This text is part of the special commemoration of Jeanne Mance
As a museologist and historian, the director of the Musée des Hospitalières de l’Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal, Paul Labonne, is fascinated by the new knowledge that is currently reaching him about Jeanne Mance and the Hospitallers. He just fell on a big tiller: 411 unpublished documents just about the founder of Montreal!
He can say thank you to historian Dominique Deslandres, full professor at the University of Montreal and principal researcher of the research project The Factory of Montreal History, who says that he is living in an extraordinary era that is completely disrupting historical research. Thanks to the software of digital handwriting recognition called Transkribus, she explains, it is now possible to process photos of archival documents with an algorithm that transcribes the document into Word. “Imagine: I took a day and a half to photograph 10,000 documents, and in five minutes, it was transcribed. »
All judicial, notarial, official and parish archives can now be consulted in Word format. “It sheds new light on the whole history of New France,” says Paul Labonne.
The Hôtel-Dieu having been burned down three times, there are a lot of holes among the documents that have survived the centuries. Now, Jeanne Mance was everywhere, in everything. She attended all the weddings. She was godmother to 73 children, almost as many Aboriginals as French.
The archive documents, easily consultable, make it possible to follow it fairly closely. “I only have to type in ‘Mance’ or ‘hospital’ to instantly find all the mentions among the hundreds of thousands of documents. It changes everything,” he says.
A new portrait
“As an administrator, Jeanne certainly benefits from Madame de Bullion’s funds, but she is always looking for money,” says Paul Labonne, who goes from discovery to discovery.
We knew from the historian Robert-Lionel Séguin that she had two iron plows, which allowed her to grow her land and ensure the subsistence of her hospital. And she had good: the inventory of her property, which appears in the biography of Marie-Claire Daveluy, is 29 pages! “But in the court records, says Paul Labonne, I came across the fact that she had obtained the proceeds of the fines imposed on the Coureurs des Bois who sold alcohol to the Aboriginals! »
The archives also shed new light on facts that were believed to be true. “We learn from the archives that she signed a contract on May 27, 1658 to have the floors of the chapel built. And on September 28, as she prepares to leave for France for a year, she hires two obligated people to finish the chapel in her absence. Conclusion, the chapel was still under construction, while researchers have always estimated that this work had been done two years earlier. »
By showing his museum, Paul Labonne points out the drawings of the first Hôtel-Dieu drawn by the architect Aristide Beaugrand-Champagne from period documents. “It shows four skylights, but the deeds speak of three. »
Group, order, analyze
The historical discipline is both access to new documents and the criticism of sources. For example, the work of researcher Geoffrey Duvoy has revealed what had been his birthplace in Langres, rue Barbier D’Aucourt.
The collection of the Hospitallers, managed by the Museum of the Hospitallers, contains 30,000 significant artefacts, but paradoxically, very few objects that can be said with certainty to have belonged to Jeanne Mance. And the documents of his hand having survived the disasters are rather rare. “There is much more certainty about the traces it leaves in notarial deeds, baptisteries, court records,” says Paul Labonne.
But he explains that he is only at the beginning of this patient study. “Before we can make the connections and the analysis, the first phase is to establish a timeline. Afterwards, we will be able to reinterpret several things that we thought we knew and to confirm others. »
The museologist is now able to see the networks of Jeanne Mance, the characters that gravitate around them. “Knowledge becomes evolutionary. I can ask about the surgeon Étienne Bouchard and discover a whole host of details. We see the contracts, the land donations,” he says.
“With court records, which are often written verbatim, we hear them talking, laughing,” says Dominique Deslandres. “We touch here on the absolute dream of historians: that of recreating total history. »
This special content was produced by the Special Publications team of the Duty, pertaining to marketing. The drafting of Duty did not take part.