Nuns Without Closter: CSSJs in 17-18th Century France

I'm about half way through Nuns Without Cloister,  a book that I think will be very interesting for Sisters of St. Joseph, associates, and agrégées throughtout the world. This book was written several years ago but the English translation has only recently been published and made available. Those who have participated in the Bearers of the Tradition Institute over the years will be familiar with much of the content. If you have traveled to France and visited the cities, towns, and little villages where the Sisters of St. Joseph originated, you also enjoy this book.

The following is excerpted from the back cover:

Nuns Without Cloister explores one of the first and most innovative among the non-cloistered women's congregations established after the Council of Trent. Under the aegis of a Jesuit missionary, the first Sisters of St. Joseph envisioned a direct role for religious women in the secular society of mid-seventeenth century France. This book opens perspectives on the sisters’ success and the introduction of creative variety in their lives in country parishes or in the urban orphanages, hospitals, and reformatories for fallen women of the ancien régime [the system of government in France before the French Revolution].

Sisters of St. Joseph preceding the French Revolution established a paradigm for the active, apostolic women’s congregations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that supplied the workforce behind Catholic schools, colleges, hospitals, and orphanages in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere. In researching them, Nuns Without Cloister addresses a little understood but central dimension in the early modern foundations of contemporary Catholicism.

Marguerite (Sister Thérèse) Vacher, CSJ, has been involved in research, teaching, and writing on the origins of the Sisters of St. Joseph since 1965 and holds a Doctorat d’Histoire moderne from the Université Lumière Lyon 2. She resides in Clermont-Ferrand, France.

I admit you won't find this on the NY Times best sellar list anytime soon and it's not exactly light "beach reading!" But it is an in-depth resource which includes recent research and scholarship. The book is available on the Barnes and Noble website. It's also available on Amazon where you can even search the table of contents and read the introduction, preface, and other portions of the text.

If you have already read Nuns Without Cloister, please add your comments. If you have not read it, consider it for summer reading!