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Abstract
This article examines the management of the education enterprise of teaching Sisters, with reference to their transnational networking. The article suggests that orders of women religious were the first all-female transnational networks, engaged constantly in work that was characterised by ‘movement, ebb and circulation’. The mobility of teaching Sisters is framed within a discussion of three interconnected features of their global networking: the management of transnational recruitment networks, the advantageous use of international travel networks, and the movement of resources around the world. The article draws on sources from convent archives in Europe, Australia, Canada and the USA that throw light on the transnational networking of women religious around the world.
Acknowledgement
The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Irish Research Council (New Foundations Award), which facilitated research at several archives in Australia.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 In the nineteenth-century Catholic Church, women in religious orders took solemn vows and received the title ‘nun’ and women in congregations took simple vows and were called ‘Sister’. It is common in scholarship to use these two terms interchangeably, and to also use the term ‘woman religious’. See Mary Peckham Magray, The Transforming Power of the Nuns: Women, Religion and Cultural Change in Ireland, 1750–1900 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 138.
2 Bart Hellinckx, Frank Simon and Marc Depaepe, The Forgotten Contribution of the Teaching Sisters: A Historiographical Essay on the Educational Work of Catholic Women Religious in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Leuven, Leuven University Press, 2010), 14, citing Catriona Clear, Nuns in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1987), xvii.
3 Elizabeth Smyth, ‘“Much exertion of the voice, great application of the mind”: Teacher Education within the Congregation of the Sisters of St Joseph of Toronto, 1854–1911’, Canadian Catholic Historical Association Historical Studies 60 (1994):112.
4 See for example Sarah Curtis, Educating the Faithful: Religion, Schooling and Society in Nineteenth-Century France (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000); Rebecca Rogers, From the Salon to the Schoolroom: Educating Bourgeois Girls in Nineteenth-Century France (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005); Elizabeth M. Smyth, ed., Changing Habits: Women’s Religious Orders in Canada (Toronto: Novalis, 2007); Marie Kealy, Dominican Education in Ireland, 1820–1930 (Dublin and Portland OR: Irish Academic Press, 2007); Deirdre Raftery and Catherine Nowlan-Roebuck, ‘Convent Schools and National Education in Nineteenth-Century Ireland: Negotiating a Place within a Non-Denominational System’, History of Education 36, no. 3 (2007): 353–365; Deirdre Raftery, The “Mission” of Nuns in Female Education’, Paedagogica Historica 48, no. 2 (2012): 299–313; 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 49, no. 4 (2013): 513–30.
5 Hellinckx et al., Forgotten Contribution of the Teaching Sisters, 25.
6 Ibid.
7 For example, see Joan McBride SM, When We are Weak, Then We are Strong: A History of the Marist Sisters in Australia, 1907–1984 (New South Wales: Marist Sisters, 2006); Maris Stella McKeown OP, Cabra Dominicans and All That Jazz: Dominican Sisters in Louisiana (Dublin: Dominican Publications, 2006).
8 See for example Mary C. Sullivan, Catherine McAuley and the Tradition of Mercy (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1995); Phil Kilroy, Madeleine Sophie Barat: A Life (Cork: Cork University Press, 2000), and The Society of the Sacred Heart in Nineteenth-Century France, 1800–1865 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2012).
9 For two recent scholarly histories commissioned by orders of women religious see Mary Ryllis Clark, Loreto in Australia (Australia: University of New South Wales Press, 2009), and Janice Garaty, Providence Provides: Brigidine Sisters in the New South Wales Province (Australia: University of New South Wales Press, 2013). Recent graduate researchers who had unfettered access to relevant archives of religious orders include Catherine Nowlan-Roebuck, whose PhD research was completed under Dr Deirdre Raftery at University College Dublin in 2009, and Louise O’Reilly, whose PhD research was completed at NUI Maynooth, under Dr Jacinta Prunty, in 2013. Both researchers were working on the Presentation Sisters (PBVMs).
10 See Guy Laperrière, ‘Comment écrit-on l’histoire d’une communauté? Note critique’, in SCHEC Etudes d’histoire religieuse 71 (2005): 109, cited in Hellinckx et al., Forgotten Contribution of the Teaching Sisters, 25.
11 Carmen Mangion, ‘“Good Teacher” or “Good Religious”? The Professional Identity of Catholic Women Religious in Nineteenth-century England and Wales’, Women’s History Review 14 (2005): 223–239; Rebecca Rogers, ‘Boarding Schools, Women Teachers, and Domesticity: Reforming Girls’ Secondary Education in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century’, French Historical Studies 19, no. 1 (1995): 152–181; ‘Retrograde or Modern? Unveiling the Teaching Nun in Nineteenth-century France’, Social History 23, no. 2 (1998): 146–164; Raftery and Nowlan-Roebuck, ‘Convent Schools and National Education’; Raftery, ‘Je suis d’aucune Nation’.
12 See for example Jenny Collins, ‘They came with a Purpose: Educational Journeys of Nineteenth-century Irish Dominican Sister Teachers’, History of Education 44, no. 1 (2015): 44–63, and Marjet Derks, ‘Modesty and Excellence: Gender and Sports Culture in Dutch Catholic Schooling, 1900–1940’, Gender and History 20, no. 1 (2008): 8–26.
