Gail Porter Mandell

Madeleva Gail Porter Mandell

Before her death in 1964, Madeleva Wolff, CSC (Congregation of the Holy Cross), was recognized as one of American Catholicism's most extraordinary women. Known as an educator who founded the School of Sacred Theology (the first and, for more than a decade, the only institution to offer graduate degrees in theology to women) Madeleva was also renowned as a scholar, mystical poet, and the author of more than twenty books. Educated at Berkeley and Oxford, she participated in the Catholic Revival of the early part of the twentieth century and established a center of Christian culture and educational innovation at Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, where she was president for twenty-seven years. Her friendships with C. S. Lewis, Thomas Merton, Jacques Maritain, Charles Du Bos, and Clare Boothe Luce, among others, put her in touch with a wide range of Christian intellectuals. As a spokeswoman for the education of women and an advocate for the improvement of the status of women in the church, Madeleva anticipated the women's movement of the late 1960s and the reforms of Vatican II by more than a generation. This biography tells her compelling story and sheds new light on the history of a religious life and religious communities, as well as women's education, writing, and lives.