Summary
Title: Fire and Roses: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834
Author: Nancy Schultz
Publisher: Northeastern University Press
ISBN: 1555535143
Pro:
• Easy, accessible prose; scholarly and well-documented material
• Provides interesting insight into an ugly chapter of American religious history
Con:
• None
Description:
• Detailed account of an important aspect of American Catholicism
• Illustrates nature of relationship between Catholicism and Protestants in 19th century
• Explains ways in which anti-Catholic bigotry could affect people
Book Review
The history of relations between Protestants and Catholics in America has been very difficult. Immigrant Protestants brought over with them the fears, ignorance and hatred of Catholicism which had long plagued Europe. Catholics often did not have full civil rights in many colonies, and it could be difficult for them to hold to their religious lives.
Over time, the outward signs of prejudice slowly disappeared, but not much changed underneath — the old prejudices and fears remained and only needed a good excuse to be given full expression. In Charlestown, Massachusetts, Protestant workers were given lots of excuses (not all of them religious) to vent their frustrations on the local convent and girls’ school, founded in 1826 and run by Ursuline nuns.
One major fuel to the fire was the problem of class divisions. Most of the laborers in Charlestown came from New England farms which, over the course of many generations, were producing less and less for more and more people. Many farmers were forced to move to cities to engage in back-breaking labor for a paltry sum that was supposed to support them and their families back home.
But at the same time, the Catholic Church was starting to buy up choice property in and around Charlestown, including land on a hill overlooking the local brickyards where many poor Protestants worked. As they labored, they literally fell under the shadow of a rich church educating the rich children of their employers, resulting in envy and hatred.
Another major fuel to the fire was the issue of gender status. The nuns were, of course, all women — becoming a nun was one of the few ways in which a woman of the time could get a good education and pursue literature and the arts. Despite the vows all nuns had to take, being in a convent actually gave them a measure of freedom and independence not available to most other women.
In the case of some, like Mary Anne Moffat, the mother superior, it also encouraged a strong will and personality which came as a surprise to the men who had to deal with her. She didn’t back down readily, and she didn’t show deference to the Protestant men who challenged her authority. Independent and educated women were unheard of and quite unwelcome. This, unfortunately, only exacerbated tensions and ended up encouraging further confrontation:
Fire and Roses: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834
- “Moffat’s haughty demeanor disgusted them. One ringleader of the rioters, a strapping six-foot-six brick maker named John R. Buzzell, later said that Moffat was “'the sauciest woman I ever heard talk.'”
Finally, religion itself also played a major role in what happened. Few Protestants really understood what goes on in Catholicism and Catholic rites, and a group of nuns who are protective of their privacy were even harder to understand. No one knew what went on behind the walls, and their imaginations created all sorts of terrifying stories.
Mutual understanding was not helped by the fact that at least one nun, a Protestant convert, began to have second thoughts about what she had done and fled the convent in the middle of the night. Bishop Benedict Fenwick persuaded her to return, but rumors spread that she was forced back against her will and may have even been murdered.
