Chronicling the history of the Daughters of Charity through the seventeenth century, this study examines how the communi
128 31
English Pages 200 [201] Year 2006
Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Maps
Acknowledgements
Chronology
1 Introduction
2 The Foundation of the Daughters of Charity
3 Varieties of Work: Living the Active Vocation in Parishes
4 Varieties of Work: Living the Active Vocation in Institutions
5 Bureaucratization and the Growth of the Company of the Daughters of Charity
Epilogue
Appendix 1: Establishments 1633-1660
Appendix 2: Establishments 1661-1699
Bibliography
Index
WOMEN AND POOR RELIEF IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE
Women and Gender in the Early M odem World Series Editors: A lly son Poska and A b b y Z anger
In the past decade, the study of women and gender has offered some of the most vital and innovative challenges to scholarship on the early modern period. Ashgate’s new series of interdisciplinary and comparative studies, ‘Women and Gender in the Early Modem World’, takes up this challenge, reaching beyond geographical limitations to explore the experiences of early modem women and the nature of gender in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa. Submissions of single-author studies and edited collections will be considered. Titles in the series include:
Salons, History, and the Creation o f 17th—C entury F rance M astering M em ory
Faith E. Beasley R eligious Women in G olden A g e Spain The P erm eable C loister
Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt C hildbirth a n d the D isplay o f A uthority in E arly M odern F rance
Lianne McTavish The P ow er a nd P atronage o f M arguerite de N avarre
Barbara Stephenson Women a nd the B ook Trade in Sixteenth-C entury F rance
Susan Broomhall P ublishing W om en’s L ife Stories in France, 1 6 4 7 -1 7 2 0 From Voice to P rint
Elizabeth C. Goldsmith
Women and Poor R elief in Seventeenth-Century France The Early History o f the Daughters o f Charity
SUSAN E. DIN AN University Honors College, William Paterson University, USA
First published 2006 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint o f the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Susan E. Dinan 2006 The author has asserted her moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Dinan, Susan E. Women and poor relief in seventeenth-century France : the early history of the Daughters of Charity. - (Women and gender in the early modem world) 1. Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul - History 2. Women - Religious life - France - History - 17th century 3. Sisterhoods - France - History - 17th century 4. France - Church history - 17th century I. Title 271.9’1’044 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dinan, Susan E. Women and poor relief in seventeenth-century France : the early history of the Daughters of Charity / Susan E. Dinan. p. cm. - (Women and gender in the early modem world) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7546-5553-9 (alk. paper) 1. Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul - History - 17th century. 2. Catholic Church - Charities. 3. Women - Services for. 4. Poor - Services for. 5. France Church history - 17th century. 6. France - Social conditions - 17th century. I. Title. II. Series. BX4463.F8D56 2006 271’.91044~dc22 ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-5553-4 (hbk)
2005021016
Contents
List of Maps Acknowledgements Chronology
vi vii ix
1
Introduction
1
2
The Foundation of the Daughters of Charity
17
3
Varieties of Work: Living the Active Vocation in Parishes
62
4
Varieties of Work: Living the Active Vocation in Institutions
94
5
Bureaucratization and the Growth of the Company of the Daughters of Charity
118
Epilogue
141
Appendix 1: Establishments 1633-1660
147
Appendix 2: Establishments 1661-1699
150
Bibliography Index
158 183
List of Maps
2.1 Establishments of Daughters of Charity in 1660
54
5.1 Establishments of Daughters of Charity in 1699
126
Acknowledgements
This book owes much to the many people who have so generously supported my efforts. Early on, when I was discovering that I wanted to pursue the study of history, Joan Jacobs-Brumberg introduced me to the field of women’s history and David Pinckney to the field of French history. Their enthusiasm for their subjects proved quite contagious. Peter Fritzsche taught me how to think like an historian and started me on the process of writing like one. This book began as a dissertation at the University of Wisconsin under the gentle, but certain, guidance of Robert Kingdon. At Wisconsin I was fortunate that Suzanne Desan and Dominico Sella also served as my mentors. I made endearing friendships, on the personal and professional level, with Susan Boettcher, Kathleen Comerford, Timothy Fehler, Michael Lynn, Alexandra Lord, and Karen Speirling; all of whom read sections of this work in its earliest stages. A seminar at the Folger Institute on Gender and Sanctity led by Alison Weber gave me the opportunity to reflect upon the faith of the Daughters of Charity providing me with a comparative framework for my ideas. A. Lloyd Moote graciously invited me to his early modem seminar at Princeton offering me a place in which to exchange ideas with a broad range of scholars. He also read sections of this work and offered helpful conceptual guidance. Colin Jones came to my aid when I was a graduate student sharing with me his knowledge of the Daughters of Charity and an index of resources at the Archives Nationales. For a renowned scholar to have taken such an interest in the project of a novice exemplifies the collegiality that can enrich our discipline. My colleagues at Long Island University have helped see this project to fruition, and they include Paul Sherwin, Kathryn Hill-Miller, and Debra Meyers. I am especially grateful to Jeanie Attie and Belinda Kremer who read this manuscript in its entirety and offered invaluable editorial guidance. The wonders worked by the Interlibrary Loan department at Long Island University cannot be overstated. I am fortunate to have been welcomed into a broad community of scholars of early modern gender and religion who have shared their enthusiasm for this project with me they include Renée Baemstein, Jodi Bilinkoff, Cynthia Cupples, Sylvia Evangeliste, Elizabeth Lehfeldt, Amy Leonard, Alison Poska, and Merry WiesnerHanks.
