There must be a chest with three keys to put the registers, writings and alms of the convent.
The prioress will have one of the keys and the two oldest depositories the other two (Constitutions).
In Carmel, we name deposit the room where the depositary, that is, the bursar of the monastery.
The depositary is chosen by the Prioress from among the 3 sisters elected by the community to become her advisers, for the duration of her triennium. In Thérèse's time, the trustees were Marie des Anges (1886-1893), then Marie de Gonzague (1893-1896), followed by Agnès de Jésus.
But she is also responsible for providing for the material needs of the sisters. In her work room and in other annexes, she stores what is necessary for the sisters and distributes it to them according to their needs: stationery, household products and hygiene products. It is also responsible for building maintenance, and therefore contacts with companies and workers who are called upon to build or repair.
Finally, the work of the depositary is to do the accounting of the monastery and to present it regularly to the Prioress and her Council, several times a year. To do this, she records daily in small notebooks the regular expenses for the workers, the baker, the sacristy, etc., small notebooks which are transcribed each month into the accounting ledger - a task accomplished today by accounting software used in religious communities. here are the recipes. and spending of the community during the 9 years that Thérèse lived there.
The community account book - 1888 to 1897
The Carmel keeps accounts of its receipts and expenditures. Accurate. Annuals. Interpretation is tricky, because all accounting delivers accounting information but also a very way of “counting” which is not always self-evident. Here is a rich documentation which sheds great light on the life of the Carmel in the time of Thérèse, if only some attention is paid to it. You can browse it and even get away from it all by identifying the high consumption of matches or the meager contribution from the sale of instruments of penance. We can also try to draw information from it to understand how the Carmelites lived very concretely. This is what this short essay on the accounts of the Carmel of Lisieux aims to do.
Read here the rest of the analysis of the historian Claude Langlois.
