Academic literature on the topic 'Little Franciscan Sisters of Mary'

AbstractThe contradictions that permeated the missionary experience can be lost through the use of words such as “encounter” and “civilizing.” This study seeks to illustrate the complementary and competing forces that impinged on the work of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary sisters in Upper Congo. It emphasizes their commitment to social action and evangelism through work, their interaction with local women and local knowledge, the particular colonial rule they witnessed, and the imperial simplification of complexity at the 1931 Paris Exposition Coloniale Internationale. Les contradictions dont a été imprégnée l'expérience missionnaire risquent de perdre en acuité avec l'usage de mots comme « rencontre » et « processus de civilisation ». Le présent article cherche à illustrer les dynamiques de complémentarité et de compétition qui ont affecté le travail des Sœurs Franciscaines de Marie dans le bassin supérieur du Congo. Il souligne leur engagement pour l'action sociale et l'évangélisation par le travail, leur rapport avec les femmes locales et le savoir local, les spécificités du régime colonial auquel elles furent confrontées, ainsi que la simplification impériale de la complexité à laquelle il fut procédé lors de l'exposition coloniale internationale de Paris en 1931.

An 1894 biography of St. Francis of Assisi was a milestone in the lives of two young urban missionaries. They were “Sisters of the People” at the dynamic and progressive Wesleyan Methodist West London Mission in Soho, a poor and overcrowded central London district. Sister Mary Neal and Sister Emmeline Pethick would eventually distinguish themselves nationally, Emmeline as a militant suffragist in tandem with her husband Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, and later as a feminist and peace activist; Mary as a music educator and folklorist. French protestant clergyman Paul Sabatier's scholarly but lyrical biography of Francis enthralled the mission's leaders, including the superintendent, Hugh Price Hughes. Francis's rejection of his family's wealth, his insistence on absolute poverty for himself and his followers, and his devotion to the poor presented a compelling model of Christian service, one that the two young Sisters found especially exciting. They resigned the Sisterhood in 1895 to live cheaply in workers' housing just north of their old turf. This decision launched them into a national community of Franciscan-inspired settlers, philanthropists, “simple livers,” and collective farmers—offering us a new perspective on fin de siècle social activism.

‭This study traces the route by which the city of Los Angeles came to be called by that name. Late in life St. Francis retired to a tiny hut on “a little piece of property,” una porziuncola near Assisi. Because angels were frequently heard singing there, the area around his hut was known as “La Valle di Nostra Donna degli Angeli.” Here, Francis experienced two appearances of Mary and her Son, during which he obtained the revolutionary plenary indulgence known as Il Perdono d’Assisi. The Porziuncola became a pilgrims’ shrine, and Francis’s hut was transformed into a huge basilica dedicated to Santa Maria degli Angeli. Reception of the indulgence slowly spread throughout Europe, and most particularly in Spain. Columbus, who was a Franciscan Tertiary, after a stay in the monastery of Our Lady of the Angels at La Rábida, set sail on his momentous journey on the feast of the Perdono (2 August). The indulgence was carried to the New World by the Franciscans where the devotion developed a wide-spread cult. Three hundred years later, the Spanish king’s army, accompanied by Franciscan friars, journeyed up the western coast and came upon a clear stream, which they called la Porciúncula. In 1781, the New World City of the Angels was founded in the cult’s honor.‬

‘Woods, M. Joseph died ye 20 April 1822, the last of ye Ladies of ye Establishment’So ends the register of the convent founded in Hammersmith in 1669, and with the death of Sister Joseph the Institute of Mary became extinct in the south of England. But in distant Belfast the story of its revival was already taking shape. On 1st April 1812 a little girl, Mary Petronilla, was born there to a Protestant Doctor Barratt and his wife. We know nothing of her childhood, but it is thought that as a young woman she taught singing in a Loreto convent. About the year 1835 she was received into the Catholic Church, and so embarked upon a career that was to have far-reaching effects. The presence of a Roman Catholic daughter may have been embarrassing to the doctor’s household, or perhaps it was just the desire to learn German and to see the world that prompted Mary Barratt to follow the advice of the Loreto Sisters and to accept a teaching post advertised in Augsburg. There she not only learned German in return for giving English lessons, but she observed religious life as lived in the oldest house of the Institute. Strict as the régime was (the nuns rose at 4.30 am. all the year round) she fell in love with it and asked to be received into the novitiate. On 10th September 1844 she was clothed in the habit and given the name Sister Petronilla, though this was later changed to Sister Ignatius.

