Fire & Roses: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834
In 1834, a group of fiercely anti-Catholic rioters burned Mt. Benedict, an Ursuline convent just outside of Boston that was home not only to a community of nuns, but also to the prestigious girls' school they ran. Using this singularly explosive example, Schultz, professor of English at Salem State College, conveys the larger current of anti-Catholic sentiment that was prevalent throughout early 19th-century America. While such religious intolerance had existed in New England since the Puritans first landed, the most recent anti-papist explosion could be traced to the departure from the convent of a novice named Rebecca Reed just two years before. A convert to Catholicism, Reed entered the convent school as a charity student and initially aspired to become a nun. However, she began to chafe under the requirements of convent life and imagined that there was a conspiracy plotting to imprison her in a convent in Canada. After fleeing Mt. Benedict, she published an anti-Catholic expose, Six Months in a Convent, filled with tales of abuse that she and other nuns allegedly suffered. Indeed, Reed wasn't the only nun to run away. Her escape was followed by that of a Sister St. John, who the hardworking but overwhelmingly poor townsfolk believed was brought back against her will by the bishop. The Ursuline nuns' dual purpose to serve the poor and to educate wealthy young women was increasingly resented by the struggling laborers who traveled to CharlestownAoften from farms in distant New HampshireAin search of work. Reed's escape, coupled with a series of anti-Catholic sermons by the Reverend Lyman Beecher (Harriet Beecher Stowe's father), served as the spark that ignited the townsfolk's burning anger. Schultz is to be commended for her riveting historical study, which is plotted like a novel, with tight pacing and fully realized characters. (Oct.)Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.