Maria Monk was a Canadian woman who claimed to have been a nun who had been sexually exploited in her convent. She, or ghost writers who used her as their puppet, wrote a sensational book about these allegations. Maria Monk's book Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, or, The Hidden Secrets of a Nun's Life in a Convent Exposed was published in January 1836. In it, Monk claimed that nuns of the Religious Hospitallers of St.

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  • Maria Monk was a Canadian woman who claimed to have been a nun who had been sexually exploited in her convent. She, or ghost writers who used her as their puppet, wrote a sensational book about these allegations. Maria Monk's book Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, or, The Hidden Secrets of a Nun's Life in a Convent Exposed was published in January 1836. In it, Monk claimed that nuns of the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph of the Montreal convent of the Hôtel-Dieu, whom she called "the Black Nuns", were forced to have sex with the priests in the seminary next door. The priests supposedly entered the convent through a secret tunnel. If the sexual union produced a baby, it was baptized and then strangled and dumped into a lime pit in the basement. Uncooperative nuns disappeared. Historians are unanimous in their agreement that the whole account was false. Monk's errors began early in her story. In her account, she stated that there were three convents in Montreal: "1st. The Congregational Nunnery. 2d. The Black Nunnery, or Convent of Sister Bourgeoise. 3d The Grey Nunnery. " She was, however, confused even on the nature of the orders. The Congregational Nuns were the Congregation of Notre Dame, founded by Marguerite Bourgeoys, not the Sisters of Charity, as Monk stated at the beginning of her text; the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph, whose habits were black but who were not typically called "Black Nuns", operated the Hotel-Dieu, where Monk claimed that she entered and suffered, and it was not founded by "Sister Bourgeoise[sic]"; and it was the Sisters of Charity who were commonly known as the Grey Nuns. There is some evidence that Maria Monk had suffered a brain injury as a child. One possible result of this injury was that Monk was easily manipulated, and was not able to distinguish between fact and fantasy. It has been suggested that Maria Monk was manipulated into playing a role for profit by her publisher or her ghost writers.
  • Maria Monk était une femme canadienne devenue célèbre pour son récit autobiographique qui allégua que, devenue nonne, elle fut abusée dans un couvent. Le récit pseudépigraphique a nourri l'imagination populaire aux États-Unis et a suscité des polémiques publiques. Son livre, intitulé The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, fut publié en janvier 1836. Elle raconta que les sœurs de l'Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal avaient construit un tunnel pour entretenir les abus et qu'elles tuaient les enfants nés d'unions illégitimes. Toutefois, cette narration n'a pas convaincu les historiens qui ont étudié l'affaire. Le livre de Monk a suscité l'indignation dans la communauté protestante anglo-américaine, qui avait déjà été ébranlée par les allégations de Rebecca Reed, auteure de Six Months in a Convent, qui avait conduit aux émeutes des Ursulines de Boston, et par le drame The Monk de Matthew Lewis. Il se vendit 26 000 exemplaires, ce qui était remarquable pour l'époque. En octobre de 1836, le colonel William Leet Stone mena une enquête dans l'établissement et conclut que les accusations ne tenaient pas sur des faits. L'évêque de Montréal, Mgr Jean-Jacques Lartigue, dut rassurer ses confrères protestants, craignant une détérioration des relations œcuméniques. Malgré le climat de détente qui s'est instauré à la suite de cette affaire, quelques auteurs fondamentalistes protestants ont continué à propager cette rumeur, dont Loraine Boettner et Jack Chick, qui continuèrent à clamer la vérité des allégations.
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  • Maria Monk
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  • Maria Monk was a Canadian woman who claimed to have been a nun who had been sexually exploited in her convent. She, or ghost writers who used her as their puppet, wrote a sensational book about these allegations. Maria Monk's book Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, or, The Hidden Secrets of a Nun's Life in a Convent Exposed was published in January 1836. In it, Monk claimed that nuns of the Religious Hospitallers of St.
  • Maria Monk était une femme canadienne devenue célèbre pour son récit autobiographique qui allégua que, devenue nonne, elle fut abusée dans un couvent. Le récit pseudépigraphique a nourri l'imagination populaire aux États-Unis et a suscité des polémiques publiques. Son livre, intitulé The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, fut publié en janvier 1836.
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  • Maria Monk
  • Maria Monk
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