The early fourteenth century marks one of the most significant periods in the development of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Not only did this period witness a profound transformation in the theological understanding of the older feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but it also brought about the active engagement of the laity in its celebration. In northern Italy the first lay confraternities dedicated to celebrating the feast of the Conception were founded in the 1320s and 1330s under the direction of the Franciscans, then the greatest advocates of the immaculist cause. This coincidence between the theological definition of Mary's conception, lay participation in the feast's celebration, and Franciscan sponsorship of confraternities raises interesting questions about the nature of lay piety and the role of lay associations in disseminating religious beliefs.The question of when certain religious beliefs and their theological formulations become known and understood by the majority of the faithful is complex, particularly in the case of the Immaculate Conception. No explicit mention of Mary's sinless conception exists in Scripture or in apostolic teaching. Belief in the Immaculate Conception emerged only gradually, through centuries of reflection and disputation, and was not proclaimed a dogma of faith until 1854. This gradual unfolding of the doctrine has meant that identifying the shift from a general reverence for Mary's conception to an explicit belief in the sinlessness of her conception has proved difficult. A second difficulty is that for centuries the qualifier ‘immaculate’ was not attached to the name of the feast. During the Middle Ages the feast was referred to simply as the ‘Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary’ The mere observance of the feast, therefore, tells us little about what the faithful actually believed.

The early European presence in California and in the American Southwest in general is identified with missions. Although missions were equally important in Spanish Florida and at an earlier date, the average American does not associate missions with Florida or Georgia. Indeed, as David Hurst Thomas observed in a recent monograph on the archaeological exploration of a site of the Franciscan mission of Santa Catalina de Guale on Georgia's St. Catherines Island, the numerous missions of Spanish Florida have remained little known even in scholarly circles. And as Charles Hudson has noted, this ignorance or amnesia has extended to awareness of the native peoples who inhabited those Southeastern missions or were in contact with them, even though these aboriginal inhabitants of the Southeast “possessed the richest culture of any of the native people north of Mexico … by almost any measure.” Fortunately, as Thomas remarked in the above-mentioned monograph, “a new wave of interest in mission archaeology is sweeping the American Southeast.” This recent and ongoing work holds the promise of having a more lasting impact than its historical counterpart of a half-century or so ago in the work of Herbert E. Bolton, Fr. Maynard Geiger, OFM, Mary Ross, and John Tate Lanning. Over the fifty odd years since Lanning's Spanish Missions of Georgia appeared, historians and archaeologists have made significant contributions to knowledge about sites in Spanish Florida where missions or mission outstations and forts or European settlements were established. But to date no one has compiled a comprehensive listing from a historian's perspective of the mission sites among them to which one may turn for the total number of such establishments, their general location, time of foundation, length of occupation, moving, circumstances of their demise and the tribal affiliation of the natives whom they served. This catalog and its sketches attempt to meet that need.

The sisters of the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary, more commonly known as Visitationists, were brought to Poland from France by Marie Louise Gonzaga (known in Poland as Ludwika Maria) in 1654. Visitationists ran a boarding school for girls and provided education for inner-city girls from less well-to-do backgrounds. In addition, the religious order for women accommodated a novitiate for young girls admitted to this religious order for women – the so-called habitki (from the habit of a member under vows), i.e. candidates for the convent. The present article provides the reader with some detailed information on the mentioned group of candidates in relation the period covering the years from the establishment of the convent to the end of the seventeenth century. Habitki’s cells were located in the part of the convent that also accommodated nuns, wore habits and participated in regular religious services and prayers with nuns. As a rule, they were usually minors up to girls of several years of age or older. They were supervised by a master-nun, appointed by Mother Superior, who took care of them, while a special rule of conduct determined their duties and responsibilities in the convent. The reasons behind a decision to send little girls to the nunnery varied. At times, still unborn babies were sacrificed to God even before delivery, a custom to be found in particular within families where children were long in coming or where successive deliveries were death experiences for parents. Girls in the convent usually had both parents, but oftentimes they were orphans, disabled, hated by their parents or came from large families. By sending a daughter to a convent parents believed that her future was somehow secured. Occasionally, by doing so they simply got rid of a crippled child that often required extra care, or cleared the situation in prospective property settlement agreements in the family. More often than not, the plans conceived by parents, or foster parents, were not in line with intentions or expectations of girls. A decision to stay within the confinement of the convent, however, was up to a candidate, who, after reaching the age of 15, was entitled to seek for admittance to the full novitiate and, at the age of 16, could take simple vows. Between 1658 and 1697, the Warsaw-based convent had 23 habitki. Only 7 of them took vows. At the time, no other religious order and convent had such a specific rule for child.