13 Stephanie Burley, ‘Reconstructing the Religious Experiences of Catholic Girls’ Schooling in South Australia in the 1920s’, Education Research and Perspectives 28, no. 1 (2001): 25–44; Kathleen Casey, I Answer with my Life: Histories of Women Teachers Working for Social Change (New York: Routledge, 1993); Yvonne McKenna, Made Holy: Irish Women Religious at Home and Abroad (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006); Christine Trimmingham Jack, ‘Sacred Symbols, School Ideology and the Construction of Subjectivity’, Paedagogica Historica 34, no. 3 (1998): 771–94; ‘A Moulding Haven? Competing Educational Discourses in an Australian Preparatory School of the Society of the Sacred Heart, 1944–1965’, Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’éducation 10, no. 1–2 (1998): 116–39.
14 Deirdre Raftery and Catherine KilBride, ‘Reading the Image and Hearing the Voice: Using Technology to Record and Interpret the Role of Catholic Religious Orders in Education and Literacy Formation’. Paper presented at ISCHE 28: Technologies of the World. Literacies in the History of Education, Umeå, Sweden, August 16–19, 2006.
15 Richard Aldrich, ‘The Three Duties of the Historian of Education’, History of Education 32, no. 2 (2003): 135.
16 This understanding of transnationalism has been utilised in Gabriela Ossenbach and María del Mar del Pozo, ‘Postcolonial Models, Cultural Transfers and Transnational Perspectives in Latin America: A Research Agenda’, Paedagogica Historica 47, no. 5 (2011): 581.
17 See Joyce Goodman, Gary McCulloch and William Richardson, ‘“Empires Overseas” and “Empires at Home”: Postcolonial and Transnational Perspectives on Social Change in the History of Education’, Paedagogica Historica 45, no. 6 (2009): 695–706; Lynne Trethewey and Kay Whitehead, ‘Beyond Centre and Periphery: Transnationalism in Two Teacher/Suffragettes’ Work’, History of Education 32, no. 5 (2003): 547.
18 Nelleke Bakker, ‘Westward Bound? Dutch Education and Cultural Transfer in the Mid-twentieth Century’, Paedagogica Historica 50, no. 1–2 (2014): 216.
19 Ossenbach and del Mar del Pozo, ‘Postcolonial Models’.
20 Ibid.
21 In the history of women’s education, the conceptual tool of transnationalism has been utilised by many scholars, including those mentioned above. In writing on women religious, it has not been utilised explicitly, although some scholars have made substantial contributions to our understanding of how women religious moved between countries and influenced education ideas in different countries. See for example Elisabeth Dufourcq, Les congrégations religieuses féminines hors d’Europe de Richelieu à nos jours. Histoire naturelle d’une diaspora, 4 vols (Paris: Librairie de l’Inde, 1993); Susan O’Brien, ‘French Nuns in Nineteenth-century England’, Past and Present 154 (February 1997): 142–80; Rebecca Rogers, ‘Le Catholicisme au féminin: Thirty Years of Women’s History’, Historical Reflections 39, no. 1 (2013): 82–100.
22 Ossenbach and del Pozo, ‘Postcolonial Models’, 582.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 This article draws on research from a major research project to identify and analyse the participation of women religious in international education in the period 1840–1940. Research data have been gathered in Canada, Australia, Europe and the USA. The author acknowledges the support of the Irish Research Council, the Fulbright Foundation, the University of Notre Dame CUSHWA Centre, and the Ireland-Canada University Foundation.
27 Novitiate education and professional formation is discussed in some detail in Deirdre Raftery, ‘Rebels with a Cause: Obedience, Resistance and Convent life, 1830–1940’, History of Education 42, no. 6 (2013): 729–744.
28 The term ‘Mother House’ was used to distinguish the original founding convent of an order from other convents established by that order, and in the nineteenth century the Superior General usually lived at the Mother House when she was not travelling between convents under her care. Most of the orders examined in my research originated in France, and therefore had their Mother House in Paris or a French city. During periods of Catholic suppression some Mother Houses were relocated to countries that were sympathetic to the displaced Sisters. Many convent annals indicate that Sisters cherished the privilege of spending some time at the Mother House; often Sisters who were embarking on a long journey to a missionary convent made a visit to the Mother House before leaving Europe.
29 Convent annals and letters indicate that Sisters were usually very alert to the whereabouts of their travelling Sisters, including those who had left for the international mission field. I have noted this kind of networking via letter-writing in many archival collections including those at the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary Provincial Archives, USA and Canada; Society of the Sacred Heart General Archives Rome; Infant Jesus General Archives, Paris; IBVM Provincial Archives Australia; Society of the Sacred Heart Archive, Canadian and United States Provinces; Sisters of St Louis General Archives, Juilly, France.
30 Pupils who were considering entering religious life sometimes spent additional time at a convent. In the early years of Mount Anville Sacred Heart Convent, Dublin, past pupils went to Roehampton, for example, to spend time discerning whether or not to enter religious life.
