Canada's first recluse: saint or masochist?
- Elvira Cordileone
- Feb 12
- 11 min read
Jeanne Le Ber came into the world in 1662 in the pioneer settlement of Ville-Marie on the southwest shore of the Island of Montreal, New France. Her parents, Jacques Le Ber and Jeanne Le Moyne, both born in France, met and married in the colony. Both sides of the family became immensely wealthy through trade and ennobled by France.
Jeanne, the only daughter, was the second child among five children.
Her parents were fervent Catholics and from birth the odour of faith infused the very air Jeanne breathed. One chronicler writes her mother began preaching religion to her before Jeanne understood what the words meant. She got her early schooling in a stone stable at the feet of Marguerite Bourgois, founder of the Congregation of Notre Dame, the first non-cloistered Catholic religious community. (In 1982 the Catholic Church canonized Marguerite Bourgois, Canada’s first woman saint.)
Biographers describe Jeanne as a lively, intelligent child who showed an early interest in religious subjects and grew into a pious, modest, obedient girl who disliked being the centre of attention. Despite the family’s wealth, they did not flaunt it nor did they live like paupers. Jeanne internalized the lesson that self-abnegation led to virtue. At an age when girls enjoyed adornments, the fine fabrics of her clothing, although simple in style, shamed her.
In 1674 on the cusp of thirteen, Jeanne’s parents sent her to the Ursuline monastery in Quebec City to further her education. The students, like the nuns who taught them, lived an austere, cloistered life. They received intense religious instruction, of course, but also grammar, history and literature, and she excelled at sewing, drawing, embroidery and the gothic script used for religious inscriptions.
During the almost three years she lived this monastic life, Jeanne’s yearning for solitude, prayer, self-sacrifice and mystical union with Jesus grew stronger by the day. She rejected a growing list of worldly things, refusing or giving away objects not strictly utilitarian, activities such as outdoor recreation with her classmates, and idle conversations except about God in favour of solitude and prayers.
Within the monastery’s walls Jeanne decided on the future course of her life. She went further than accepting the teaching that sacrifice went hand in hand with being a good Christian. Jeanne wanted to become holy, and that meant upping the sacrifices she had to make. It meant retreating from the world the better to hear and respond to God, and inflicting pain and privations on herself to tame her human nature (which runs wild if allowed to) so it doesn’t turn destructive.
When her father called her home in 1677, she must have returned with trepidation. Now fifteen she was near ripe for marriage.
Her family rejoiced to have her home but Jeanne had changed. She soon resumed austerities practiced at the monastery. They noticed she spent more and more time praying and meditating until she had no time for anyone but her Divine Master. But Jeanne kept her vocation secret, knowing her father would be opposed. She put her faith in God, and bided her time.
The parents wanted a normal life for their beloved only daughter, including making a good match. But that life, including the fine-quality clothes they provided were now repugnant to her. To guard against enjoying and desiring them, Jeanne secretly wore belts and bracelets with bristling spikes underneath them to remind herself of suffering amid pleasure.
Her influential family lived in a spacious house on rue St-Paul. Distinguished people came and went, including dashing young men. When one of them stepped up with a proposal when she was seventeen, Jeanne refused it and revealed her desire to live the rest of her life in seclusion. Pious as they were, it stunned them.
Her father tried his best to dissuade her. But what hope did he have when Jeanne was convinced God, Himself, had called her? She hungered to live alone with God. With the Sulpician priests supporting her vocation, her brokenhearted father, gave his daughter up as a sacrifice to God.
In 1680, Jeanne, eighteen, took vows of chastity, obedience and seclusion for a five-year period to test her commitment to the austere life she said she wanted. Religious life usually meant giving up all worldly wealth but Jeanne, an heiress, made no such promise. Her biographers suggest the sum was so vast she decided to dispose of it herself, giving it away for causes close to her heart.
Her bedroom within the family home became her monk’s cell. She spent most of the time in prayer, reading and meditation. Whatever time remained she used to embroider liturgical vestments and decorations for the church and to knit and sew for the needy. A poor cousin, Anne Baroy, who lived with the family, tended to her meager needs.
Jeanne left the room once each day in the company of Anne for five o’clock morning mass. She never missed. Blizzards didn’t stop her, neither did the bone-freezing winter cold nor her own illnesses. She walked eyes down, silent, and once in church she prostrated at the foot of the altar for the duration of the service, until her confessor asked her to stop because it made her an object of attention.
From where did this need to seal herself up alone and in silence originate? Why did Jeanne keep the heavy window drapes closed to keep out light and sun and the view of a garden from entering her room with heavy drapes? Didn’t the God she loved so profoundly send her the sun and light? Did she have God 's approval when, Jeanne, one of his beloved creations, damaged her health by depriving herself of adequate food – she ate only scraps from the family kitchen – used the coarsest materials to clothe herself so it hurt her skin, and deprived herself of adequate sleep?