viii
Acknowledgements
In France I was offered assistance by the staffs of the Archive de Assistance Publique and the Archives Nationales in Paris and the Archive Departmental in Angers. My greatest debt of gratitude is to Soeur Anne-Marie Magermans, archivist at the Motherhouse of the Daughters of Charity in Paris. She allowed an American graduate student whose shoes squeaked and coat rustled into the quiet splendor of her convent, and gracefully mitigated the concerns of her sisters over allowing a secular scholar access to their documents. She not only shared materials with me, but she helped me make better sense of them by speaking of her own religious vocation. At the archives of the Daughters of Charity in Albany, New York, Sister Elaine Wheeler offered me considerable direction, and a letter that helped me gain access to the Company’s archives in Paris. She has very patiently awaited the arrival of this book, and has been its constant advocate. I could not have asked for a better team of editors than Erika Gaffney, Allyson Poska, and Abby Zanger. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewer of this text for such thoughtful and constructive criticisms. This project was funded by the University of Wisconsin and Long Island University and was improved by a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute. My oldest debt is to my parents, Thomas and Judy Dinan. They have offered a lifetime of encouragement and support. Benson Hawk has known me for as long as I have known this project. He has read this manuscript in many forms, has offered indispensable editorial assistance, has remedied countless computer crises, and he has never lost his sense of humor. It is to him and our daughter Maggie, who it must be said is much more interested in Fox in Socks, than in anything Mommy is writing, that this book is dedicated. Susan Dinan
Maplewood, New Jersey
Chronology
1581
24 April
Birth of Vincent de Paul in Pouy
1591
12 August
Birth of Louise de Marillac in Paris De Paul begins his studies in theology at the University of Toulouse
1597 1600
23 September
Ordination of De Paul as a priest
1604
25 July
Death of Louise de Marillac’s father, Louis
1613
4 February
Marriage of Louise de Marillac and Antoine Le Gras
1613
De Paul becomes a tutor and spiritual advisor for Gondi family
1619
De Paul becomes chaplain of the galleys
1622
De Paul become superior of the Visitandine nuns
1623
Urban VIII becomes Pope
1625
21 December
Death of Antoine Le Gras
1625
De Paul becomes spiritual director to Louise de Marillac
1629
De Marillac begins visiting Confraternities of Charity
1630
10 November
Day of Dupes Marguerite Naseau becomes the first Daughter of Charity
1630 1632
10 May
Execution of Louis de Marillac, Louise de Marillac’s uncle
1632
7 August
Death in prison of Michel de Marillac, Louise de Marillac’s uncle
1633
February
Death of Marguerite Naseau
1633
29 November
Foundation of the Daughters of Charity Daughters of Charity begin their work with foundlings
1638 1638
February
Establishment of Daughters of Charity at SaintGermain-en-Laye
Chronology
X
1638
October
Establishment of Daughters of Charity at Richelieu
1639
November
De Marillac travels to Angers to establish Daughters of Charity at the Hôtel-Dieu
1642
24 March
De Marillac and four Daughters of Charity take simple vows
1643
De Paul at deathbed of Louis XIII
1644
Innocent X becomes Pope
1646
July
Archbishop of Paris grants approbation to the Daughters of Charity
1646 1647
De Marillac travels to Nantes to establish Daughters of Charity at the Hôtel-Dieu
June
Foundlings transferred to Bicetre
1648
Daughters of Charity to Picardy to help war refugees
1648
Fronde of the Parlement begins
1651
Condé enters Paris, Mazarin leaves France
1652
September
Daughters of Charity established in Poland
1653
March
Daughters of Charity found the hospice Nom de Jésus for the elderly
1653
Fronde ends, Mazarin returns to Paris
1655
Archbishop of Paris grants approbation to the Daughters of Charity
1659
Peace of the Pyrenees between France and Spain
1660
15 March
Death of Louise de Marillac
1660
27 September
Death of Vincent de Paul
Chapter 1
Introduction
Although much recent historical research has provided a more sensitive appreciation for the complexities of the past, certain myths persist in historical accounts long after they have been challenged. The myth of imposed order plagues the Council of Trent and the Catholic Reformation; historians had argued that the Council of Trent single-handedly initiated the Counter Reformation by imposing a series of moral reforms from above that established discipline within the Church. According to this model, the events that are worth observing are largely political (a group of similarly minded reformers joining to impose order) and doctrinal (the Church acting to clarify matters of faith and informing a passive laity as to the nature of truth). The appeal of such a story is clear: it is simple, it has clearly identified actors, and it lends itself to moral instruction in and of itself. However, when one actually confronts the record of the religious Reformations, it becomes clear that although there were moves toward more clearly articulated confessionalization and social discipline, no one top-down and orderly process occurred in the Catholic Church. The Council of Trent met between 1545 and 1563 and delegates attended it sporadically. Different national Catholic churches accepted some of the doctrines and reforms that emerged from the Council, and rejected others. Large numbers of illiterate people (both parishioners and clergy) comprised the Church, and barriers of print and education attenuated the impact of the Council. Some actors involved in the reforms of Trent, such as Cardinal Bellarmine, held no illusions about the speed with which the Church could adopt such teachings, and pragmatically went about adopting processes by which they could start to involve the average Catholic in the process of reform. Most historians now recognize that Trent itself was a fundamentally messy affair, and our modem streamlined mythology of it simply does not hold up to the facts. The documentary record left in the wake of Trent indicates that it was often subverted by precisely the people that the Council had sought to most regulate: faithful members of the clergy and laity. It becomes quite clear that although the Council of Trent excluded women and lower-level clergy, they became central actors in shaping the outcomes of Trent and reinterpreting conciliar mandates to fit their spiritual, physical, and social needs. The actions of women illustrate how Church members reinterpreted or subverted the decrees of Trent. Although the Council of Trent was certainly
2
Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France
concerned with matters of theology, it was also preoccupied with reforming the behavior of the religious and the laity. Protestant divines used the accusation that members of Catholic religious orders were involved in a variety of sexual and moral scandals as a potent weapon of religious propaganda. Additionally, a noticeable number of Catholic clergy were in the habit of practicing concubinage (effectively achieving a married status with an unmarried laywoman) with the tacit support of national Churches. For the reformers at Trent, and most people in early modem Europe, women were the source of social and sexual disorder. From the perspective of the councilors, they could impose moral discipline on the Church by removing religious women from the public sphere. Thus, in 1563 the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church decreed that all nuns had to live behind the walls of their convents.1 Female religious were not to interact with the world, where they could find themselves personally compromised; instead, they were to remain permanently within their cloisters after taking solemn vows. Many historians have blamed the Tridentine legislation of 1563 for returning women to “silence and stillness.”1 2 For Catholic women, this decree would have been devastating, as it eliminated a socially acceptable public career other than marriage. For Catholic nations, this reform posed serious problems, as convents practicing mitigated clausura had often provided valuable social and charitable services not provided by state agencies. For families, mandated enclosure was also problematic in that children entering contemplative orders were largely “dead to the world,” and could not continue to interact regularly with their families, as they had been able to when part of lax or unclosed communities. Without doubt, the reforms of Trent served to dramatically reduce the appeal of a nun’s vocation for many women. Yet, a scarce seventy years later, in 1633, with these decrees still in effect, a group of pious and elite French women came together to offer the sick and poor medical care, religious instruction, and alms. Although they did not call themselves “nuns”, this group of women joined together and behaved in ways that closely modeled the behavior of active women’s orders prior to the Council of Trent. The experimental confraternity turned out to be successful, and spread rapidly through France, progressively evolving into highly organized, disciplined religious communities of “ladies” directing the charitable works of “daughters” of more modest origins. The daughters were highly visible: they had a distinctive form of dress, lived in private houses, and were often involved in administering and staffing large institutions—especially hospitals. By all accounts, Church authorities should have acted to enclose the confraternities and to preserve the moral integrity
1 H.J. Schroeder, The Canons and Decrees o f the Council o f Trent (Rockford, IL: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1978), 220-221. 2 Gabriella Zarri, “Living Saints: A Typology o f Female Sanctity in the Early Sixteenth Century,” in Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, eds. Daniel Boorstein and Roberto Rusconi (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 253-254.
