Early Life and Departure
Saint Marguerite Bourgeoys was born in Troyes (France), on 17 April 1620. The daughter of Abraham Bourgeoys and Guillemette Garnier, she was the sixth of their twelve children. Marguerite came from a middle-class and socially connected background, her father being a candle maker and coiner. Her father ultimately died when she was young, and her mother soon followed when Marguerite was 19.
In her early years, Marguerite had never held much of an interest in joining the Congregation Notre-Dame, which had been founded earlier in France in 1598 and had a major convent in her hometown. The nuns present in this external congregation helped the poor but remained cloistered and did not have the right teach outside of the convent. However, it is said that she had a change of heart in October of 1640, during a procession in honour of Our Lady of the Rosary. Her response to this experience was to seek to give herself wholly to God and to live a life that mirrored, as much as possible, that of the Virgin Mary.
Interestingly enough, the director of the convent happened to be the sister of Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, the governor of Ville-Marie at the time. During a visit to France in 1652, De Maisonneuve stopped in Troyes. He told his sister that, although the colony was still too fragile for the establishment of a community of cloistered nuns, a lay woman would be welcome to teach the children of the settlers and of the Amerindian peoples. The 33-year-old Marguerite Bourgeoys was ultimately chosen, agreeing to accompany De Maisonneuve to Ville-Marie. In February of 1653, Marguerite left her native France along with approximately 103 other French men that had been recruited and signed to working contracts.
Read more about this topic: Marguerite Bourgeoys
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or departure:
“Make-believe is the avenue to much of the young child’s early understanding. He sorts out impressions and tries out ideas that are foundational to his later realistic comprehension. This private world sometimes is a quiet, solitary
world. More often it is a noisy, busy, crowded place where language grows, and social skills develop, and where perseverance and attention-span expand.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“In this lucid and flexible pattern only one thing remained always stationary, but this fallacy went unnoticed by Martha. The blind spot was the victim. The victim showed no signs of life before being deprived of it. If anything, the corpse which had to be moved and handled before burial seemed more active than its biological predecessor.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Nature seemed to have adorned herself for our departure with a profusion of fringes and curls, mingled with the bright tints of flowers, reflected in the water. But we missed the white water-lily, which is the queen of river flowers, its reign being over for this season.... Many of this species inhabit our Concord water.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)