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A Rule for Children and Other Writings

Edited and Translated by John J. Conley, S.J.
Jacqueline Pascal (1625-1661) was the sister of Blaise Pascal and a nun at the Jansenist Port-Royal convent in France. She was also a prolific writer who argued for the spiritual rights of women and the right of conscientious objection to royal, ecclesiastic, and family authority.

This book presents selections from the whole of Pascal’s career as a writer, including her witty adolescent poetry and her pioneering treatise on the education of women, A Rule for Children, which drew on her experiences as schoolmistress at Port-Royal. Readers will also find Pascal’s devotional treatise, which matched each moment in Christ’s Passion with a corresponding virtue that his female disciples should cultivate; a transcript of her interrogation by church authorities, in which she defended the controversial theological doctrines taught at Port-Royal; a biographical sketch of her abbess, which presented Pascal’s conception of the ideal nun; and a selection of letters offering spirited defenses of Pascal’s right to practice her vocation, regardless of patriarchal objections.

203 pages | 6 x 9 | © 2003

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe

Literature and Literary Criticism: Romance Languages

Women's Studies

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Series Editors’ Introduction
Volume Editor’s Introduction
Bibliography on Jacqueline Pascal
Poetry (1638-43)
On the Mystery of the Death of Our Lord
Jesus Christ (1651)
Report of Soeur Hacqueline de Sainte Euphémie to the
Mother Prioress of Port-Royal des Champs (1653)
A Rule for Children (1657)
Interrogation of Soeur Jacqueline de Sainte Euphémie
(Pascal), Subprioress and Novice Mistress (1661)
A Memoir of Mère Marie Angélique by Soeur
Jacqueline de Sainte Euphémie Pascal (1661)
Letters of Jacqueline Pascal (1647-61)
Series Editors’ Bibliography
Index

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