Introduction
3
of the Church by assuring that these women were secluded. Nevertheless, in 1645, the French Catholic Church recognized their existence, and in 1668 they received approbation from the Pope. If the Council of Trent, and the Catholic Reformation in general, were fundamentally about imposing order on an undisciplined Church, as our myth tells us, why were these women allowed to be out in public places? The women of the Daughters of Charity broke the Church’s rules and broke them visibly, yet went undisciplined. What had occurred in the intervening seventy years that made this possible? To address this question, this book argues that we must fundamentally revise how we understand the nature of Trent and the Catholic Reformations to include an understanding of the role of individuals and disenfranchised groups in shaping reforms. While the Council of Trent established general patterns of reform, certain charismatic individuals reinterpreted institutional teachings to meet their needs. As evidence of this process, this book notes that the founders of the Daughters of Charity, Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, both moral exemplars of Catholic orthodoxy, conspired deliberately to deceive a host of local and Roman Church authorities in order to establish an active, public, and religious role for women. Both de Paul and de Marillac viewed acts of charity as central to Christian piety, they employed a variety of devices to circumvent the clear intent of the reformers at Trent, and to assure that the women undertook an active role in caring for the poor. Under the leadership of de Paul and de Marillac, the Daughters of Charity escaped the cloister by aggressively managing their self-presentation in order to avoid being formally labeled as a religious order, and thus preserved their independence. Second, this book argues that local politics were critical in shaping the final form of the Reformation. While de Paul and de Marillac were charismatic and powerful figures, they were dependent upon the protection of the French religious and political establishment to assure that the Daughters remained out of the cloister. The Daughters of Charity’s mission was facilitated when the social services offered by them became indispensable to the French state. The Daughters developed into one of the most significant providers of services in France during a time of war, famine, and epidemic. Papal recognition of the Daughters of Charity depended on the Daughters’ long and substantial backing from members of the Gallican Church and the French state. Put simply, the costs of cloistering the Daughters became greater than the costs of tolerating their disobedience. Third, I explain that the sheer impossibility of achieving the broad goals of the Council facilitated the success of the Daughters of Charity in eluding Church regulation. Although some in religious and secular society wished to see nuns removed from the world, and legislated such seclusion on occasion, they rarely
4
Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France
entirely accomplished this goal.3 Because of their financial needs, many convents had at least one foot in the world. Convents supported themselves with dowries, but they also had extensive networks of patrons. Patrons expected visitation rights and other perquisites in return for their generosity; thus, convents often had visitors.4 Moreover, many convents took in boarders for vocational and financial reasons, and although these girls were supposed to reside separately from the nuns, it is likely that their lives intersected in places other than the classroom. Many Catholic-Reformation convents sought to shelter nuns as much as possible from the world, but nuns did not entirely remove themselves from it. Historians have recently come to speak of the “permeable” nature of convents, and this is a very useful way of understanding their structure.5 Finally, this book asserts that the Daughters of Charity remained unenclosed because their disobedience ultimately posed no threat to the Church itself. Before the strictures of Trent, Catholicism had a tradition of activist women who helped their neighbors. By remaining outside of the cloister, the Daughters of Charity were following in the footsteps of women like the Beguines, who did good works and led profoundly spiritual lives outside the confines of the cloister in medieval, and in some places, early modem Europe. The work of the Daughters of Charity was not novel. In addition, nothing in the Daughters’ behavior threatened early modem conventions for women’s conduct. Indeed, the Daughters’ new, public, and yet modest identity for women came to be seen as piety embodied. Their strategy was so successful that, according to historian Elizabeth Rapley, “the[se] active congregations became an integral part of early modem France. The vast majority of schoolgirls in the Old Regime were educated by them. The hospitals depended on them absolutely. Society grew up around them, to the degree that it developed no alternative sources for the services which they provided.”6 Indeed, nursing “sisters” and Catholic schoolteachers continued as a formidable presence in French hospitals and schools into the twentieth century.7 So, were the Daughters of Charity revolutionary figures? Not in their actions, as they did work that women, religious and lay, had done before them. Their uniqueness lies in the fact that they built the largest community of active women religious in early modem Europe, and brought small groups of these women into institutions like hospitals while encouraging others to serve their neighbors in their local communities. The Daughters did not break down the walls of enclosure. 3 Francesca Medioli, “An unequal law: the enforcement of clausura before and after the Council of Trent,” in Women in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe, ed. Christine Meek (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), 136-152. 4 Barbara B. Diefendorf, “Contradictions in a Century of Saints: Aristocratic Patronage and the Convents of Counter-Reformation Paris,” French Historical Studies 24 (2001), 469-499. 5 See especially the work of Alison Weber and Elizabeth Lehfeldt. 6 Elizabeth Rapley, The Dévotes: Women and Church in Seventeenth-Century France (Buffalo, NY: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990), 8. 7 Rapley, The Dévotes, 8.
Introduction
5
What they did do was take active religious service for women to a new level; in so doing, they dramatically changed the way that the poor obtained social and nursing services in early modem France.
