Roland’s ban on religious activities

Roland’s ban on religious activities keeps the pupils in his household from practicing their faith or seeking religious guidance, helping him maintain control over what they know and whom they can consult. Rosalie’s account shows the personal consequences of that prohibition, while Therese’s efforts to restore her faith and the monks’ later misuse of religious forms reveal how religious practice can serve either spiritual care or coercive power.

Prohibition and Its Effects

Rosalie tells Therese that her father forbids religious devotions and has done little to instruct her. What little he has said about religion, she explains, was intended to prevent her ignorance from exposing his own impiety. His ridicule has worked its way into the pupils’ ideas and displaced their sense of religious duty; those made to fulfill obligations by their families do so with indifference. The restriction thus reaches beyond outward observance: it deprives the pupils of a framework and a means of seeking help beyond Roland’s household.

Rosalie’s own circumstances make that deprivation concrete. She says she had never been to confession and had not made her First Communion. When Therese asks whether religion remained available to her as consolation, Rosalie’s answer makes clear that she had neither adequate instruction nor an established practice through which to turn for spiritual counsel. Roland’s prohibition is therefore part of a broader control over the pupils’ education and religious understanding.

Therese’s Response

Therese answers Roland’s influence by speaking with Rosalie about faith. She argues that belief in God entails worship and that virtue is the necessary basis of that worship; through these arguments, she says, Rosalie becomes a Christian. This change contrasts with Roland’s effort to ridicule and suppress religious belief, and shows that his influence has not made Rosalie permanently unreachable by religious teaching.

Therese’s response is not simply doctrinal. She fears for Rosalie’s safety in the household and urges her to flee, reasoning that removing her from her father is less harmful than leaving her exposed to continuing danger. Before Therese can act on that concern, Rosalie disappears. The household says she has gone to stay with a relative for the summer, but Therese’s inquiries fail to establish where she has gone. The account leaves the result of Therese’s intervention unresolved and shows the limits of counsel when Roland controls the household and information about his daughter.

Religious Practice as Care and Control

The contrast with the monastery sharpens the significance of Roland’s ban. Therese approaches the monks seeking confession and expecting religious welcome; Dom Severino hears her account, including information about her isolation and lack of protection. He then uses what she has disclosed to assess her vulnerability before turning the encounter against her. In this episode, confession becomes a means of gathering information rather than offering spiritual care.

The monastery also sustains its standing through a public display of religion. For the Notre-Dame d’Août festival, the monks stage a supposed miracle using Florette, and the assembled people respond with offerings and renewed confidence in the Virgin’s intercession. Omphale explains that the superior’s association with the Pope and the monastery’s reputation for miracles help protect its secrecy: outsiders are few, and visitors are received in a manner that leaves them praising the institution. Roland’s ban and the monks’ practices differ in form, but both show religious authority being manipulated to restrict other people’s choices. The novel sets that manipulation against Therese’s sincere attempt to restore Rosalie’s faith.