Had she experienced some horrific trauma in her young life over which she felt guilty?
The most succinct answer lies between the pages of Marie Beaupre’s book, Jeanne Le Ber: première recluse du Canada français (1662-1714): like Jesus, by her suffering she sought to redeem souls in a world filled with sin and evil as though humanity had an account at the Bank of God whereby every sin reduced the account whereas prayer, suffering and good deeds offered up to God made deposits.
Maybe not so crazy in the context of the Catholic Church’s belief which says God loved humanity so much He sent his only Son, Jesus Christ, to earth to serve as an innocent blood sacrifice. Christ suffered and died to pay for our redemption and Jeanne aimed to imitate Jesus. The greater her suffering, the greater her joy and the closer she felt to God.
Did the dangerous, bloody times in which she lived motivate her to withdraw from the world?
The colony was under constant threat by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (also known as the Iroquois) and numerous other First Nations over territory the settlers had occupied. One of Jeanne’s brothers died in one such conflict. New France also faced many battles with the English as they competed for land and trade in the new continent. Did Jeanne worry about being overtaken by heathens and English heretics?
Or was she born with an obsessive nature which early and pervasive religious training fed?
Two years into her seclusion, as her mother lay near death in the room across the hall, so close she could hear her groans of pain, Jeanne refused her last wish to set eyes on her only daughter and went about her prayers as usual. Surely, even God would have allowed it?
When the five years of her temporary vows ended, her father was relieved. He’d hoped those five hard years would have quenched Jeanne's thirst for seclusion and self-abnegation. He thought she’d take on running of the household now that his wife was dead.
But to his dismay, Jeanne wanted seclusion, prayer and pain more than ever.
In 1685 she made her vows permanent – until death. Although she remained within the four walls of her bedroom another ten years, Jeanne wasn’t entirely satisfied with the arrangement because hearing daily Mass meant interrupting her seclusion to go to church whereas she wanted to be in the presence of God every minute of every day.
Jeanne got her wish in 1694, when their neighbours, the sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame, decided to build a chapel in the garden beside their convent.
Jeanne proposed financing its construction if they would agree to add a tiny apartment at the back of the chapel, behind the altar where she could live the rest of her days. Again, her father resisted but eventually gave up in the face of her holy determination.
PART TWO
Not only did Jacques Le Ber allow Jeanne to live as she wished, he gave her the dowry she would have received had she married. The amount was a staggering fifty-thousand livres, the currency then used by France. How staggering? One livre equaled the value of one pound of silver. With the average cost of silver in 2024 worth $38.75 (Canadian) an ounce, today her dowry would have a value of $31 million.
Jeanne and the nuns signed a formal agreement: Jeanne gave them four thousand livres ($2.5 million) for the chapel’s construction. She also set up an annual endowment of five hundred livres ($300,000) out of which the sisters would buy whatever materials she would need for her needlework – fine gold, silver and silk thread imported from France, and fabrics for the sewing and knitting she made for the poor.
In exchange, the nuns would build Jeanne’s living quarters to her specifications, provide whatever she needed in sickness and in health and in addition house her cousin and long-time attendant, Anne Baroy, who would continue to assist her. (Anne later joined the Congregation and became a nun herself.)
On August 5, 1695, Jeanne moved into the prison she’d designed. She was thirty-three.
The whole town, rich and poor, turned out on the designated day, for a procession that accompanied Jeanne on the walk from her house to the chapel. She walked arm in arm with her father wearing a loose, grey-white, floor-length serge robe tied at the waist with a black belt and a thick linen cloth covering her head and shoulders. By all accounts her face glowed with rapture. Her father, on the other hand, was in pieces.
Inside the chapel, the Sulpician superior was waiting to welcome her but Jacques Le Ber’s anguish so overwhelmed he had to leave for fear he’d lose control of his emotions and mar the proceedings. Did Jeanne even notice? The dignitaries took their places inside the chapel and everybody else crowded in behind them.
Jeanne prostrated before the altar then got to her knees while the priest conducted the blessing after which the assemblage chanted litanies. How Jeanne must have wished for all the fuss to end so she could finally be alone with God who, Jeanne believed, was a living presence in the Eucharist kept in the tabernacle on the altar. Beside of all, with only a wall separating her living quarters from the altar she would now live in His presence every minute of every day.
The service ended and the priest led Jeanne to the door of her cell, which opened into the chapel. She entered it without looking back and locked herself in from the inside.
Jeanne’s quarters consisted of three tiny rooms, one above the other, the width of the small chapel by ten feet deep. The bottom room with the door leading into the chapel had a barred window cut into it. Through the open window she heard Mass, took communion and said her confession. A few steps led up to a middle space on the same level as the tabernacle on the other side of the wall. She slept in that room, her head touching the common wall, and where she prayed. The topmost area served as her work space.