The Founders of the Company of the Daughters of Charity
The individuals who established the Daughters of Charity were unlikely figures: one was bom to a peasant family in Pouy, a village in the province of Béarn (near Toulouse in Southwestern France) who could not have expected to obtain a position of authority in the Church; the other was the illegitimate daughter of a nobleman whose brothers connived and disgraced their family politically and, as such, she could have been politically marginalized and seen as a social outcast by precisely the social circles that welcomed her later in life.8 Despite their origins on the margins of French society, they became two of the seventeenth century’s most formidable personalities, revered as exemplars of piety and upholders of Catholic orthodoxy. In the process of achieving that status, they transgressed some of the conventions established by the Church itself to regulate the conduct of the religious and the laity. Together Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac founded the Daughters of Charity, a community of women religious who, had they been nuns, would have been enclosed in a convent in accordance with the regulations of the Catholic Church. Instead de Paul and de Marillac used the liminal status of the Company of the Daughters of Charity to create a body of teachers, nurses, and social servants to aid the poor in war-ravaged France and bring to them the message of the Catholic Reformation. De Paul and de Marillac took steps that kept the community unenclosed, deliberately misrepresenting their activities to both the Roman and French Catholic churches. However, most accounts of their lives presume that de Paul and de Marillac were simply bom to become saints and do not examine the challenges they posed to the Church. Bom in 1581 to a comfortable peasant family, Vincent de Paul received his early education at the hands of local Franciscans.9 At the age of sixteen, he began his studies in theology at the University of Toulouse, and in 1600, he was ordained a priest.10 Initially de Paul entered religious life in an effort to better his family’s social position, knowing that he could share the status and wealth of a
8 Pierre Coste, Monsieur Vincent: le grand saint du grand siècle. Volumes I-III (Paris: Desclée de Brouer et cie Éditeurs, 1934), I: 17. 9 Louis Abelly, La vie du venerable serviteur de Dieu Vincent de Paul instituteur et premier supérieur general de la congregation de la Mission (Paris : F. Lambert, 1668). Translated as The Life o f the Venerable Servant o f God, Vincent de Paul, trans. William Quinn (New York: New City Press, 1993), I: 38. 10 Luigi Mezzadri, A Short Life o f Saint Vincent de Paul (Dublin: The Columba Press, 1992), 11 and Abelly, Venerable Servant, 1:39.
6
Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France
modest benefice with them, not primarily out of a sense of religious vocation.11 Early in his career he expended a great deal of energy acquiring benefices and other positions that would confer upon him income and status. After acquiring a few benefices, de Paul rejected this path and deliberately chose a more ambitious one. While it is difficult to understand de Paul’s motivations from the documentary record, Bernard Pujo argues persuasively that de Paul abandoned his secular pursuit of benefices and titles for a more spiritual undertaking. Certainly de Paul’s decision in 1613 to enter the home of the powerful Gondi family to tutor the family’s sons and serve as a spiritual advisor for the pious Madame de Gondi can be interpreted as part of a greater spiritual calling, and not just as a worldly promotion.12 Madame Gondi, FrançoiseMarguerite de Silly, was a model of piety and acclaimed for her charitable works.13 De Paul’s mission was not limited to assisting the Gondi family, but at the behest of Madame Gondi, it included ministering to the poor on the family’s vast land holdings and hearing their confessions to enable them to attain eternal salvation.14 Monsieur de Gondi was the King’s General of the Galleys as well as a lord of many estates.15 This mission was central in shaping de Paul’s outlook, and seems to be where de Paul recognized working with the rural poor as his calling.16 In 1618, de Paul preached a series of missions to the inhabitants of the estates and in 1622 began conducting similar missions on the estates of other nobles.17 It was through these activities that de Paul first began to acquire the skills and receive the financial and moral support of the powerful allies that were necessary for organizing and executing missions in the name of charity. Madame de Gondi supported his missionary activities by giving him 45,000 livres and continuous moral support; she later bequeathed him another generous sum.18 The innovative nature of de Paul’s work became more apparent when he organized a religious order, based upon his evolving theology of charity, to serve the poor. De Paul expanded his work by directing priests who desired to preach to the rural poor, and those who gathered around him became the first generation of the Congregation of the Mission. The Congregation’s seminary was located in
11 André Dodin, Saint Vincent de Paul et la charité (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1965), 17. 12 Paul Renaudin, Saint Vincent de Paul: Classiques de la Foi (Belgium: Bloud et Gay, 1961), 17. 13 Rybolt, John, “Madame de Gondi: A Contemporary Seventeenth-Century Life,” Vincentian Heritage 21/1 (2000), 39. 14 Coste, Monsieur Vincent, I: 89-90 and Frances Ryan and John E. Rybolt, Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac: Rules, Conferences, and Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1995), 18. 15 Abelly, Venerable Servant, 55. 16 Bernard Pujo, Vincent de Paul, the Trailblazer, trans. Gertrud Graubart Champe (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2003), 56. 17 Renaudin, Saint Vincent de Paul, 19. 18 Ryan and Rybolt, 22 and 25.
Introduction
1
Saint-Lazare, and the priests were therefore known as the Lazarists. These priests proselytized the basics of Catholic theology in regions of the countryside where most Catholics remained ignorant of the Church’s teachings.19 The missionaries stressed the importance of making confessions, and tailored their sermons to encourage peasants to confess and be penitent. To modem eyes, this initiative appears to be a purely orthodox example of Christian missionary outreach. Considering the context of seventeenth-century France, however, these missions can be perceived as somewhat more subversive. The priests of the Mission did not attach themselves to any one parish, and did not hope to gain benefices where they preached. Their charismatic preaching and their dedication to hearing confessions threatened local parish priests who may have possessed less zeal and rhetorical virtuosity. De Paul was able, in 1626, to establish official church and secular approbation for the order from the Archbishop of Paris and Louis XIII.20 He accomplished this by virtue of his political alliances, and his promise that priests of the Mission would work exclusively in rural France and hence not encroach upon the parish priests of the towns and cities. The Congregation of the Mission also proved itself valuable to the state and obtained legal status in France in 1627 when Louis XIII signed the lettres patent for its establishment. In 1632 Pope Urban VIII formally confirmed the order of the Congregation of the Mission. In some ways, then, de Paul was a man who challenged institutional tradition in order to achieve worthy goals. How do his works with the Congregation of the Mission and the Company of the Daughters of Charity compare? De Paul’s involvement with the Daughters of Charity was less threatening than his work with the Lazarists, as they were not preaching missionaries and therefore did not pose as much of a threat to curés. Within the context of French society, the Daughters may also have been less troubling because they were engaged in activities that were associated with women’s work: cooking food, educating girls, and looking after orphans. In other ways, however, the activities of the Daughters were transgressive. They were in close contact with the poor in a way that may have violated social conventions. They often had jobs of significance, including administering hospitals and hospices. Finally the Daughters adopted an identity that was close to that of nuns, but they refused to obey the directives of Trent and live within the cloister. Although de Paul was a driving force behind the creation of the Company of the Daughters of Charity, Louise de Marillac was most vital to its establishment. De Marillac, bom in 1591, was the illegitimate child of Louis de Marillac, the younger
19 See Jean Delumeau, Le Catholicisme entre Luther et Voltaire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971) for a fuller discussion o f efforts made to educate the European population about religion in early modem Europe. 20 Coste, Monsieur Vincent, I: 182. and Paul Thone, La vie et Voeuvre de saint Vincent de Paul, le père des miséreux (Genval: Editions Marie-Mediatrice, 1960), 42.
