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Marguerite Bourgeoys, C.N.D., was the French founder of the Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal in the colony of New France, now part of Québec. She lived in Fort Ville-Marie (now Montreal) as of 1653, educating young girls, the poor, and natives until her death at the turn of the 18th century. She is also significant for developing one of the first uncloistered religious communities in the Catholic Church.〔Simpson, Patricia. "Marguerite Bougeoys and Montreal, 1640-1665", (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press), p.6〕 She has been declared a saint by the Catholic Church. == Early life == Bourgeoys was born in Troyes, then in the ancient Province of Champagne in the Kingdom of France, on 17 April 1620. The daughter of Abraham Bourgeoys and Guillemette Garnier, she was the seventh of their thirteen children.〔"Marguerite Bourgeoys", Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=82〕 Marguerite came from a middle-class and socially connected background, her father being a candle maker and coiner at the royal mint in the town. Her father died when she was very young, and her mother followed when Marguerite was 19. In her early years, Bourgeoys had never held much of an interest in joining the confraternity attached to the monastery in the town of the canonesses regular of the Congregation Notre-Dame, which had been founded in 1597 by the Blessed Alix Le Clerc, C.R.S.A., dedicated to the education of the poor. The canonesses of the monastery helped the poor, but remained cloistered and did not have the right to teach outside of the cloister. To reach poor young girls who could not afford to be boarded within the cloister as students, they relied upon the confraternity, whose members they would educate in both religion and pedagogy. It seems, however, that she had a change of heart on 7 October 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. By chance, the Director of the confraternity, Mother Louise de Sainte-Marie, C.R.S.A., was the sister of Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, the Governor of Fort Ville-Marie at the time. During a visit to France in 1652, de Maisonneuve stopped in Troyes to visit his sister. Mother Louise and several of the canonesses enthusiastically volunteered to accompany him back to New France to teach its children. He told them, however, that the colony was still too fragile for the establishment of a community of cloistered women to provide education, but a laywoman would be welcome to teach the children of the settlers and of the indigenous peoples. Bourgeoys was the leader of the confraternity and it was she who was ultimately chosen for this task. At the age of 32, having been refused admission to the Carmelite nuns, she agreed to accompany Maisonneuve to the colony. In February 1653, Bourgeoys set sail on the ''Saint-Nicholas'' from her native France along with approximately 100 other colonists, mostly men, who had been recruited and signed to working contracts.〔Simpson, Patrcia. "Marguerite Bourgeoys and Montreal: 1640-1665", (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1997) p. 101〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Marguerite Bourgeoys」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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