Mary Ward (nun)
IBVM CJ | |
---|---|
Born | Joan Ward 23 January 1585 Mulwith, Yorkshire, England |
Died | 30 January 1645 Heworth, York, England | (aged 60)
Mary Ward, IBVM CJ (23 January 1585 – 30 January 1645)
Early life and education
Mary Ward was born Joan Ward in Mulwith, West Riding of Yorkshire, the first child to Marmaduke and Ursula Wright Ward (Ursula's second marriage), and took "Mary" as her confirmation name. It is postulated that Ward was of noble descent. Marmaduke of Givendale was also head of the manor in Mulwith and Newby, and Mary can include Joan Ward, Prioress of Esholt as one of many notable ancestors, the Warde arms being bestowed in the early 9th century by Ecgberht, King of Wessex "for assisting him against the other six kingdoms".[3]
She was born at
In 1595 her family home at Mulwith was burnt down in an
Religious calling
In 1609, at the age of 24, she experienced the voice of God directing her towards a religious life (Glory Vision). She heard "Glory, Glory, Glory" while she was sitting and combing her hair.
Even with the wealth of her birth and the continued support of family and friends she did not have an easy path to a religious life. At the ages of both ten and twelve, she was proposed for marriage into two Northumbrian families, but declined "as one who already esteemed only God as worthy of her love." However, her father intended her to marry the heir of Edward Neville of Westmoreland. To persuade her, she was taken by him to the priest Richard Holtby (b. 1553) at Baldwin's Gardens, Holborn, London. It was during this trip that three of her uncles John and Christopher Wright, along with their brother-in-law Thomas Percy (also an uncle, who had married her aunt Martha Wright), were involved with and lost their lives in the Gunpowder Plot, in which Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up Parliament.[4] Her father was also examined as a possible conspirator but was not implicated. He was able to prove that he was in London about the proposed Neville marriage. Mary could not refuse her confessor and wrote, "My confessor [...] by God's permission, was also of opinion that in no way ought I to leave England nor to make myself a religious. Whose words truly were of weight, and on this occasion caused me inexpressible distress, because I did not dare to do what he prohibited as unlawful, nor could I embrace that which he proposed as my greater good. His motives were pious, prudent, regardful of the service of God and the common good." Mary prayed for an extended period and after Mass, the priest, despite all resolutions and pre-made arrangements, discerned the contrary. Holtby had spilt the wine during Mass and interpreted it as a sign from God that the only marriage that would be suitable would be one to Christ. Mary recalled, "But the same God […] would not permit that I should be hindered through his means, so that finally He caused him to change his opinion, at least so far as to leave me to myself in this matter, which was sufficient for me".
After being refused by Mary, Edward Neville would give up the family inheritance, travel to Rome and join the
Ward left England in order to enter a
Establishment of the institute
At this time, women in the Catholic church lived an enclosed, cloistered, contemplative life, governed by others.[2] However, Mary Ward did not find herself called to the contemplative life and instead decided to dedicate herself to an active ministry, whilst still being religious; this was considered most unusual at the time. At the age of twenty-four, she found herself surrounded by a band of devoted companions[5] including Winefrid Wigmore determined to work under her guidance to address new needs.[8] One of these was that it was essential to educate girls. She said in 1612, "There is no such difference between men and women that women, may they not do great things? And I hope in God that it may be seen in time to come that women will do much."[2] In 1609 they established themselves as a religious community at Saint-Omer and opened schools for girls.[5]
Although the venture was a great success, and grew in the 1610s and 1620s,
There were other startling differences between the new Institute and existing congregations of women, including freedom from
At the express desire of Pope Urban, Mary went to Rome accompanied by her religious followers. It was there that she gathered around her the younger members of her religious family, under the supervision and protection of the Holy See. She travelled to Rome about five or six times during her life.[2] She travelled throughout Europe on foot, in extreme poverty and frequently ill, founding schools in the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Austria, and in today's Czech Republic and Slovakia.[9] The "Jesuitesses", as her congregation was designated by her opponents, were suppressed in 1631.[10] In 1631 she was confined in a convent as a heretic on the instructions of the Pope. She then relied on her female friends to continue running the schools, using coded letter written in lemon juice as invisible ink to provide instructions.[2]
Return to England
In 1637, with letters of introduction from Pope Urban VIII to Queen Henrietta Maria of France, Mary returned to England and established herself in London.[10] There she and her companions established free schools for the poor, nursed the sick and visited prisoners. In 1642 she journeyed northward with her household where they established a community school in Hutton Rudby, the home of cousin Sir Thomas Gascoigne, and then travelled to stay with the Thwing family at Heworth, near York. She died at Heworth Manor, on 20 January 1645 (old calendar) during the English Civil War.[11]
After her death, her companions thought it best not to bury her body near the city centre where she died because of the dangers of desecration. Instead, they sought a less conspicuous place and found a solution by arranging for her to be buried in the churchyard of St Thomas' Church, Osbaldwick, about a mile away. There, as the record says, "the vicar was honest enough to be bribed". Her burial on 1 February 1645 was also attended by Anglicans and she was much admired and revered by many local people, both Catholic and Protestant.[12] Her epitaph can be viewed inside the church, though she was buried in the cemetery of the Anglican church of Osbaldwick. The epitaph reads, "To love the poor, persevere in the same, live, die, and rise with them was all the aim of Mary Ward who having lived 60 years and 8 days. Died 30th January 1645".