8
Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France
brother of Michel, the Keeper of the Seals and a patron of the Carmelites in Paris, and of Louis (the two brothers named Louis shared a father, but had different mothers), a Marshall of France.21 Louise’s uncles, Michel and Louis de Marillac, were leaders of the Dévot party, a Catholic political association that opposed compromise with the Protestants and advocated a foreign policy different from Richelieu’s, including an alliance with Spain. Louise’s father, however, was not involved with this political movement. The zenith of political power for the Dévot party came on 10 November 1630 when Marie de Medici persuaded a very ill Louis XIII to dismiss the politique Cardinal Richelieu and negotiate an alliance with Spain. Richelieu’s disgrace was brief and Louis XIII restored him as Minister with his full confidence on 12 November.22 The results for the Dévots were politically disastrous and historians call the event the Day of Dupes because the leaders of the party had errantly supported the Queen Mother in opposition to the King and Richelieu.23 With a strengthened hand, Louis XIII sent Marie de Medici into permanent exile; he imprisoned Michel de Marillac at Châteaudun (where he died two years later) and recalled Louis de Marillac from the Italian front, tried him on exaggerated charges, and had him publicly beheaded in 1632.24 In his biography of Louis XIII, A. Lloyd Moote argues that Louis de Marillac “brought out the worst in the king’s character and...the monarch has been described of having ‘pursued his soldier’s doom with singleminded intensity, [and] with fastidious relish.’”25 It would not seem likely that Louise de Marillac could look forward an auspicious career within a French Church propelled by Gallican interests. Despite the king’s persecution of the de Marillac traitors, Louis XIII did not appear to hold a grudge against Louise de Marillac, possibly because her father died before the Day of Dupes and had not been an opponent of the King. The identity of Louise de Marillac’s mother is unknown, and she may have been a servant, but her father, a widower, always claimed her as his progeny. When Louise was three, and her father remarried, he sent her to live at the royal monastery of Saint-Denis at Poissy, a Dominican convent where her cousin was a nun. After her father’s death, when Louise was thirteen, the family did not leave her in the convent or take her in; instead, it placed her in a modest pension, where 21 Élisabeth Charpy, Petite vie de Louise de Marillac (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1991), 7. See also, Dirvin, 90-91. 22 Richard Bonney, Society and Government in France under Richelieu and Mazarin, 16241661 (New York: Saint Martin’s Press, 1988), 229. 23 Robin Briggs, Early Modern France 1560-1715 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 106-107. 24 De Marillac, 10. Louis de Marillac was beheaded on 10 May 1632 and Michel de Marillac died in prison on 7 August 1632. 25 A. Lloyd Moote, Louis XIII: The Just (Berkeley, CA: University o f California Press, 1989), and cited in this passage, Louis Vaunois, Vie de Louis XIII. Second Edition (Paris, 1961), 455-458.
Introduction
9
she learned practical domestic skills.26 The goal of this pension was to prepare her for marriage, and indeed, she did marry in 1613, following the wishes of her uncles. Marriage was not her first choice of vocations. As a child Louise de Marillac had wanted to be a nun and had made a private vow to God that she would join the austere Capuchin order. However, when she considered applying to enter a Capucine convent at the age of fifteen, her spiritual director told her that her body was too weak to withstand the rigors of a strict monastic life. It is tempting to interpret this event in the light of de Marillac’s illegitimate status. However, there is little direct evidence that de Marillac’s birth seriously limited her options in life.27 Her father recognized de Marillac as his child, and her spiritual director did not formally blame the status of her birth when he discouraged her entrance into the Capucines. De Marillac was also able to marry, although not to a nobleman. None of her letters or spiritual writings conveys a concern about her illegitimacy. On the other hand, when the Daughters of Charity assumed direction of a foundling home near Paris, the children’s’ illegitimate status was never compared of de Marillac’s. Moreover, women who joined the Daughters of Charity were to have originated from legitimate relationships. Therefore, it is likely that few in the Company know the circumstances of her birth. What conclusion shall we reach, then, about the impact of her illegitimacy on her life options? The answer is not entirely clear, although the absence of any mention of her illegitimacy suggests that the issue may have merited secrecy. Whether excluded from a religious vocation by parentage or by physical limitations, the documentary record does suggest that her uncles did press her to marry, and were influential in her choice to marry Antione Le Gras.28 Le Gras was the Chief Secretary to the Queen Regent Marie de Medici in 1613. While he was certainly one of the social elites of the kingdom, he was not a nobleman. This distinction had practical consequences for de Marillac, who assumed the title Mademoiselle Le Gras, and not the more prestigious title of Madame that would have come with marrying a nobleman. After the death of her husband in 1625, de Marillac came into her own, and rededicated herself to a religious calling. As a widow, de Marillac occupied a position of significance within French society. Widowhood was the only time in a woman’s life in early modem France when she was not under the direct control of a man. Unlike nuns, widows were not constrained by any particular institution, and could govern their own activities. As a mature woman de Marillac crafted her own form of religious devotion by helping to create the Company of the Daughters of Charity. De Marillac expressed her devotion to the poor and sick in her concrete 26 Charpy, Petite vie, 8. 27 Jean Calvet, Louise de Marillac par elle-même (Paris: Aubier, 1958), 17. 28 Le Gras lost his secretarial position with the majority o f Louis XIII and the fall o f Marie de Medici.
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Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France
model of practical service to the poor—a model that appealed to noblewomen anxious to demonstrate their generosity before God and their peers. Many of the well-placed women who shared de Marillac’s ambition to become benefactors of the poor joined her fledgling organization in the 1620s and 1630s as Ladies of Charity. The material and political support of the Ladies was essential for the success of the Company of the Daughters of Charity.
