ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at a passage in the history of the Ursuline nuns of colonial New Orleans that offers an opportunity to compare the diverse ways religion and women intersected in the colonial Americas and examines some of the implications of the differences. The case of the New Orleans Ursulines provides a unique opportunity to follow the consequences of that divergence. The results are rewarding, allowing not only an exploration of a signal fault line in the history of female religious life, but a consideration of how distinct French and Spanish female religious traditions each affected the societies that grew up around them in the New World. The differences in the way religion shaped the construction of gender roles in France and Spain generated strains when Louisiana changed hands and produced a confrontation between distinct European cultures that found themselves sharing a common space in America.
