English Dames Book
Having come across this wonderfully innocuous provenance within a book by and about Saint Edmund Campion (1540-1581) I found myself interested in who the ‘English Dames’ might be, and when they were in Dunkirk. There are several clues:
The provenance itself … ‘English Dames’ (a term used by Benedictine Choir nuns)
The authorship of the book (Campion being a Jesuit)
The book label of St Scholastica’s Monastery, Teignmouth (following its closure the Library from this Benedictine convent was transferred to Downside Abbey Library)
I followed this up with our resident nun expert Dr Roberta Anderson (follow her on twitter @bobbyatbath) and we discovered the *story of the Benedictine Nuns of Dunkirk.
The Benedictine house at Dunkirk was a daughter house of the Ghent Abbey of the Immaculate Conception of our Blessed Lady. On 13 October, 1793, during the French Revolution, the convent was seized by the military and they were declared ‘enemies of the nation’ in their opposition to the Revolution. The nuns were taken to the Poor Clare convent where they were kept for four days before being transported by ship to Gravelines, another Poor Clares convent. The three communities were held captive here together for 18 months, where they learned that their names had been on Robespierre’s list for the guillotine. However, in 1795, all three communities left Gravelines for Calais. The Benedictine nuns stayed in Hammersmith until 1863, when they relocated to Saint Scholastica’s Monastery in Devon.
*The Community (1957). A history of the Benedictine Nuns at Dunkirk. Catholic Book Club.
This paper lace image was found inside the book.