Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of a New World Society, 1727-1834

by Emily Clark

During French colonial rule in Louisiana, nuns from the French Company of Saint Ursula came to New Orleans, where they educated women and girls of European, Indian, and African descent, enslaved and free, in literacy, numeracy, and the Catholic faith. Although religious women had gained acceptance and authority in seventeenth-century France, the New World was less welcoming. Emily Clark explores the transformations required of the Ursulines as their distinctive female piety collided with slave society, Spanish colonial rule, and Protestant hostility.

The Ursulines gained prominence in New Orleans through the social services they provided--schooling, an orphanage, and refuge for abused and widowed women--which also allowed them a self-sustaining level of corporate wealth. Clark traces the conflicts the Ursulines encountered through Spanish colonial rule (1767-1803) and after the Louisiana Purchase, as Protestants poured into Louisiana and were dismayed to find a powerful community of self-supporting women and a church congregation dominated by African Americans. The unmarried nuns contravened both the patriarchal order of the slaveholding American South and the Protestant construction of femininity that supported it. By incorporating their story into the history of early America, Masterless Mistresses exposes the limits of the republican model of national unity.

Genres: History, American History, Nonfiction, Catholic, Womens

304 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 2007

Reviews

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dense. Really dense but a fascinating history of New Orleans as well as the Ursulines.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tally another historian who writes about religion but doesn’t critically examine what they mean by “religion.” Meanwhile, she carries a great deal of assumptions into her analysis of religion. For instance, religion—at least Catholicism in this case—is primarily defined by true belief (she fumbles the fairly entry level distinction between orthodoxy and orthopraxy by overemphasizing belief), is generally benevolent, and in being so, can be neatly separated out from the economic and political forces swirling around it. Here, the most obvious implication of such assumptions is that the Ursulines’ choice to own human beings as slaves was not an outgrowth of their religious beliefs. Their beliefs ameliorated the peculiar customs of the times, but did not help set the conditions which led to their owning slaves.

The terrible chapter on slavery doesn’t diminish some of the historiographical strengths of the book, though. Clark’s work is a strong example of longue durée methods, setting the Ursulines in deep context of the cycles of revival and renewal in European Christian piety and religious organization going back as far as the Cluniac reforms (early 10th century CE).
Her writing on early modern France and overarching trends in European history is filled with nice turns of phrase and rich prose. Plus, she helps correct for the historiographical bias of focusing on male religious orders in the colonial period, especially the Jesuits in “New France.” She successfully argues that the Ursulines were a major force in early New Orleans society and that their practices, from their founding into the 19th century, often presented a challenge to hardening patriarchal social and religious structures.

[Sarah Duggan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic study of the pioneering French women who helped establish New Orleans and were rarely afraid to defy social convention. This is based on a dissertation but is very readable - and you won't miss too much if you skim over the archival data charts. Clark does a wonderful job explaining the Ursuline origins and placing the New Orleans convent in its wider historical context. She also doesn't shy away from detailing church politics and the tragic legacy of the Sisters' willingness to profit from slaveholding.

The only misstep is the epilogue that jumps up north to the Ursulines in New England - I would rather have heard more about the New Orleans' community's legacy. But overall this is an accessible, well-told account of Louisiana origins.

[Kerri Stoner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I stumbled across this book while in search of non-fiction works, covering the Ursuline Nuns from New Orleans, to write a historical fiction novel. This book was nothing short of amazing. My hope was to find history that was digestible, but what I discovered was a thought provoking piece of literature that inspired more than imaginable. This book resurrected forgotten women, whose stories were the spine of New Orleans.