheritance patters in nineteenth-century Ireland, see Diner, Erin’s Daughters in America, 7–9.
92.
Diner, Erin’s Daughters, 11.
93.
See Raftery et al., Nano Nagle, 188.
94.
Adrian Van Kaam, The Vowed Life: Dynamics of Personal and Spiritual Unfolding (New Jersey: Dimension Books, 1968), 129.
95.
Ibid., 138.
96.
Devine, Convent Life, 72.
97.
Publications included René Biot and Pierre Galimard, Medical Guide to Vocations (Maryland: Newman Press, 1950; 1956); A. Bonduelle, ‘The Recognition of Vocation’, in Vocation (n.n., London: Blackfriars Publications, 1952); Suzy Rousset, ‘Medical Aspects’, in Chastity (n.n., London: Blackfriars Publications, 1955);
98.
Biot and Galimard, Medical Guide to Vocations, 189.
99.
The vow of chastity is ‘a vow made to God to abstain from … every voluntary sensual gratification, whether internal or external, not only unlawful, but also lawful’. Devine, Convent Life, 132.
100.
Biot and Galimard, Medical Guide to Vocations, 207.
101.
See Devine, Convent Life, 110.
102.
See Bennett, The Founding and Funding, Chapter 4, passim.
103.
Devine, Convent Life, 58.
104.
Trans.: I have a pain in our teeth.

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Deirdre Raftery

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Raftery, D. (2023). Preparing for Religious Life: The Training of Aspirants, Postulants and Novices in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. In: Irish Nuns and Education in the Anglophone World. Global Histories of Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46201-6_2

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46201-6_2
Published: 09 January 2024
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