The Ursulines, also known as the Order of Saint Ursula (post-nominals: OSU), is an enclosed religious order of women that in 1572 branched off from the Angelines, also known as the Company of Saint Ursula. The Ursulines trace their origins to the Angeline foundress Angela Merici and likewise place themselves under the patronage of Saint Ursula. While the Ursulines took up a monastic way of life under the Rule of Saint Augustine, the Angelines operate as a secular institute. The largest group within the Ursulines is the Ursulines of the Roman Union.
In the following century, the Ursuline nuns were strongly encouraged and supported by Francis de Sales. They were called the "Ursuline nuns" as distinct from the "federated Ursulines" of the company, who preferred to follow the original way of life. Both forms of life continued to spread throughout Europe and beyond.[2]
At the beginning of the 18th century, the period of its greatest growth, the order was represented by 20 congregations, 350 convents and from 15,000 to 20,000 nuns.[3][4]
The Ursuline sisters were not the first Catholic nuns to land in the new world. They were preceded by the Hieronymites in 1585 in Mexico City, who established the convent of San Jerónimo y Santa Paula.[5] In 1639, Mother Marie of the Incarnation, two other Ursuline nuns, three Augustinian sisters and a Jesuit priest left France for a mission in New France in what is now the Province of Quebec, Canada. When they arrived in the summer of 1639, they studied the languages of the native peoples and then began to educate the native children.[6] They taught reading and writing as well as needlework, embroidery, drawing, and other domestic arts.[7][8] The Ursuline convent in Quebec City is the oldest educational institution for women in North America.[9] Their work helped to preserve a religious spirit among the French population and to evangelize native peoples of New France.
The first Ursulines arrived at Mobile, Alabama, in 1719 (though information is contradictory from remaining and available sources). In 1727, 12 Ursulines from France landed in what is now New Orleans. The entire group of Ursulines were the first Roman Catholic nuns in what is now the United States. Both properties were part of the French colony of Louisiana (New France). They came to the country under the auspices of Pope Pius III and Louis XV of France. Following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, their charter came under the jurisdiction of the United States.[10]
They instituted a convent and school, both of which continue today.[11]Ursuline Academy (New Orleans) is the oldest continually operating Catholic school in the United States and the oldest girls school in the United States.[12] The Ursuline tradition holds many United States firsts in its dedication to the growth of individuals, including the first female pharmacist, first woman to contribute a book of literary merit, first convent, first free school and first retreat center for ladies, first classes for female slaves (which continued until abolition), free women of color (a unique New Orleans group also known as Creoles of Color) and Native Americans. In the Mississippi Valley region, Ursulines provided the first social welfare center.[13]
The Old Ursuline Convent is located in the Vieux Carre (New Orleans' French Quarter). The building now houses the Archdiocese of New Orleans' Archives as well as operating as a tourist attraction/ museum with public tours available almost daily. They had a well established presence as a hospital by the time of the US Revolutionary War. Ursuline sisters treated in the same building both British and United States soldiers wounded in the war. They may have been the first group of women propagating the ideals of diversity in a society, which flowed directly from the teachings of St Ursula and her followers.
The members wore a habit consisting of a black dress bound by a leathern girdle, a black sleeveless cloak, and a close-fitting headdress with a white veil and a longer black veil.[16] Since Vatican II they were no longer required to wear habits and today many opt out of wearing a habit.
Today the monastic Order of St. Ursula (post-nominals OSU) has as its largest group the Ursulines of the Roman Union (described in this article) which consists of Ursulines of the Eastern Province, Ursulines of the Central Province and Ursulines of the Western Province. The other branch is the Company of St. Ursula, commonly called the "Angelines", who follow the original form of life established by their foundress.
Ursuline Academy, Springfield, Illinois was founded in 1857 by Mother Mary Joseph Wolfe and operated from 1857 until 2007.
Ursulines in Ireland
In 1767, Nano Nagle stayed with the Ursuline Sisters on Rue des Ursulines in Paris while visiting her cousin Margaret Butler who had been professed just one year previously. In 1771, she established the first Ursuline convent in Ireland on Cove Lane in Cork. The community was made up of four Cork women – who were professed at the Ursuline Convent in the Rue St. Jacques in Paris – together with a reverend mother.[17][3] In 1825, the sisters and their boarding students relocated to Blackrock. The first Ursuline primary and second-level schools were founded at Blackrock.[18]
At the request of James Butler, Archbishop of Cashel and Emly, Anastasia Tobin went to Cork to train as a religious. She was professed at the Ursuline convent in September 1787, and returned to Thurles where she commenced teaching. Joined in 1796 by two others also trained at Cork, a small Ursuline community was founded at Thurles. In 1816, four sisters from Thurles established a community in Waterford.[19] In 1932, Providence School was opened to serve the needs of the travelling community.[20]
In 1839, George Joseph Plunket Browne, Bishop of Galway, brought the Ursuline Order of nuns to Dangan on the Oughterard road. In 1844, Browne was translated to the Diocese of Elphin. The Ursulines Order followed him to Elphin, first to Summerhill in Athlone and then to Sligo. He raffled his carriage to raise funds to compensate the sisters for the financial loss they suffered by removing to Sligo. There they took up residence at "Seaville", the former house of Bishop Burke, Browne's predecessor, and renamed it St. Joseph's Convent. Nazareth free primary school was built in 1851.[21] In 1952 the Ursulines established St. Angela's College, Sligo for the training of students and teachers in Home Economics, which became recognised college of the National University of Ireland in 1978, and since 2003 is a college of the National University of Ireland, Galway. in 2022 St Angela's College became a constituent college of Atlantic Technological University[22]
The Irish Ursuline Union was established in 1978.
