Life and Religion at Louisbourg, 1713-1758

Olaf Uwe Janzen is an associate professor of history at Sir Wilfred
Grenfell College, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

This is a paperback edition of a book first published in 1984 under the
title Religion in Life at Louisbourg, 1713–1758. With the exception of
four pages of sources that were added to the bibliography, the two books
are identical.

There are five chapters plus an introduction and conclusion. Two
chapters discuss the historical and social context of religion at
Louisbourg (including the founding of the colony) and the role of
religion in the everyday lives of the inhabitants of the colony. These
chapters (unquestionably the best in the book) explore topics ranging
from infant and child mortality to the distinction between
“education” and “instruction.” They also present us with a
striking contradiction: religion was an important ingredient in
Louisbourg society “in personal and social terms,” yet the church
“as an institution did not have a pronounced impact on Ile Royale
society.”

The remaining three chapters focus on the principal religious orders at
Louisbourg: the Récollets, who tended to the religious needs of the
people; the Brothers of Charity, who ran the hospital; and the Sisters
of the Congregation of Notre-Dame, who provided education for the
colony’s females. These chapters dwell on the controversies and issues
that generated much of the surviving documentation; one must assume that
what is being revealed are the exceptional rather than mundane details
of “life and religion” at Louisbourg.

There is a good deal of repetition from one chapter to the next. It
would seem that the book was written as a series of separate articles
rather than as a coherent monograph. The maps are reproductions of
contemporary charts and are nearly impossible to decipher. Still, the
literature on religion in 18th-century colonial society is thin, so this
book continues to be a valuable study.