"But an Echo"?: Claude Martin, Marie de l'Incarnation, and Female Religious Identity in Seventeenth-Century New France

Claude Martin s Vie de la Venerable Mere Marie de l'Incarnation claims to reproduce so faithfully Marie de l'Incarnation's spiritual autobiography that Claude's voice in the text is "but an echo" of his mother's own. A close reading, however, suggests that Claude so dominates the account of his mother's life that the Vie emerges as an instance of hagiography and apology that renders Marie the model of the Counter-Reformation saint, the paradigm of post-Tridentine Catholic devotion, and the obedient daughter of a patriarchal ecclesiastical hierarchy in an effort to draw the boundaries of female religious identity in early-modern New France.Keywords: authorship; Marie de l'Incarnation; hagiography, New France; UrsulinesON SEPTEMBER 27, 1654, Marie de rincamation wrote to her son, Claude Martin, from Quebec,The love and affection I have for you and the consolation I feel for the fact that you belong to God has made me get over myself to send you the writings that you have desired from me. I wrote them with repugnance and sent them with difficulty. But ... I have to tell you my intentions with regard to the above, namely, that I desire that these writings not be shared with or made known to anyone but you ... I beg you to write on the cover, Papers of conscience, so that no one touches them and glances at them without scruple ... If you happened to fall ill and were in danger of death, have them thrown into the fire.This letter, which "is short so that it makes more of an impression on you," accompanied the Relation of1654-Marie's spiritual autobiography and a source of urgency for Claude for at least eleven years.1 Composed at the behest of her spiritual director, the Relation of1654 traces Marie's spiritual development from a young and pretematurally pious girl in seventeenth-century Tours to the celebrated mystic and founder of the Ursuline order in colonial New France. When Marie finally revealed to her spiritual director her intention to send the Relation to Claude, he not only conceded but "even commanded me to do it."2 This, then, Marie did, but only on the condition of utmost confidentiality. "I trust," she continued in the letter of September 27, "that you will keep the fidelity for which I am asking and that after I granted you what you asked of me, you will not refuse me what I desire of you."3Claude published his mother's Relation in its entirety in 1677. Although he had originally intended to compose a biography of a more conventional sort, he was persuaded by "learned and pious people" to let his mother tell her own story, for to edit the text would have been to detract from the edifying simplicity of her prose and, indeed, "to correct the Holy Spirit who, after having made her do so many holy and heroic actions, guided her hand to put them down on paper."4 Nevertheless, Claude could not resist tinkering with his mother's work, appending a number of "additions" to the text, dividing the Relation into books and chapters, and editing Marie's prose-but only, he insists, in the interests of explaining, clarifying, and polishing-such that the resulting Vie de la Venerable Mere Marie de l'Incarnation amounts to the work of two authors. This great ser- vant of God, writes Claude in the preface to the Vie, "worked on it herself and her son put the finishing touches on it, but such that he speaks there as but an echo."5 At once inscribing and effacing himself from the Vie, Claude purports to give center stage to his mother's voice, casting himself in an exclusively supporting role as the "supplement that extends [Marie's voice] beyond its own activity even when it is no longer."6From the beginning, readers of the Vie de la Venerable Mere Marie de l'Incarnation seem to have seconded Claude's assessment of the insignificance of his editorial influence. Pierre Loisel, for example, doctor at the Sorbonne and chancellor of the diocese and University of Paris whose letter of approbation is appended to Vie, renders Claude the natural editor of the work of his motherwho not only gave him the milk of her breasts . …