Legacy
Although her ideas were suppressed, her work was not destroyed. Later congregations of women looked to her for inspiration.
Ward was finally formally recognized as the founder of the two religious institutes by the Holy See in 1909.[9] In 2002, the Congregation of Jesus was finally allowed to adopt the constitutions of the Jesuits, as well as the name she had originally intended for them.[13]
Ward's writings were approved by theologians on 20 April 1932.
By the twenty-first century, over 200 schools had been named after her and they form a worldwide network.[2] For the 400th anniversary of her birth in 1985, the Mary Ward Catholic Secondary School in Toronto was named after her. A Catholic elementary school in Niagara Falls, Ontario is also carries her name. Schools in Germany named for her include, the Maria-Ward-Schule in Landau[16] and the St. Marien-Schulen in Regensburg.[17] In addition, there is the private St Mary's School, Cambridge in England, Loreto Toorak (Mandeville Hall) in Melbourne and Loreto Kirribilli in Sydney.
Her work is celebrated in an exhibit in the museum of the Bar Convent in York.[18]
References
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/28699. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Livesey, Sister Jane; Avery, Charlotte. "Woman's Hour 21 Jan 2022". BBC. Retrieved 21 January 2022.
- ^ a b c Chambers, Mary Catherine Elizabeth (1882). The Life of Mary Ward (1585–1645), Volume I. London: Burns and Oates. pp. 1–8 (Ancestry), 20–21 (Imprisonment of Family), 27 (Gunpowder Plot), 29–33 (Proposals), 86–98 (Gunpowder Plot & the Neville Debacle).
- ^ "Mary Ward", English Province of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary
- ^ a b c Caldwell, Simon. "The first sister of feminism", The Independent, 11 June 2009
- ^ a b c Giles, Elizabeth. "Mary Ward." The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 15. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. 2 February 2021
- ^ Mary Ward, France. Loreto College Marryatville Australia, archived from the original on 18 February 2011.
- required.)
- ^ a b "Mary Ward". Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Archived from the original on 18 September 2013. Retrieved 2 September 2013.
- ^ a b "Mary Ward, Her Story", Congregatio Jesu
- ^ Coleridge, Henry James (1887). St. Mary's Convent, Micklegate Bar, York (1686–1887). London: Burns and Oates. pp. 6–7.
- ^ "The parish of St Thomas Osbaldwick with St James Murton | About the Parish | Mary Ward |". Archived from the original on 26 November 2011. Retrieved 1 November 2010.
- ^ "Our Name". Congregation of Jesus. Retrieved 30 June 2016.
- ^ Index ac status causarum beatificationis servorum dei et canonizationis beatorum (in Latin). Typis polyglottis vaticanis. January 1953. p. 169.
- ^ "Pope Benedict XVI addresses British religious". The British Province of Carmelites. 17 September 2010. Archived from the original on 8 June 2012. Retrieved 18 March 2012.
The Holy Father spoke of the contribution of religious orders to the life of the Church and Society in many spheres, and made particular mention of the venerable Mary Ward.
- ^ "Maria-Ward-Schule, Landau". Maria-Ward-Schule, Landau. Retrieved 12 February 2022.
- ^ "Home". St. Marien-Schulen Regensburg. Retrieved 12 February 2022.
- ^ Museum and Archives, The Bar Convent, archived from the original on 15 February 2012, retrieved 16 October 2011
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Mary Ward". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
Bibliography
- Kóhler, Mathilde: Maria Ward. Ein Frauenschicksal des 17. Jahrhunderts. Kósel Verlag, 1984
- Görres, Ida Friederike. Mary Ward, trans. Elsie Codd. London: Longmans, Green: 1939.
- Sr. Ursula Dirmeier, CJ, ed., Mary Ward und ihre Gründung: Die Quellentexte bis 1645 (Mary Ward and Her Foundation. The Source Texts to 1645), 4 vols, 2007, Münster 2007, Corpus Catholicorum, vols. 45–48. (in German)
- Immolata Wetter, Bernadette Ganne, Patricia Harriss, Mary Ward Under the Shadow of the Inquisition, 1630–1637, Way Books, 2006, ISBN 0-904717-28-3.
- Margaret Mary Littlehales. Mary Ward Pilgrim and Mystic Burns and Oates, 1998.
- Nigg, Walter: Mary Ward – Eine Frau gibt nicht auf. Römerhof Verlag, Zürich 2009. ISBN 978-3-905894-03-5(in German)
Further reading
- Wallace, David (2012). "Holy Amazon: Mary Ward of Yorkshire, 1585–1645". Strong Women: Life, Text, and Territory 1347–1645. Oxford University Press. ]
- Wallace, David (2006). "Periodizing Women: Mary Ward (1585-1645) and the Premodern Canon". Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. 36 (2): 397–453. . Retrieved 29 May 2015.
- L. Lux-Sterritt (2011). "Mary Ward's English Institute and Prescribed Female Roles in the Early Modern Church", in L. Lux-Sterritt and C. Mangion (eds.), Gender, Catholicism and Spirituality: Women and the Roman Catholic Church in Britain and Europe, 1200–1900 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
External links
- Literature by and about Mary Ward (nun) in the German National Library catalogue
- "Mary Ward" in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints
- http://www.mariaward.de Internet-Auftritt der Congregatio Jesu
- 'Mary Ward: Dangerous Visionary': A one-hour documentary telling the story of Mary Ward through the lens of the 21st century (directed by Ciaran O'Connor and produced by Sarah Mac Donald).