Jeanne Mance
Encyclopedia
Jeanne Mance was a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 settler of New France
New France
New France was the area colonized by France in North America during a period beginning with the exploration of the Saint Lawrence River by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Spain and Great Britain in 1763...

. She was one of the founders of Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

 who secured its survival and was the founder and head of the Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal
Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal
The Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal is the oldest hospital in Montreal, Quebec. Since 1996 it has been one of the three hospitals making up the Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal ....

.

Origins

Jeanne Mance was born into a bourgeois family in Langres
Langres
Langres is a commune in north-eastern France. It is a subprefecture of the Haute-Marne département in the Champagne-Ardenne region.-History:As the capital of the Romanized Gallic tribe the Lingones, it was called Andematunnum, then Lingones, and now Langres.The town is built on a limestone...

, in Haute-Marne
Haute-Marne
Haute-Marne is a department in the northeast of France named after the Marne River.-History:Haute-Marne is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790...

, France. She was the daughter of Catherine Émonot and Charles Mance, a prosecutor for the king in Langres, an important diocese in the northern Burgundy. Her mother died prematurely and she cared for eleven brothers and sisters before devoting herself to the care of victims of the Thirty Years War and the plague.

Vocation

At age 34, while on a procession
Procession
A procession is an organized body of people advancing in a formal or ceremonial manner.-Procession elements:...

 to Troyes
Troyes
Troyes is a commune and the capital of the Aube department in north-central France. It is located on the Seine river about southeast of Paris. Many half-timbered houses survive in the old town...

 in Champagne
Champagne, France
Champagne is a historic province in the northeast of France, now best known for the sparkling white wine that bears its name.Formerly ruled by the counts of Champagne, its western edge is about 100 miles east of Paris. The cities of Troyes, Reims, and Épernay are the commercial centers of the area...

, Mance discovered her missionary calling and decided to go to New France, which was at the time being settled by the French. She was supported by Anne of Austria
Anne of Austria
Anne of Austria was Queen consort of France and Navarre, regent for her son, Louis XIV of France, and a Spanish Infanta by birth...

, wife of King Louis XIII, and by the Jesuits. Mance was a member of the Society of Our Lady of Montreal whose aim was to convert the natives and found a hospital in Montreal similar to the one in Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

.

Founding of Montreal and Hôtel-Dieu Hospital

It was Charles Lallemant
Charles Lallemant
Charles Lallemant , came from France in 1625 as the first superior of the Jesuit missions in Canada...

 who recruited Jeanne Mance for the Société Notre-Dame de Montréal
Société Notre-Dame de Montréal
The Société Notre-Dame de Montréal was a religious organisation responsible for founding Ville-Marie, the original name for the settlement that would later become Montreal....

. Mance embarked from La Rochelle
La Rochelle
La Rochelle is a city in western France and a seaport on the Bay of Biscay, a part of the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital of the Charente-Maritime department.The city is connected to the Île de Ré by a bridge completed on 19 May 1988...

 on May 9, 1641 on a crossing of the Atlantic that took three months. After wintering in Quebec, she and Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve
Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve
Paul de Chomedey, sieur de Maisonneuve was a French military officer and the founder of Montreal.- Early career :...

 arrived at the Island of Montreal In the spring of 1642. They founded the new city on May 17, 1642 on land granted by the Governor. That same year Mance began operating a hospital in her home. Two years later (1644), with a donation sf 6000 francs by Angélique Bullion
Angélique Bullion
-Life:She was born in Paris, at the beginning of the seventeenth century; her parents were Guichard Favre and Madeleine Brulart de Sillery. Claude de Bullion :fr:Claude de Bullion, her husband, was Keeper of the Seals and Superintendent of Finances under Louis XIII; Cardinal Richelieu annually...

, she opened a hospital on Rue Saint-Paul. The hospital stood for fifty years and was in her care for the first seventeen of those years.

Later years

In 1650 she visited France and returned with 22,000 livres of the money set aside by Mme de Bullion for the hospital. On her return to Montreal, she found that the attacks of the Iroquois threatened the colony and lent the hospital money to M. de Maisonneuve who returned to France to organize a force of one hundred men for the colony's defense.

Mance made a second trip to France in 1657 to recruit assistance for the hospital. She secured three Hospital Sisters of the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph
Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph
The Religious Hospitallers of Saint Joseph was a religious order founded in La Fleche, France by the Venerable Jerome le Royer de la Dauversiere and Venerable Marie de la Ferre...

 from the convent of La Fleche in Anjou: Judith Moreau de Bresoles, Catherine Mace, and Marie Maillet. It was a difficult passage made worse by an outbreak of the plague
Bubonic plague
Plague is a deadly infectious disease that is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis, named after the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin. Primarily carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death...

 on board. While Mgr. de Laval
François de Laval
This article is in part a sermon and generally comes close to hagiography.Blessed François-Xavier de Montmorency-Laval was the first Roman Catholic bishop of Quebec and was one of the most influential men of his day. He was appointed when he was 36 years old by Pope Alexander VII. He was a member...

 tried to retain the sisters at Quebec for the hospital there, they eventually reached Montreal in October 1659. Mance's work was now fully established and for the rest of her years, she was able to live a more retired life.

She died after a long illness and was buried in the church of the Hôtel-Dieu in 1673. While the church and her house were destroyed in 1696, her work was carried on by the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph
Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph
The Religious Hospitallers of Saint Joseph was a religious order founded in La Fleche, France by the Venerable Jerome le Royer de la Dauversiere and Venerable Marie de la Ferre...

, with the three nuns recruited by Mance acting as hospital administrators. Two centuries later (1861) the hospital was moved to the foot of Mount Royal.

External links

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