The article analyses the iconographic programme of the altars of St Trinity Church of the convent of former Bernardine nuns (Sisters of the Third Order of St Francis) in Kaunas until its closure in 1864 and reveals the expression of the spirituality of this order in the sacral art as far as the surviving few sources and heritage allow. In order to achieve the goal, the following objectives were established: (1) to reconstruct the old interior of the altar ensemble, (2) to reveal the most important peculiarities of the Bernardines’ spirituality, and (3) to highlight the logical connections between art and Bernardine spirituality in church art through the icono-theological approach. Scarce earliest sources indicate that the most venerated representation of the Virgin Mary and the relics of the True Cross were in the church in the first half of the seventeenth century, and the Feast of the Discovery and Exaltation of the Holy Cross was celebrated. These hints suggest that piety to the Crucifix and the Mother of God was prevalent at that time. The cult of the Crucifix is associated with the common origin of Franciscan religious devotion, which encourages following the example of St Francis by contemplating the suffering of Jesus Christ. Also, it is not difficult to infer that based on the name of the church, the high altar should have been dedicated to the Holy Trinity; therefore, there should have been appropriate piety practices. It is believed that the fraternity of the Holy Trinity was active from the time of the completion of the church. The main accents of iconography of the altars of the Bernardine Church in Kaunas were formed after the disasters in the mid-seventeenth century, the last fire in 1668. The Holy Trinity was the dominant accent of piety. A painting dated to the early eighteenth century that reflects the post-Tridentine recommendations for visual arts decorated the high altar of the same name. In the early eighteenth century, the exceptional piety to St Joseph also gains prominence: in 1703, the fraternity of St. Joseph was established and a separate altar was dedicated to this saint. The feasts of the Holy Trinity and St Joseph were celebrated. It is believed that the Bernardine nuns in Vilnius, who had settled in the city a little earlier, influenced the piety to the Holy Trinity. A highly developed and majestic iconography distinguished their high altar, visually emphasising the figure of the Crucifix. The exceptional piety of the Bernardine nuns of Krakow to St Joseph influenced the cult of this saint. The first Bernardine nuns came to Lithuania from Krakow and, without doubt, the Lithuanian nuns must have kept in touch with the nuns from Krakow. Devotion to the Virgin Mary and the Crucifix was further developed. Two altars in the church were dedicated to the Mother of God (Mary, Consoler of the Afflicted and Our Lady of Sorrows); also, there were altars of Jesus at the Pillar and the Crucifix. The relics of the True Cross preserved and venerated in the altar of the Crucifix are mentioned from the first half of the seventeenth century. The Feast of the Discovery and Exaltation of the Holy Cross was celebrated. The Bernardine nuns venerated the Franciscan saints and close followers and brothers of St Francis. This is confirmed by the altars of St Francis of Assisi (stigmatisation plot), St Clare, and St Anthony of Padua in the church. A closer study into the lives of the lesser-known saints who can be easily confused with other popular saints of the same name revealed a rich gallery of Franciscan saints, especially females, among them. Bernardine nuns had a separate altar and a feast dedicated to St Elizabeth of Hungary, the patron of the Third Order of St Francis and one of the most venerable followers of the example of St Francis’ life. In the context of other Bernardine monasteries in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Bernardine nuns in Kaunas stood out for their veneration of this saint. Bernardine nuns also distinguished St Rose of Viterbo, St Agnes of Assisi, and St Barbara, whose cult is associated with active devotion of the Lithuanian Bernardines to this saint. The iconography of the Bernardine Church was influenced by the Convent of St George the Martyr in Kaunas, whose church was naturally richer and whose iconographic programme covered a broader spectrum. Interestingly, it also contained images or sculptures of all the above-mentioned saints associated with the Franciscan Observants, including the female saints lesser known to other communities of believers, while individual altars were dedicated to St Rose from Viterbo and St Barbara. The ensemble of church altars, which had been gradually evolving from the seventeenth century, and the practices of piety hardly changed until the closure of the convent in 1864. It is unfortunate that due to the lack of sources, many assumptions and questions remain, and one can only hope that further research into the interior of the church will lead to more discoveries.

