"in the Eyes of the Children This Was a Miracle": Sanctity in Nineteenth-Century Quebec‪.‬

Drawing on notions of the text as cultural symbol and Paul Ricoeur's idea of the historical source as a vestige of the past, this paper explores the value of Canadian hagiography for the study of the religious culture of nineteenth-century faith communities. Saints' Lives, as a genre of literature, demonstrate that their subjects were and are saints by mediating between the supernatural and the temporal, negotiating amongst the author, institutional notions of sanctity, and community conceptualizations of the holy. When read on their own terms and within the cultural context of their own creation, these works have a great deal to say about the faith communities that produced them and the performances that led to understandings of individuals as holy. Authors of sacred biography acted as representatives of the expectations of the faith community that regarded individuals as saints, and also as teachers and interpreters of saintly performances. These ideas are explored through three examples from Quebec: the Life of Mother Mary Ann, Foundress of the Sisters of Saint Ann, the Life of Louis-Zephyrin Moreau, Bishop of St-Hyacinthe and the Life of Rosalie Cadron-Jette, Foundress of the Sister of Misericorde. En prenant l'idee du texte comme symbole culturel et les theories de Paul Ricoeur, que se veut la souree historique en tant de vestige du passe, l'auteur propose une analyse du role joue par l'hagiographie canadienne au sien des communautes des croyants au dix-neuvieme siecle Le livre Vies des saints, en tant du genre litteraire, demontre la saintete de leurs sujets en jouant le role d'intermediaire entre le monde temporelle et le monde surnaturel, et a travers des notions contemporaines et institutionnelles de la saintete et les notions du saere. Pris a leurs propres termes, et dans le contexte culturel de leur creation, tes textes ont beaucoup a nous apprendre concernant les communautes religieuses dont ils sont originaires et les gestes decisifs des individus veneres comme etant pieux. Les auteurs de ces biographies agissent comme representants des esperances des communautes religieuses lorsqu'ils consideraient des individus comme des saints, ainsi que des enseignants et interpretes de performances pieuses. Ces idees seront examinees a travers trois exemples Quebecois: Mere Marie-Anne, fondatrice des Soeurs de Sainte-Anne; Monseigneur Louis-Zephyrin Moreau, Quatrieme de St-Hyacinthe; et Mere de la Nativite et les origines des soeurs de Misericorde.