Bourgeoys, Marguerite, Venerable (BOURGEOYS, MARGUERITE, VENERABILE)

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

BOURGEOYS, MARGUERITE, venerable. - Foundress of the Congregation of Notre-Dame (v.), born at Troyes on 17 Apr. 1620, died at Montréal on 12 Jan. 1700. Of modest social condition, she soon felt attracted to the religious state, and sought to enter first among the Carmelites, then among the Poor Clares, but was not

admitted. She went to Canada in the company of de Maisonneuve (1653), where at Villemarie, now Montréal, she began her work as an educator of youth. The initiative developed very promisingly, and B. made 3 journeys to France to recruit companions and to obtain approval of the rules of her Institute. She lived a heroic life of privation and hardship. Her cause of beatification is in progress; on 19 June 1910 the decree concerning the heroicity of her virtues was published.

BIBL.: [E.-M. Faillon], Vie de la soeur B., fondatrice de la Congrégation de N.-D. de Villemarie en Canada, 2 vols., Paris 1853; M. M. Drommond, La vénérable mère M. B., sa vie et son temps, Montréal 1910; G. Goyau, Une épopée mystique. Les origines religieuses du Canada, Paris 1926, p. 208 ff.; E. Levesque, s. V. in DHG, X, cols. 176-77.