The Reluctant Prophet: Remembering and Forgetting Recluse Jeanne Le Ber (1662-1714)

This presentation traces the life and cultic afterlife of Jeanne Le Ber, New France’s only recluse, exploring the tides of remembering and forgetting that have made this enigmatic figure repeatedly sharpen, then recede, in Canada’s collective memory.  Embracing the medieval custom of reclusion, or renunciation of the world for a life of total seclusion, vowed silence, and constant prayer, Jeanne sems at first glance to be an unlikely prophet, given that role’s passionate engagement with society and public warnings of its ills and threats.  And yet, even in her silence and solitude, Jeanne emerged in the early eighteenth century as a prophetic voice whose whispered words, amplified by repetition in the convents, schools, streets, and markets of Ville-Marie, urged steadfast hope in divine deliverance, even in the face of a far more numerous foe.  Despite formal interdiction of involvement with the world beyond her cell, Jeanne managed to fabricate and distribute a series of talismanic prayer-images, used as icons of protection, in a process of complicit cooperation with the habitants who revered her.  The dramatic failure of the English invasions of 1709 and 1711 were popularly attributed to Jeanne’s successful intercession with the town’s namesake and patroness: the Virgin Mary.