The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation

Produced by Anne Soulard, Juliet Sutherland
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
This file was produced from images generously made available by the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions.
The materials for the following Biography have been gathered principally from The Life of the Mother Mary of the Incarnation by her son, and from The History of the Ursuline Monastery at Quebec, by a member of that community, the former published in 1677; the latter in 1863.
The Life of the Venerable Mother by her son, is founded partly on her own communications regarding the graces with which she had been favoured, and partly on her correspondence with himself extending over the thirty years which she passed in Canada. With the genuine information thus received, he intersperses, under the name of Additions, further details which had either come under his personal observation, or been gleaned from perfectly reliable sources. His work is therefore a sure and invaluable guide to the biographer.
The accounts of her inner life referred to, were written by the Venerable Mother at two different epochs, and each time in obedience to an imperative command from her confessors. The first written in 1633, the 34th year of her age, fell into the possession of the Ursulines of St. Denis, near Paris, who on hearing that Dom Claude Martin was engaged in writing his holy Mother's life, obligingly sent him the precious document. The second, written in 1654, was forwarded to him from Canada.
The Annals of the Quebec Ursulines also afford rich material to the historian of the Mother of the Incarnation, their pages containing constant references to and quotations from her letters both spiritual and historical, as well as from the Annual Reports of the Jesuit Missioners, and other contemporary documents of the highest authenticity and the deepest interest.
The historical statements in the introductory chapter, rest chiefly oh the authority of the Abbé Ferland in his Cours d'Histoire du Canada, 1861, and of Bancroft in his History of the United States, 1841. The historical facts incidentally introduced in the course of the work can be verified by reference to the Abbé Ferland or any other Canadian historian, or to the Letters of the Mother of the Incarnation.