Dubois at 10:41, 21 November 2017

2017-11-21T10:41:30Z

Dubois at 10:41, 21 November 2017

2017-11-21T10:41:14Z

Dubois: Created page with "{{Infobox Siefar | image = | fr = Marie Forestier | title(s)= | spouses = | also known as = Mother Marie de Saint-Bonaventure-de-Jésus | birth date = 1615 | death = 1698..."

2017-11-21T10:37:23Z

Created page with "{{Infobox Siefar | image = | fr = Marie Forestier | title(s)= | spouses = | also known as = Mother Marie de Saint-Bonaventure-de-Jésus | birth date = 1615 | death = 1698..."

New page

{{Infobox Siefar
| image =
| fr = Marie Forestier
| title(s)=
| spouses =
| also known as = Mother Marie de Saint-Bonaventure-de-Jésus
| birth date = 1615
| death = 1698
| online =
}}
== Entry by [[Julie Roy]], 2005 ==

Marie Forestier was born in Dieppe around 1615. We do not know the identity of her parents. At age eight, she was placed as a boarder at the religious hospital in her hometown, where she professed her faith nine years later. In 1634, the community hospital of Dieppe received a young native from Canada, sent to France by the Jesuit missionaries to complete her education, and probably to encourage the nuns to participate in missions to New France. The presence of the young girl was probably a major incentive for the religious hospital of Dieppe in their moves to build a hospital in the New World. With the support of the mother Madeleine de St. Joseph, a Carmelite in Paris, the Dieppe nuns managed to convince the Duchess of Aiguillon, the niece of Cardinal Richelieu, to finance the founding of the Hôtel-Dieu de Québec.
On the 4 May 1639, four years after the signing of the contract of foundation (1635), Marie Forestier de St. Bonaventure de Jesus, who was only 22 years, Marie Guenette de St. Ignatius and Anne Le Cointre de St. Bernard, all three nuns in Dieppe, sailed for the New World. They were accompanied by three Ursulines, Marie Guyart de l'Incarnation and secular founder Madeleine de la Peltrie. They would establish a school in Canada. After a rough crossing, the crew docked in Quebec on the 1st August 1639. Upon arrival, the nuns engaged in the construction of their monastery and learn Algonquin from the Jesuit Priest Paul Lejeune. Once a room was ready to receive patients, they took in several Indians victims of smallpox. On the death of Marie Guenette in 1645, Marie Forestier becomes Mother Superior. She held this post six times, in addition to her commitment to the mission of the hospital community. These responsibilities made her one of the most important founders of the Hôtel-Dieu. From 1656 Marie Forestier was involved in the conflict between Jeanne Mance, secular founder of the first hospital in Ville-Marie (Montreal) and religious authorities of the country. François de Laval, Bishop of Quebec wished to entrust the foundation of Montreal to the care of nuns of the Hôtel-Dieu de Québec. Marie Forestier sent two nuns in the autumn of 1658. Jeanne Mance preferred the nuns of La Flèche to them, while holding onto the administration of her foundation. Anxious regarding sound accounting, Marie Forestier St. Bonaventure was also the originator of the distinction between the property of the Hôtel-Dieu de Québec and those reserved for the poor that the community had taken under its wing, a decision approved by François de Laval in 1664. First secretary of the community hospital, Marie Forestier was then responsible for the drafting of the correspondence of establishment in Quebec. On 20 October 1667, she signed a circular letter, published in Paris by Sébastien Cramoisy following the year in which she asked for reinforcements for her community and a list of essential items that hospital hoped to receive from France. At the request of her fellow-nuns, she wrote the first annals of the community, a source which was unfortunately destroyed in a fire in 1755. In the early eighteenth century, the mothers of St. Ignatius and St. Helena used it to trace a short history of the establishment of the Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, published in France in 1751 under the title of History of the Hôtel-Dieu de Québec. It recounts, among other things, the story of the voyage and the establishment of hospitals in Quebec, written by Marie Forestier. The mother of St. Bonaventure died at the Hôtel-Dieu de Québec on 25 May 1698, after a long life devoted to the mission in Canada and to service to patients.
Marie Forestier has not enjoyed the fame of Marie de l'Incarnation. She came out of the shadows in the nineteenth century, when historians became interested in the early religious foundations of Canada, but has been forgotten since.

(translated by [[Julie Robertson ]])

== Works ==

- 1668: Lettre de la Révérende Mère Supérieure [Marie de Saint-Bonaventure de Jésus] des Religieuses hospitalières de Kébec en la Nouvelle-France, du 20 octobre 1667, à M. Bourgeois de Paris, Paris, Sébastien Cramoisy, 1668, 12 p. (This letter, published as a leaflet, was included by Cramoisy in some copies of Relation de François Le Mercier, Relation de ce qui s'est passé de plus remarquable aux missions des peres de la Compagnie de Jesus, en la Nouvelle France, aux années mil six cens soixante-six & mil six cens soixante-sept: envoyée au R.P. Jacques Bordier, provincial de la province de France, Paris, Sebastien Cramoisy, & Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, imprimeurs ordinaires du roy, 1668. These copies of La Relation were for the benefactors of the religious hospitals in France).

