Page 6, 10th March 1967
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UNDER THE CLICHES
THE dust-jacket of Saint Jeanne Antide Thouret, by Francis Trochu (Sands and Co., 21s.)promises an exciting biography of a courageous girl who lived through the terrors and upheavals of the French Revolution and Waterloo. Alas, this promise expires in the first chapter among such platitudes as "the dainty little girl quickly learned the secrets of the spelling-book, and the whole tale (translated and adapted by Fr. John Joyce, S.J.) is weighted with the cliches of conventional hagiography. This is regrettable, for the story of the foundress of the Sisters of Charity under the protection of St. Vincent de Paul is worth telling.
At the age of 22 Jeanne joined the Daughters of Charity (of the familiar comette), but before her profession, religious houses were closed In Besancon once more, she was joined by other girls, and gradually as the fury of the persecution abated, a new con. gregation emerged, affectionately nicknamed "The Sisters of the Soup Kitchens and Little Schools."
These lively adventures occupy one-third of the book; the remaining 220 pages relate the struggles of the institute as foundations multiplied and spread to Naples and Italy. The persecutions the foundress endured at the hands of ecclesiastics and her own daughters were far more searing than anything inflicted by the National Assembly.
It is a sordid tale of intrigue, calumny and condemnation on hearsay without representation or appeal. But the telling is pedestrian, whereas one feels that this woman, so far ahead of her time in ideas and outlook, was a modem of the moderns with fire in her veins. She was canonised in 1934.
Sr. Teresa Margaret, D.C.
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