Jeanne’s first biographer, Francois Vachon De Belmont, superior of the Sulpician seminary in Ville-Marie from 1700 to 1731, lists the rules Jeanne’s spiritual director imposed on her: no interaction with anyone “since you are dead and buried in your solitude as in a tomb (and) no one speaks or converses with the dead.” Exceptions included himself, the bishop, her father (twice a year), the Mother Superior or when she fell ill.
If she needed anything, Jeanne left a note on the window sill and her attendant would see to it. Incoming notes could also be left but these she sent straight to her confessor unread since she was not to have news of the outside world. If he deemed the note required her attention, he would send it back to her.
Jeanne’s daily life varied as little as the rotation of the Earth around the sun except on holy feast days when she added prayers and penances to her routine.
4:00 a.m. Prayers immediately after rising, interspersed with various devotions, Holy Mass, spiritual and biblical reading.
11:30 a.m. A meager lunch of boiled meat (she fasted on holy days) eaten while kneeling. She didn’t give up meat because of her frail constitution.
1:00 p.m. Vespers and compline (specific prayers said at specific hours of the day) followed by a half-hour of spiritual reading
4:00 p.m. One hour of prayer
6:00 p.m. Dinner: soup eaten on her knees
7:00 p.m. The rosary followed by prayers said out loud
8:00 p.m. To bed on a mattress of corn straw
12 midnight Enters the empty chapel to pray prostrate on the cold stone floor before the altar for an hour – two hours on holy days -- followed by Matins and Lauds.
A contemporary of Jeanne’s, a nun named Soeur Trottier, reported hearing her pray in a low voice, and it was whispered she had conversations with angels, with whom she’d always felt a sort of friendship.
Jeanne didn’t tolerate a single idle moment in her day. In the spaces between prayers and devotions, she embroidered gorgeous liturgical vestments and decorative textiles with which she supplied to all the churches of Montreal and made clothing for the poor. ( (See videos of her work: https://flambeau.ca/pages/galerieEntreeParementAutel.html
Towards the end of the 1600s, Jeanne’s reputation as a holy woman had spread. In The Christian Heroine of Canada, Étienne Michel Faillon (1799-1870), recounts a visit in 1698 by two English gentlemen of rank visiting Ville-Mare who had received permission to see the now famous recluse from the bishop who thought it would produce a “salutary” impression on them. Faillon writes:
They could not express their amazement on beholding Canada’s wealthiest daughter in such an abject abode, and deprived of most of the necessaries of life; for although Sister Le Ber retained the right of disposing of her fortune, she practiced poverty as rigorously as a fervent religious could do in the most austere orders; hence, they were greatly astonished on seeing her clothed in a coarse woolen garment, with an apron of similar material, and wearing straw shoes, made, by herself, of the husks of Indian corn. Her couch also attracted their attention, it was composed of a simple straw bed; a bundle of the same material sufficed for her pillow; she never slept on a mattrass nor used any other covering but a coarse blanket.
One of the men, a Protestant “heretic” clergyman, asked her why she endured such privations – including refusing to light a fire in the dead of winter. Jeanne pointed to the barred window that looked out onto the tabernacle:
“There,” she said, her gaze moving towards the altar. “There is my magnet. There is the person of God, real and really present.” The clergyman was so moved by her devotion he later converted to Catholicism, at least, according to Étienne Michel Faillon.
By May, 1713, Jeanne, never in robust health, sensed the end of her life drawing near. She pressed the sisters to build a boarding school which she would finance. She also offered to set up endowments for seven poor young orphans. According to The Recluse of Montreal, a 1996 booklet published by the Congregation of Notre Dame, by then she had given away the bulk of her fortune, and this would take care of what remained.
A few days after signing the agreement, Jeanne came down with a chill and didn’t recover. Bedridden and racked with cough and fever she asked her former attendant, Anne Baroy, now known as Sister Saint Charles, to recite her prayers for her and to take her place before the Blessed Sacrament.
She died on October 3, 1714, age 52, and was buried next to her father in the Congregation’s cemetery. Today Jeanne’s remains rest in Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours church in Old Montreal, their position marked by a wall plaque.
A number of miracles have been attributed to Jeanne’s intercessions during her lifetime and since. In 2015 the Archdiocese of Montreal officially opened the sainthood cause for her.
Jeanne Le Ber’s needlework is displayed at Maison Saint-Gabriel, 2146 Place Dublin, Montréal QC H3K 2A2, Canada
Bibliography
Beaupré Marie, Jeanne Le Ber: première recluse du Canada français, 1939
De Belmont, François Vachon, Éloges de quelques personnes mortes en odeur de sainteté à Montréal en Canada, 1722 (manuscrit)
Pepper, Mary Sifton, Maids and Matrons of New France, 1901
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