Tea at Trianon: The Ursulines in France

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, June 13, 2015

The Ursulines in France

From Madame Gilflurt's salon:

The nuns taught the girls how to examine their consciences and recount their faults to a confessor. The priest had the power of absolution, but it was the nuns who ensured that the sacrament of penance took place and was effective. In my novel, the heroine, Claire Donet has made a vow to a dying girl to become a nun and worries much about the penance she may be required to pay because of her feelings for the handsome Captain Simon Powell. But, as the Mother Superior taught Claire, the Ursulines believed that holiness was achieved not be retreating from the challenges of an imperfect world, but by going into that world and meeting those challenges armed with knowledge.

Since the convent schools in France were primarily for the daughters of the French nobility and the wealthy, the girls might have been taught some mathematics along with reading, writing, Bible instruction, needlework, art and music. Art would have included art appreciation, not just learning to draw and paint. Writing classes would focus on not only on the development of a graceful hand, but the proper forms of address and the proper construction of well thought out and effective letters.

At all times there would have been an emphasis on deportment, etiquette and the social graces. In the formal sense of education, this would have been extended to include development of menus, the proper way to set the table and other things a lady would be expected to know to run her own household. (At one point, the hero in my story is disappointed to learn the heroine cannot cook.) (Read more.)