Survey of the Literature
Until the last century, many of the works about de Paul, de Marillac, and the Daughters of Charity were not specifically historical in focus, but were rather testaments of faith. Many of them were published with specifically apologetic or polemical intents in mind. The first studies of the Company of the Daughters of Charity were biographies of de Paul and de Marillac written soon after their deaths in 1660.29 Louis Abelly’s study of de Paul, and Nicolas Gobillon’s treatise about de Marillac, remains the definitive accounts of their lives. Abelly and Gobillon were admirers of de Paul and de Marillac and their books provide optimistic and laudatory accounts of the lives of the Company’s founders. Since the seventeenth century many biographers have written about de Paul and de Marillac and they follow the general outline of Abelly and Gobillon. Pierre Coste was the first biographer to move beyond Abelly. In the 1920s, he edited the writings of de Paul; his collection remains the most thorough compendium of de Paul’s works and letters, and historians have not challenged the accuracy of his transcriptions.30 As a priest of the Mission, Coste had access to the order’s private archives, where the manuscripts of de Paul and his colleagues are preserved. Coste’s biography of de Paul, Monsieur Vincent: le grand saint du grand siècle is an exhaustive and knowledgeable record of de Paul’s life that owes its high quality to Coste’s familiarity with de Paul’s writings.31 However, Coste is never critical of his subject and he accepts that de Paul was always motivated only by the desire to serve God. A few notable biographers wrote about de Paul after Coste’s study. In the mid-twentieth century, Monsignor Jean Calvet chronicled the spiritual development of de Paul; Calvet later wrote a similar book discussing de Marillac’s
29 The first biography o f de Paul was written in 1664 by Abelly and is available in English as, Louis Abelly, The Life o f the Venerable Servant o f God, Vincent de Paul, trans. William Quinn (New York: New City Press, 1993), and the first biography o f de Marillac was written in 1676 by Nicolas Gobillon, La vie de Mademoiselle Le Gras, fondatrice et première supérieure de la Compagnie des Filles de la Charité. 30 Saint Vincent de Paul. Correspondance, Entretiens, Documents. 14 Volumes, ed. Pierre Coste. Paris: Librairie Lecoftre, 1920-1926. 31 Coste, Monsieur Vincent.
Introduction
11
religious growth.32 In 1981, an international colloquium convened to study the works of Vincent de Paul, and yielded a book that contains numerous articles about him, the Congregation of the Mission and the Daughters of Charity.33 This stimulating book brings together essays written by secular and religious historians addressing a diversity of topics including the Rule of the Daughters of Charity, de Paul’s influence on seminary education in France and an essay analyzing the linguistic structure of de Paul and François de Sale’s theology. More recently two priests of the Mission, Luigi Mezzadri and André Dodin, published thoughtful biographies of de Paul.34 Mezzadri has produced a short and readable popular biography of de Paul. Although its scope does not reach beyond that of Coste, Mezzadri carefully edited his book and provides a pithy summary of de Paul’s life. The strength of Dodin’s work rests in his discussions of de Paul’s ideology and theology. Dodin probes the writings of de Paul and even challenges the saint’s construction of his past when he questions whether de Paul actually lived as a slave in North Africa when he was a young priest as he claimed. Dodin is the first historian to dispute the traditional narrative of de Paul’s life and to probe more deeply into the saint’s motivations. In 1998 Bernard Pujo published his account of de Paul’s life, with the goal of better contextualizing the saint’s experiences. He succeeds in his effort to place de Paul within the political milieu of early seventeenth-century France. Pujo’s principal goal is to explain the metamorphosis of de Paul from a worldly young man who enters the priesthood to improve his family’s station into a man impassioned by charitable service, and then into a saint. Pujo, however, takes de Paul’s writings at their word too often and, for instance, does not grapple with Dodin’s questioning of the slave incident, explaining that de Paul wrote about his experiences and his reader should take him as his word. Moreover, the author frequently credits Providence for de Paul’s actions when secular forces were no doubt at work as well. Louise de Marillac has also been the subject of many biographies, all of which rely upon Gobillon for the basis of their narratives. Despite its grounding in Gobillon, Joseph Dirvin’s account of the life of de Marillac is a less hagiographie and more balanced study than any of its predecessors. Dirvin, a member of the Congregation of the Mission, based his 1970 biography upon de Marillac’s writings, unlike Coste who principally relied upon de Paul’s letters to describe her 32 Jean Calvet, Saint Vincent de Paul (Paris: A Michel, 1948) and Jean Calvet, Louise de Marillac par elle-même (Paris: Aubier, 1958). 33 Vincent de Paul, Actes du Colloque international d ’études vincentiennes (Rome: Edizioni Vincenziane, 1983). 34 André Dodin, Initiation à Saint Vincent de Paul et la charité (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1993), André Dodin, Saint Vincent de Paul Entretiens spirituels au missionnaires. (Paris, 1960) and Dodin, Saint Vincent de Paul et la charité; Luigi Mezzadri, A Short Life o f Saint Vincent de Paul (Dublin: Columba, 1992). See also his biography of de Marillac, Luigi Mezzadri, Sainte Louise de Marillac par elle-même (Rome: Edizioni Vincenziane, 1992).