Ursulines in Australia
New South Wales
Armidale (Head House of the Ursuline Order in Australia)
In 1927, the Ursuline Sisters of the Eastern Province restructured Catholic education in Elkton, Maryland, by assisting in the founding of Immaculate Conception School, originally located at the corner of Cathedral Street and Singerly Avenue in historic Elkton, Maryland. The Ursulines ministered within the schoolhouse from 1927 to 1930, followed by the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, Glen Ridde.
In 1921, the Ursuline Sisters of Louisville established Sacred Heart Junior College, which was expanded into a four-year college, Ursuline College, in 1938. Ursuline College merged with Bellarmine College in 1968, now Bellarmine University.[23]
The Mount Saint Joseph Junior College for Women operated between 1925 and 1950 in Maple Mount, Kentucky, with the Ursulines offering co-educational extension courses at Owensboro. The Ursulines merged their extension courses with Mount Saint Joseph Junior College in 1950, creating the co-educational Brescia University that remains in operation.
From 1968 to 2003 the Ursuline Order operated Ursula College at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. It is a co-educational residential college for approximately 200 undergraduates. In 2003 the college was sold to the university and was renamed Ursula Hall. The Ursuline tradition has been retained in the Hall's high educational standards, retention of Ursuline symbols and livery, and the observance in October of Ursies Weekend for relaxing and socializing before November exams.
Secondary education
Ursuline Convent, Dallas, Texas (postcard, circa 1901–1907)Ursuline Convent, Toledo, Ohio
In New York City, in 1873, James Boyce (1826–1876) invited the Ursuline nuns to found a girls' academy in St. Teresa's parish on Manhattan's Lower East Side. The new school, called St. Teresa's Ursuline Academy, located at 137 Henry Street, was incorporated in 1881 and as of 1891 had a faculty of five sisters teaching 62 pupils.[25] In 1899, the Ursulines bought a two-story, wood-frame house farther uptown in Manhattan, at the northwest corner of Park Avenue and 93rd Street, converted the house to a school building, and changed the name of their school to simply "Ursuline Academy". In 1905, a news article announced plans for a twenty-four-foot wide, four-story seminary building to be built on the site to the design of architect Joseph H. McGuire.[26] The new building was constructed immediately to the west of Gen. Scott's old house, in its former garden.[27] The order occupied both buildings until selling them in 1912, and moving the school to the Ursuline Provinculate at Grand Boulevard and 165th Street in the Bronx, New York.[28](Both the house and school building were demolished for the construction of the Francis F. Palmer House beginning in 1916.
The British philosopher and author Celia Green has written extensively about her time at the Ursuline High School (now Ursuline Academy Ilford) in Ilford, London.[30] Angela de Merici inspired the Ursuline Sisters to provide young women with an opportunity to achieve their full potential. Throughout their lives, students continue to remain part of the Ursuline community and continue to carry forward the legacy of Angela de Merici, by serving their society.[31]
In Thailand, the Ursulines established Mater Dei School in Bangkok in 1928. Its elite alumni include Kings Ananda Mahidol and Bhumibol Adulyadej.[33] Although an all-girls school, it enrolled boys from Kindergarten through Primary 2.
In Indonesia, the Ursulines established the Princess Juliana School in Batavia (1912), after its initial establishment as an Ursuline Convent in 1859. Now the school is known as St. Ursula Catholic School and is an all-girls school.[citation needed]
^Collier's New Encyclopedia: A Loose-leaf and Self-revising Reference Work; with Illustrations and Ninety-six Maps. Google Books: Collier. 1921. pp. 140–141.
^Lavrin, Asunción (2008). Brides of Christ: Conventual Life in Colonial Mexico. Stanford: Stanford University Press. p. 259.
Agnes Repplier. Mère Marie of the Ursulines: a study in adventure (New York, 1931), on Canada to 1672
Dom Guy-Marie Oury. Les Ursulines de Québec, 1639-1953 (2000)
Querciolo Mazzonis, "A female idea of religious perfection: Angela Merici and the Company of St Ursula (1535-1540)," Renaissance Studies, 18,3 (2004), 391–411.
Emily Clark (ed), Voices from an American Convent: Marie Madeleine Hachard and the New Orleans Ursulines, 1727-1760 (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 2007).
Q. Mazzonis, "The Impact of Renaissance Gender-Related Notions on the Female Experience of the Sacred: The Case of Angela Merici's Ursulines," in Laurence Lux-Sterritt and Carmen Mangion (eds), Gender, Catholicism and Spirituality: Women and the Roman Catholic Church in Britain and Europe, 1200-1900 (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011),
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