Find of the Month – Friendship Pact Between Augustinian and Usruline Sisters
Every month, an object from the heritage bequest by the Augustinian community is selected by the museum storage facility and archives center teams. In the spotlight this month: Deed of a Promise Made Between the Hospital’s Reverend Mothers and the Quebec Ursuline Nuns, dated February 8th, 1651.
During the fire that destroyed the Ursuline nuns’ house on December 30, 1650, the Hôtel-Dieu de Québec Augustinian Sisters welcomed their sisters for three weeks. Before parting ways, and to strengthen and cement their union, the two communities drafted this convention.
Excerpt: “[…] that to conserve a perpetual and indissoluble union and charity between our two communities, that henceforth there will be an entire society and communication of spiritual goods, and the mutual participation to the good deeds and prayers made in our two monasteries, both particular and general.”
This friendship pact has served more than once as a moral and material remedy, because the Monastère des Ursulines became engulfed in flames a second time on October 21, 1686. The Monastère des Augustines suffered the same fate as it was also destroyed by a fire of criminal origin on June 7, 1755. Each time, the nuns of one community took refuge with their sisters in the other.
It should be noted that this friendship pact was ratified on July 31, 2015. It is now extended to all Augustinian and Ursuline sisters in Canada. It is important to remember that the two communities arrived together on Île d’Orléans on July 31, 1639, and in Québec City the next day.
To discover more about this pact, read Les Augustines et les Ursulines: une amitié datant de plus de 365 ans! from rom the historian-archivist Geneviève Piché (French only).
To learn more about the Augustinian Sisters’ heritage, visit Le Monastère’s museum.