31 Mother Teresa Ball to Mother Teresa Dease, November 29, 1851. Toronto Series 3, Box 13, Files 1-10. IBVM Archives of Canada and North America.
32 Anthony Fahey, ‘Female Asceticism in the Catholic Church: A Case Study of Nuns in Ireland in the Nineteenth Century’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Illinois, 1982); Mary Peckham Magray, The Transforming Power of the Nuns: Women, Religion and Cultural Change in Ireland, 1750–1900 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Raftery, ‘The ‘Mission’ of Nuns in Female Education’; Raftery, ‘Je suis d’aucune Nation’.
33 Novitiate education and entrance to religious life is discussed in Raftery, ‘Rebels with a Cause’, 729–44.
34 M. Mary McKillop, Mercy Convent, Cappoquin, Waterford, to the Congregation of St Joseph (CSJ) Community, Sydney, August 30, 1874. Congregation of St Joseph Archives, Sydney (hereafter CSJAS). AP/91. Typescript copies of the letters of Mary McKillop, 1874, book 7.
35 For a history of the ‘habit’, or garb, worn by members of religious orders, see Elizabeth Kuhns, The Habit: A History of the Clothing of Catholic Nuns (New York and London: Doubleday, 2003). Women religious, in the period discussed here, typically wore a scapular over a long dress (which sometimes had a train), and they covered their heads with a layered headdress that included a close-fitting cap, a wimple and a veil. Each order adopted its own habit, with unique features, and these features had symbolic value. The Sisters of St Joseph, of which Mary McKillop was foundress, adopted a simple brown habit of coarse cloth, and a veil. They were often known as the ‘brown Josephites’, to distinguish them from another order dedicated to St Joseph that wore a black habit. In many orders, each Sister made her own habit, and wore it until it fell apart from use. Habits were hard to launder, though underclothes were more easily washed. The habits worn by nuns were infrequently modernised before the Second Vatican Council, and missionary nuns often wore heavy wool habits in the tropics.
36 M. Mary McKillop, Convent of Mercy, Blandford Square, London to Mons. Kirby, Sydney, October 30, 1874. CSJAS, AP/91. Typescript copies of the letters of Mary McKillop, 1874, book 7.
37 Researchers are alerted to the relevance of ‘multi-directional’ flows of ideas and culture, in Ossenbach and del Pozo, ‘Postcolonial Models’, 582. In my own work on women religious, I look at the transmission of culture via Irish missionaries, who taught music, singing, literature and drama at mission schools in South East Asia, for instance. See Deirdre Raftery, ‘From Kerry to Katong: transnational influences in convent and novitiate life for the Sisters of the Infant Jesus, c. 1908–1950' in Education, Identity and Women Religious, 1800–1900: Convents, Classrooms and Colleges, ed. Deirdre Raftery and Elizabeth Smyth (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015).
38 See Suellen Hoy, Good Hearts: Catholic Sisters in Chicago’s Past (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 29.
39 Ibid.
40 Irish Catholic, June 8, 1912, and weekly until September 14, 1912. See Hoy Papers, IGC Loyola, Series 2, Box 3.
41 An exhaustive account of all orders of teaching Sisters established in Australia is found in M. R. Mac Ginley, A Dynamic of Hope: Institutes of Women Religious in Australia (Sydney: Crossing Press, 2002). For studies that give an account of similar expansion projects in the USA see Eileen Brewer, Nuns and the Education of American Catholic Women, 1860–1920 (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1987) and Anne M. Butler, Across God’s Frontiers: Catholic Sisters in the American West, 1850–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).
42 For a brief discussion of ‘acculturation and enculturation, the transmission and adaptation of culture, and the relationship between dominant and receptive cultures’ see Ossenbach and del Pozo, ‘Postcolonial Models’, 583.
43 See earlier discussion of the work of Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmerman.
44 Account of the Voyage of the Sisters from St Mary’s Convent, Kingstown, on the Mission to Maitland, Australia’. Typescript, Mercy Archives, Sydney.
45 MS Annals of Mount St Joseph, Richmond, Vol. 1, 1882–1899. Faithful Companions of Jesus Archives, Melbourne, Australia.
46 Mother M. Aloysius Macken, MS Diary of the Foundation at Sydney, 1892. IBVM Archives, Ballarat.
47 John Mullanphy was an Irish settler who made his fortune from cotton and land. Mullanphy was the foremost merchant in the Mississippi Valley by the time Mother Duchesne arrived in St Louis in 1827, and he had an interest in supporting Catholic education. He left a legacy to the RSCJs, with terms which included that they would run an orphanage for 20 children, who would be given an education suited to ‘their station in life’. See Louise Callan, The Society of the Sacred Heart in North America (New York and Chicago: Longmans, Green, 1937).
48 MS Journal of the Society of the Sacred Heart, St Charles 1818–1840, May 2, 1827 (Series IV, St Louis Province). Sacred Heart Archives, USA and Canada Provinces, St Louis, MO.
49 See Callan, The Society of the Sacred Heart.
50 See Raftery, ‘Je suis d’aucune Nation’.