Mapping religious exile: Sacred and domestic spaces in an eighteenth-century Parisian convent — Australian Historical Association annual conference hosted by The Australian National University
  1. Schedule
  2. Creating Spiritual Communities
  3. Mapping religious exile: Sacred and domestic spaces in an eighteenth-century Parisian convent

Mapping religious exile: Sacred and domestic spaces in an eighteenth-century Parisian convent (531)

Claire Walker

The English Augustinian convent of Our Lady of Syon was located in the Rue des Fossés Saint Victor in the 5th arondissement of Paris. Founded in 1634, the cloister quickly became a hub for the exiled English Catholic community in the city. This paper explores how the nuns established Our Lady of Syon as an affective space for the performance of religious exile. Using hand drawn plans of the buildings and grounds in conjunction with textual sources detailing the nuns’ interactions with the British exilic community and Parisian patrons, it examines the ways different spaces within the convent mediated interactions between the sacred and the domestic, the holy and profane, to shape the nuns relationship with their kin, benefactors, and ecclesiastical authorities.

#OzHA2018