Records Volume 78: An I.B.V.M. Biographical Dictionary of the English Members and Major Benefactors

SWALE, Sister M. Bernard 1810 1832 Margaret Swale was born in Knaresborough . After education at the Bar Convent she was admitted to the Novitiate, despite having poor health . As Sister Bernard she taught in the schools for less than a year before dying of tuberculosis on 13 March 1832. She is buried in the Bar Convent cemetery.

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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION 1. The Structure of the Institute. The government of the Institute is hierarchical . A General Congregation elects the General Superior ( or Chief Superior as she was known in the early days); she appoints the Provincial Superiors who, in turn ,

appoint the Local Superiors. At first the General Superiors held office for life and there were no rules determining the length of office of Provincial and Local Superiors. Even when terms were specified, dispensations were readily granted , so that many Superiors remained in government for very long periods. The rules for the terms of office are now plainly stated .

2. The Suppression of the Institute and its subsequent Approbation. The nature of Mary Ward's Institute, with its government by a woman and total lack of enclosure, aroused much opposition from the early days of its foundation.

Conservatives, Pauline fundamentalists , ecclesiastics who felt threatened by the activities of these young women and bona fide supporters of the enclosure decrees of the Council of Trent, all raised their voices in protest against the galloping girls . The Jesuits gave the Institute little support , for St. Ignatius had ruled out the possibility of a female branch of the Society, but Mary Ward's known inclination to Ignatian spirituality and the Jesuit way of life earned her further enemies among the secular clergy who were the bitter opponents of the Society. To this general acrimony was added the personal spite of one Mary Alcock who had left the Institute and who expressed her jealousy of Mary Ward by spreading scurrilous stories about her. In time these adversaries won the credulous ear of Pope Urban VIII , who accepted the calumnies at face value. He first ordered the closure of several individual houses and then in 1631 issued the Bull Pastoralis Romanus Pontificis, suppressing the Institute in the severest terms he could muster . Shortly afterwards , however, he took the nuns in Rome under his special protection and gave

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Records Volume 78: An I.B.V.M. Biographical Dictionary of the English Members and Major Benefactors

Published on Jan 1, 2001

The Catholic Record Society

This work spans nearly four centuries of apostolic endeavour. It is tempting to describe it succinctly as a biographical dictionary of the English Province, I.B.V.M., but the word Province would be anachronistic. For three hundred years there was no organisation in England that merited the term Province, and not until 1929 was the title bestowed on the English houses. The early history of the Institute in this country is played on a stage where transient actors come and go, some speaking significant lines, others - shadowy supernumeraries - making brief, silent appearances. This book records the individual history of those members whose religious -life was spent in England though some had made their noviceship on the continent, and some few died abroad. Taken together, the entries relate the fortunes of the Institute in England, but by their very nature only in a fragmentary way, so that a cohesive summary seems called for, and is therefore attempted in this introduction.