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Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France
life when he wrote about the Daughters of Charity.35 Dirvin produced a more analytic work than had his predecessors. For instance he grappled with de Marillac’s illegitimate birth whereas earlier authors ignored, or had been unaware of, this fact. Dirvin also examined the stresses that de Marillac experienced as a young wife balancing marriage with intense religious devotion. Instead of crediting her anxiety to Providence (as had prior biographers), Dirvin investigated de Marillac’s relationships with her spiritual advisors and her family. Dirvin provided an interesting analysis of the language of the letters between de Paul and de Marillac to determine the evolution of their alliance from her being his “daughter” to their becoming partners. Dirvin’s book succeeds because he sees a multifaceted woman struggling, and succeeding, to create her vision of a religious community. Daughters of Charity have also written perceptive books about their founder. Margaret Flinton, in her dissertation at the University of Paris, examined the social service component of de Marillac’s vocation. Flinton examined manuscripts in the archives of the Congregation of the Mission and the Daughters of Charity for her thesis. Flinton does credit divine intervention with guiding de Marillac’s vocation which occasionally keeps her from examining other impulses de Marillac experienced; however she also details de Marillac’s abilities as a leader in the secular realm. Flinton’s most valuable contribution is her detailed discussion of the particular works of de Marillac, such as service to the galley slaves. The Company of the Daughters of Charity published Flinton’s book for their internal use in 1957; it was not available to the public until thirty-five years later.36 Elisabeth Charpy is the Company of the Daughters of Charity’s foremost historian and she has written extensively about de Marillac.37 Charpy has published a collection of the writings of de Marillac and a book containing copies of many of the early documents produced by the Company.38 She also wrote a short biography of de Marillac in 1991. Like Coste, Charpy has an extensive knowledge of the writings of de Marillac, and she wrote insightfully and thoroughly about her. Flinton and Charpy have had access to manuscripts and documents unavailable to secular historians and as a result, their books are the most detailed accounts of de
35 Joseph I. Dirvin, Louise de Marillac (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1970). 36 Margaret Flinton, Saint Louise de Marillac: Social Aspects o f Her Work (New Rochelle NY: New City Press, 1992). 37 The first two works cited are published by the Daughters o f Charity for their private use, the third citation however is for a popular edition of the life of de Marillac that is available to the public. Elisabeth Charpy, Chemin de sainteté: Louise de Marillac (Paris: Compagnie des Filles de la Charité, 1988), Élisabeth Charpy, Contre vents et marées: Louise de Marillac (Paris: Compagnie des Filles de la Charité, 1988). The book that is available to the public is, Charpy, Petite vie de Louise de Marillac. 8 Louise de Marillac, Écrits spirituels ed. Élisabeth Charpy (Paris: Filles de la Charité 1983). This work has been translated by Louise Sullivan as Spiritual Writings o f Louise de Marillac: Correspondence and Thoughts (New York: New City Press, 1991) and all translations are Sullivan’s.
Introduction
13
Marillac’s life and service. Flinton and Charpy create a new hagiography as they write primarily to evoke the memory of their spiritual mother, but not to critically assess her life and work. Given the reverent nature of the work on de Paul and de Marillac, few authors were interested in examining de Paul or de Marillac’s motivations except to show how their lives complied with God’s will. Most biographers treat both as if they were bom to become saints. When examined more critically, it becomes clear that de Paul and de Marillac were not simply champions of Catholic orthodoxy, and recent scholarship is questioning earlier hagiographical accounts. Secular historians became increasingly interested in the lives of religious women late in the twentieth century, in part because of the increased attention paid to the history of women. The first wave of feminist analyses of religious life appeared in the 1970s and included Ruth Liebowitz’s ground-breaking article “Virgins in the Service of Christ,” an optimistic recording of religious life for women.39 Liebowitz praised the women who founded active religious communities, including the Daughters of Charity, for their creativity and vision. She argued that the vow of celibacy freed women from the burdens of sexual relations and that their innovative non-cloistered lives allowed women great mobility and flexibility. Despite her insightful conclusions, Liebowitz’s enthusiasm for these foremothers caused her to praise the founders of active communities without considering their internal flaws and the problems. Moreover, she premises her work on the belief that women in active religious communities led lives of greater meaning than did those in contemplative orders, an assertion that is simply false. Later works have managed to explore women’s history, and the issue of gender within religious communities, in a more balanced fashion. Judith Combes Taylor’s dissertation examined seventeenth-century French teaching congregations, including the Daughters of Charity.40 Taylor successfully discussed the evolution in the nature of teaching communities and their goals as France’s most important educators of girls. She balanced her discussion of the new and prestigious roles of teachers with an examination of how they treated and educated children. Taylor argued that women exercised great influence over culture and morality as educators of children. She notes that women became an important instrument through which communities created “properly” socialized adults. Taylor did not investigate how these changes altered the communities and the 39 Ruth P. Liebowitz, “Virgins in the Service o f Christ: The Dispute over an Active Apostolate for Women during the Counter-Reformation,” in Women o f Spirit: Female Leadership in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, eds. Rosemary Ruether and Eleanor McLaughlin (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979). 40 Judith Combes Taylor, “From Proselytizing to Social Reform: Three Generations of French Female Teaching Congregations, 1600-1720.” Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Arizona State University, 1980.
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Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France
teachers themselves; despite this omission, her work is broad in its scope and useful for understanding early modem teaching congregations. Colin Jones’s interest lies in studying the nursing activities of the Daughters, predominately in eighteenth-century Montpellier.41 Jones examined the struggles between the doctors (generally perceived as those who brought modem medical knowledge into hospitals) and the Daughters (traditionally portrayed as the stalwarts of old-fashioned ideas and opponents to the enlightened doctors and surgeons). He argued that the Daughters of Charity were competent medical practitioners, well educated and skilled in their duties. He finds that the Daughters’ reliance on dietary regulation and herbal remedies was no more harmful to patients than the doctors’ reliance on more invasive procedures. Jones’ research at the Archives Nationales, as well as at the provincial and hospital archives, paints a fascinating picture of French medical life during the age of Enlightenment. Jones’s success derives from his use of diverse sources, and his ability to examine the Daughters as historical, and not solely religious, actors. The richest accounts of early modem women’s religious life come from Elizabeth Rapley and Barbara Diefendorf. Elizabeth Rapley published her account of the dévotes of seventeenth-century France in 1990. She examined the new religious communities founded by women in the first half of the century. Rapley detailed the struggle between women who sought to create and enter active companies and conservative church officials who sought to enclose them. She also credited women as being the agents of change for developing a network of schools for French girls, which figures into her larger assertion that the Catholic Church was “feminized” in the seventeenth century. Although the feminization of Catholicism is not a new claim, most historians place the feminization in the eighteenth or nineteenth century.42 Rapley’s primary investigation was an analysis of three smaller teaching communities, but she also discussed the Ladies and Daughters of Charity, so her book provides a useful comparison among religious communities. Rapley wrote a convincing institutional history, but because she did not examine the women themselves, she provides her reader only a partial explanation for the new companies’ successes. Rapley addressed the lives of women in teaching congregations in The Social History o f the Cloister, published in 2001.43 Her extraordinary book vividly describes the lives of nuns and their students, both boarders and day pupils, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Her examination of death notices allows her 41 See Colin Jones, “Sisters of Charity and the Ailing Poor,” Social History o f Medicine, 2, 3 (1989), 339-348 and Colin Jones, The Charitable Imperative: Hospitals and Nursing in Ancien Régime and Revolutionary France (New York: Routledge, 1989). 42 For instance, see Claude Langlois, Le Catholicisme au fém inin: les congrégations françaises à supérieure générale au XIXe siècle (Paris: Les éditions du Cerf, 1984). 43 Elizabeth Rapley, A Social History o f the Cloister: Daily Life in the Teaching Monasteries o f the Old Regime (Ithaca, NY: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001).