Whenever a disease is widespread like an epidemic or pandemic its apocalyptic nature fails to escape the creative imagination of literary writers. Beginning from Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe and Mary Shelley’s The Last Man are some of the precursors of the literary fiction in English which captures apocalyptic events and their impact on the society. A pandemic affects not only elders but also children, not only rich but also poor, not only upper class but also the workers. A lot of literature focuses on the affliction of the first and their response to the pandemic. In addition to the epidemics like cholera and plague which recurred from time to time and afflicted a large section of the population, there was the pandemic scarlet fever which rarely made the adult population suffer as it primarily struck the children aged between five and fifteen. The number of works which focus on scarlet fever are few and one of the prominent ones which this paper intends to look at is by an American novelist. Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1868-69) captures influences that shape the lives of four sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March from childhood into womanhood. One such influence, scarlet fever which is said to have spread across Europe and America during the 19th and early 20th century victimising and causing death of several infants and young children affect the March family too. The paper attempts to capture the pandemic and tries to humanise disease and decay and its impact on the lives of the March sisters.

Folger, Napatsi. Joy of Apex. Iqaluit: Inhabit Media, Inc., 2011. Print. This is a first novel from Napatsi Folger, who grew up in Iqaluit, moved to Vancouver and then returned as an adult to work in Iqaluit. She has given us a bright new heroine in Joy, a ten-year old girl who lives in Apex, just outside of Iqaluit in Nunavut. Joy, who tells the story in the first person, is quite a normal pre-teen. She generally wants to do well, but occasionally does silly things like calling little sister, Allusha, by the nickname “ALLA SUCKS”. From the beginning of the novel, it is clear that Joy has a heavier than normal family workload for a ten-year old. Her dad is doing most of the cooking and cleaning and Joy and her older brother, Alex, are looking after each other and Alla. They look out for each other at school, make their own Halloween costumes and solve their own problems. Their mother, Mary, who spends most of her time with her sisters, does come home occasionally. When she does, she and her husband fight, with predictable effects on the children. “They are fighting again. This time it sounds like a big one. The yelling wakes Allusha and we are so frightened that we creep into Alex’s room and crawl into bed with him. After Alex and I calm Allusha’s quite sobs, the three of us sleep together in a little nest for the rest of the night.” Joy’s voice is authentic for a ten year old, who is doing her best to cope while her parents’ marriage falls apart. It is hard not to be moved by her humiliation, anger and pain when her best attempts fail and there is no mom to prevent the disaster or pick up the pieces. Folger’s humour often provides some relief from the weight of the difficulties that Joy faces. For example, when Allusha eats too much candy, throws up and bursts the capillaries in her face, she tells her mother, “Don’t worry, Mama. It’s just burst caterpillars in my face.” This is a well-written volume and an engaging read. The work is clearly rooted in the author’s personal experience growing up in the Eastern Arctic. Pre-teens through adult readers will enjoy this book. Highly recommended for public libraries and school libraries everywhere. Reviewer: Sandy CampbellHighly recommended: 4 stars out of 4Sandy is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Alberta, who has written hundreds of book reviews across many disciplines. Sandy thinks that sharing books with children is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give.

`There are half a million more women than men in this unhappy country of ours . . . So many odd women - no making a pair with them.' The idea of the superfluity of unmarried women was one the `New Woman' novels of the 1890s sought to challenge. But in The Odd Women (1893) Gissing satirizes the prevailing literary image of the `New Woman' and makes the point that unmarried women were generally viewed less as noble and romantic figures than as `odd' and marginal in relation to the ideal of womanhood itself. Set in grimy, fog-ridden London, these `odd' women range from the idealistic, financially self-sufficient Mary Barfoot and Rhoda Nunn, who run a school to train young women in office skills for work, to the Madden sisters struggling to subsist in low-paid jobs and experiencing little comfort or pleasure in their lives. Yet it is for the youngest Madden sister's marriage that the novel reserves its most sinister critique. With superb detachment Gissing captures contemporary society's ambivalence towards its own period of transition. The Odd Women is a novel engaged with all the major sexual and social issues of the late-nineteenth century. Judged by contemporary reviewers as equal to Zola and Ibsen, Gissing was seen to have produced an `intensely modern' work and it is perhaps for this reason that the issues it raises remain the subject of contemporary debate.

In July 1862, small band of Sisters of Mercy, led by Mother Mary Madeline Tobin, arrive at Beaufort and take charge of the military hospital at the Atlantic Hotel-once a fine report, now half-derelict and spoiled by looting. They find patients badly fed, suffering with little care and no sanitation. They demand food, clothing, cleaning and medical supplies. Quickly they transform the squalid place into a clean hospital that provides excellent care for wounded and ill men of both armies. They are among some 600 women from 21 religious orders who labor among the battlefield wounded. Four of the sisters die in service. All exhibit extraordinary commitment and perseverance and earn the undying loyalty of the soldiers to whom they minister-many of whom have never before encountered a nun and are at first confounded by their black and white habits, but quickly are won over by the sisters’ gentleness and competence.