== Selected bibliography ==

- Casgrain, Henri-Raymond, Histoire de l'Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, Québec, s. n., 1878.
- Juchereau de Saint-Ignace, Jeanne-Françoise and Regnard Duplessis de Sainte-Hélène, Marie-André, Histoire de l'Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, Montauban, Jérôme Legier imprimeur, 1751 – Re-edited under the title Annales de l'Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, Albert Jamet (ed.), Québec, Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, 1939.
- Pelletier, Jean-Guy, ‘Marie Forestier’, in Dictionnaire biographique du Canada/ Canadian Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Sainte-Foy et Toronto, Presses de l'Université Laval and Toronto University Press, t.1, 1966, p.318.
- Pelletier, Jean-Guy, ‘Forestier (Marie)’, in Dictionnaire d'Histoire et de Géographie ecclésiastiques, t.17, 1971, col.1042-1043.
- Deslandres, Dominique, ‘Femmes missionnaires en Nouvelle-France. Les débuts des ursulines et des hospitalières à Québec’, in La religion de ma mère. Les femmes et la transmission de la foi, Jean Delumeau (éd.), Paris, Cerf, 1992, p.209-224.

== Selected bibliography of images ==

== Reception ==
- «L'année suivante Dieu nous visita encore par la mort de deux de nos Religieuses; la premiere fut la Mere Marie Forestier de Saint Bonaventure de Jésus, qui mourut le 25. De May 1698. Agée de 82. Ans, elle en avoit 74. De Religion: étant entrée dès l'age de 8 ans dans un Couvent, & n'ayant jamais été exposée aux dangers du monde, dont elle avoit toujours eu un grand éloignement; c'étoit une de nos trois premieres Meres venues de France, pour fonder notre Hôtel-Dieu; elle succeda à la Mere Guenet de Saint-Ignace dans la superiorité & elle a exercé cette charge 21 an dans différens triennaux: c'est elle à qui Dieu fit voir l'entrée de la Mere Saint Augustin au Ciel, il lui donna connoissance de plusieurs choses cachées, & elle recevoit des graces très singulieres de sa divine bonté; il ne se pouvoit rien ajoûter à la charité, à la douceur et au zele avec lequel elle servoit les pauvres; elle étoit naturellement bienfaisante, affective et accommodante, suportant les foiblesse du prochain avec une grande patience, aimant beaucoup les jeunes Religieuses qui se portoient au bien, les traitant avec une cordiale honnêteté, & gagnant plusieurs filles à Dieu par l'exemple de ses vertus, quoique son humilité lui fit cacher avec soin tout ce qui pouvoit lui faire honneur: elle a travaillé infatigablement pour l'établissement de ce Monastère; & Notre Seigneur a tellement beni ses soins & ses prieres, qu'elle a vû cette maison florissante; nous devons par reconnaissance la cherir, l'estimer, en conserver le souvenir: son grand âge avoit affoibli son esprit, elle etoit tombée dans l'enfance; mais la Sainte Habitude de la vertu d'obeïssance qu'elle avait contractée, la rendit si soumise, que quand elle demandoit quelque chose qu'on ne jugeois pas lui devoir accorder, celle qui avoit soin d'elle n'avoit qu'à lui dire notre Mere ne le veut pas; c'étoit assez pour qu'elle n'en temoignât plus aucune envie & qu'elle demeurât paisible, elle avoit encore dans sa grande vieillesse l'air du visage fort agreable, & les Sauvages l'avoient toujours appellée la belle, la bonne, la gentille» ([Juchereau de La Ferté de Saint-Ignace, Jeanne-Françoise et Marie-André Regnard Duplessis de Sainte-Hélène], ''Histoire de l'Hôtel-Dieu de Québec'', Montauban, Jérôme Legier imprimeur, 1751, p. 113-114).

== Web links ==
Pelletier, Jean-Guy, ‘Marie Forestier’, Dictionnaire biographique du Canada en ligne/ Canadian Dictionary of Canadian Biography on Line
http://www.biographi.ca/FR/ShowBio.asp?BioId=34346%20

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Marie Forestier - Revision history

Dubois at 10:41, 21 November 2017

Dubois at 10:41, 21 November 2017

Dubois: Created page with "{{Infobox Siefar | image = | fr = Marie Forestier | title(s)= | spouses = | also known as = Mother Marie de Saint-Bonaventure-de-Jésus | birth date = 1615 | death = 1698..."