Biography of jeanne mance

MANCE, JEANNE, founder of the Hôtel-Dieu of Montreal; baptized 12 Nov. 1606 in the parish of Saint-Pierre, at Langres, in Champagne (France), daughter of Catherine Émonnot and Charles Mance, attorney in the bailliage of Langres; d. 18 June 1673 at Montreal and was buried there the following day.

The Mance family hailed from Nogent-le-Roi (today Nogent-en-Bassigny, Haute-Marne), and the Émonnot family from Langres, where Jeanne Mance’s parents went to make a home. The two families belonged to the administrative middle class; Charles Mance and Catherine Émonnot had married in 1602. They had six boys and six girls. Jeanne, their second child, was probably among the first pupils entrusted to the Ursulines, who had come to establish themselves at Langres in 1613. She was a little over 20 when she lost her mother. Very devout, and with the ability to be unmindful of herself, she became, together with her sister, the support of her father and looked after the education of her young brothers and sisters. She experienced the hardships of the Thirty Years’ War, which spared scarcely any of the frontier towns of France. Hospitals were founded at Langres. The bishop, Sébastien Zamet, concentrated his efforts and poured out his gold for the construction of a charity-hospital in his town. Better still, he established a society of pious ladies directed towards charitable activities of an external and social nature. It was probably in this type of work that Jeanne Mance first served as a nurse. By it she no doubt learned to give emergency care to the wounded and the sick. How else can we explain her deftness at Ville-Marie, at the bedside of the horribly mutilated victims of the Iroquois? As her brothers and sisters grew up, she had more and more time to attend to charitable works, and her father was no longer there to require her care. He had died about 1635.

Around the middle of April 1640, Jeanne learned of the presence at Langres, where he was stayi

One of the early colonizers of Canada, inspired by religious devotion and the desire to serve God, who is credited as the founder of the Hôtel Dieu hospital and the co-founder of Montreal . Pronunciation: Jan Monce. Name variations: Jeanne de Mance. Born Jeanne Mance in late 1606 (she was baptized on November 12, 1606) in the town of Langres, France; died in Montreal, Canada on June 18, 1673; daughter of Charles Mance (a lawyer) and Catherine Émonnot Mance; never married; no children.

Worked as a nurse attending to victims of war and plague (1635–36); immigrated to New France (1641); Montreal founded (1642); secured funds to stave off Iroquois attack (1651); journeyed to France, returned with nursing sisters to Montreal (1658); was present at the founding of the Church of Notre Dame (1673).

The early exploration and settlement of North America has traditionally been viewed as the work of men. Along the St. Lawrence River, however, in the small settlements of the 17th century which were to form the backbone of New France, women played a significant role in early colonial life. One of these women was Jeanne Mance, who was born in France and spent the first half of her life in relative obscurity. However, by the age of 33, she had decided that the best way for her to serve God was to go to the New World to aid in the process of settlement and in the spread of Christianity to the natives. Mance played a critical role in the fortunes of the new colonies. As one of the founders of the City of Montreal, she was instrumental in the colony's survival, advising the governor and securing financial aid. She was also given sole responsibility for establishing a hospital and worked tirelessly over the years overseeing its construction and administration, while providing nursing care to the colonists. As well, she arranged for the establishment of an order of nursing sisters at the hospital, thereby ensuring its independence and survival afte

Jeanne Mance was born on November 12, 1606 in the city of Langres, France. On the same day, she was baptized in the Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul church. She was the second of twelve children born to Charles Mance, the King’s attorney of France in Langres, and Catherine Emonnot, daughter of the attorney Laurent Emonnot. At the age of 16, seriously ill, she was barely saved by the doctors. Her health was predicted to be fragile for the rest of her life.

Jeanne was very active in this bourgeois family and in her father’s law office. Her father died in the early summer of 1630, followed by her mother two years later in July 1632. With her sister Marguerite, Jeanne had to work to ensure the subsistence of her minor brothers and sisters.

Not being inclined to religious life or marriage, Jeanne took up the profession of nursing, devoting herself to the victims of the Thirty Years’ War and the plague, two scourges that ravaged Langres in the 1630s.

In 1640, Jeanne hurried to visit a priest cousin she loved, Father Nicolas Dolebeau. The young man talked to her about New France. He told of the prodigious vocation of Mrs. de La Peltrie and the Ursulines she was taking to New France. He told her how Mrs. de La Peltrie had been miraculously healed after promising St. Joseph to consecrate her life for Canada. He also told her how St. Mary of the Incarnation had a dream in which she saw herself going to a wilderness with Mrs. de La Peltrie and that St. Joseph appeared in the dream to show her the way; and that she later heard the voice of God say to her: “It is Canada that I have shown you. I want you to go there and found a house for Jesus and Mary. After hearing these things, Jeanne Mance had the desire to go and help the missions in Canada.

In that same year of 1640, with the authorization of her Jesuit spiritual advisor, she left Langres and her brothers and sisters for Paris to seek the means to go to this land of promise. She met Father Charles Lale

17th-century French nurse and settler in Quebec, New France

This article is about the 17th-century historical personnage. For other uses, see Jeanne Mance (disambiguation).

Jeanne Mance (French pronunciation:[ʒanmɑ̃s]; November 12, 1606 – June 18, 1673) was a French nurse and settler of New France. She arrived in New France two years after the Ursuline nuns came to Quebec. Among the founders of Montreal in 1642, she established its first hospital, the Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal, in 1645. She returned twice to France to seek financial support for the hospital. After providing most of the care directly for years, in 1657 she recruited three sisters of the Religieuses hospitalières de Saint-Joseph, and continued to direct operations of the hospital. During her era, she was also known as Jehanne Mance contemporarily by the French, and as Joan Mance by the English contemporarily.

Early years

Jeanne Mance was born (as Jehanne Mance) into a bourgeois family in Langres, in Haute-Marne, France. She was the daughter of Catherine Émonnot and Charles Mance, a prosecutor for the king in Langres, an important diocese in the northern Burgundy. After her mother died, Jeanne cared for eleven brothers and sisters. She went on to care for victims of the Thirty Years' War and the plague.

Vocation

At age 34, while on a pilgrimage to Troyes in Champagne, Mance discovered her missionary calling. She decided to go to New France in North America, then in the first stages of colonization by the French. She was supported by Anne of Austria, the wife of King Louis XIII, and by the Jesuits. She was not interested in marriage in Nouvelle-France.

Mance was a member of the Société Notre-Dame de Montréal; its goal was to convert the natives and found a hospital in Montreal similar to the one in Quebec.

Founding of Montreal and Hôtel-Dieu Hospital

Further information: Société Notre-Dame de Montreal and Hôtel-Dieu d