The Education of Female élites in Nineteenth-Century Papal Rome. Innovative Contributions of the Society of the Sacred Heart of Madeleine-Sophie Barat

Abstract

After a brief description of the evolution of educational institutions in the first half of the nineteenth century Papal Rome, the Author explores the role played –on this side– of the new female religious institutions arose after the French Revolution. The article, on the basis on a rich archival and printed documentation, analyzes the innovative work of the teaching and religious Congregation of the Sacred Heart, founded in Paris in 1800 by Madeleine-Sophie Barat, whose “colleges for young ladies” of bourgeois and aristocracy offered to the young women of upper classes of papal capital a cultural and religious education, that was much more rich and elaborate than that provided by female traditional boarding schools.