Introduction
15
to reconstruct through rich and lively anecdotes the lives of those within the convent walls. Taken together, Rapley’s books provide an excellent foundation for understanding communities of religious women in early modem France. Barbara Diefendorfs 2004 From Penitence to Charity offers a comprehensive look at late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century religious communities of women in Paris.44 She examines the transformation of religious sentiment from the passionate and ascetic expressions of spirituality evident during and after the Wars of Religion to the charitable manifestations of faith that characterized the years of the Fronde. Diefendorfs nuanced book reexamines the Catholic Reformation and challenges the established notion that men endeavored to lock women away in convents, and she shows how some elite women often chose enclosure for themselves. Like Rapley, Diefendorf stresses female agency, and underscores how the actions of women shaped the Catholic Reformation. Ultimately the works of Diefendorf and Rapley, as well as John O’Malley and others, demonstrate that the Catholic Reformation Church permitted some of its members the space to develop creative new communities.45 This book will underscore the argument about invention by showing how the Daughters of Charity helped to change the face of early modem female religiosity by creating a dynamic community of teachers, nurses, and social servants. I argue that the Catholic Reformation in France ultimately led to increased opportunities for some women’s work and spiritual expression. Women were an important force in defining Catholic Reformation spirituality in France, and the Daughters of Charity were critical in developing that spirituality as something broad and flexible.
Overview This book places the work of the Daughters of Charity within the context of early modem Catholicism, and it seeks to unravel what the Company’s experience can tell historians about the French Catholic Reformation. The second chapter examines the founding of the Company, asking how the Daughters were able to remain unenclosed while bishops herded other active communities of women behind cloister walls. De Marillac and de Paul were astute strategists who created an alternative form of religious life that reinforced Catholic Reformation ideology while challenging its restrictive practices. The founders understood the importance of good public relations, and worked to forge sound relationships with members of the Church and the State. Equally important, they created a community of women that had a sound infrastructure, enabling it to grow dramatically without losing
44 Barbara Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 45 John W. O ’Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 67.
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Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France
sight of its original mission. This chapter also considers the meaning of enclosure in early modem France, in order to explain the meaning of the Daughters’ evasion of it. Chapter 3 begins by asking what the Daughters were doing as active religious women who had evaded enclosure, and investigates the work of the Daughters of Charity in the parishes where the community laid its roots. Working closely with Ladies of Charity and parish priests, the Daughters educated and tended the poor and the sick. Ladies of Charity directed and funded the Daughters, and a handful of elite women, including a niece of Richelieu, shaped the vocations of the Daughters, much like the patrons of enclosed convents shaped the lives of the women living within their walls. Daughters of Charity worked in parishes and established schools for poor girls. Tensions within France between Catholics and Huguenots encouraged both sides to improve the quality of education in an effort to keep the young within their respective folds. Educating disadvantaged girls became a central facet of the Daughters’ vocation and important to their social identity, just as teaching was a primary mission of many communities of women founded in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The fourth chapter investigates the work of the Daughters of Charity in large institutions. The Daughters founded a huge orphanage on the outskirts of Paris to house the capital’s orphans. More significantly for the Company’s future, they also became involved in working in hospitals in the 1640s. Although working in large institutions proved challenging it was in these places where the Daughters made their mark by becoming France’s most important nursing community. The Company changed the practice of poor relief and medical care in early modem France with its work in hospitals and other institutions. By the end of the seventeenth century it was common for active women religious, like the Daughters of Charity, to run girls’ schools and hospitals, which depended upon their work as nurses and administrators. Finally, Chapter 5 describes the growth of the Company from a small group of young women living together in Paris and serving their poorer neighbors to a large and formally organized assemblage. Unlike many contemporary communities, the Daughters of Charity grew stronger and larger over time with an expanding bureaucratic infrastructure. The deaths of de Paul and de Marillac in 1660 did not mark the demise of the institution; rather it grew faster and spread across vaster terrain in the later seventeenth century. The Daughters of Charity demonstrated the viability of an active and non-cloistered religious community, although enclosed convents remained more common in the early modem period, by 1969 ninety percent of French religious communities were active and integrated into the towns and villages they served.46
46 Rapley, The Dévotes, 168.
Chapter 2
The Foundation of the Daughters of Charity The Company of the Daughters of Charity was founded at a time of change in the Catholic Church, the French state, and the European economy. Spiritual, social, economic, and political forces shaped the community’s development and allowed it to circumvent Church mandates. The Company was an innovative institution, and the purpose of this chapter is to explain how the Daughters of Charity managed to create a new religious community that remained outside of the cloister when the Church had mandated that that all women religious had to reside within convents.
The Council of Trent
The Council of Trent initially met in December 1545, with the goal of articulating the doctrines of the Catholic Church and implementing behavioral regulations.1 The Council (which met in three sessions, (1545-1547, 1551-1552 and 1561-1563) was convened in order to spur the Church to action, and to give it a solid doctrinal foundation from which it could check the advance of the Protestant Reformation. From its start, however, the Council faced many impediments. According to Giuseppe Alberigo, “the bishops gathered at Trent were few and often bewildered, overwhelmed by a rupture in the religious unity of the West that they did not really understand... .”2 Moreover, the Council was pulled in two directions. The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, wanted the Council (which was meeting in the imperial city of Trent) to remedy the disciplinary and pastoral problems within the Church, whereas the Pope wanted the Council to address the theological issues raised by Luther, with the goal of condemning Protestant doctrinal dissent.3 The Council bridged these competing visions as the clergy in attendance alternated between disciplinary and doctrinal questions. In the end, the Council was
1 Hubert Jedin, A History o f the Council o f Trent, 2 volumes, trans. Ernest Graf (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co, 1957). 2 Guiseppe Alberigo, “The Council of Trent,” in Catholicism in Early M odem History: A Guide to Research, ed. John O’Malley (St. Louis, MO: Center for Reformation Research, 1988), 211. 3 Alberigo, 212.
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Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France
successful in formulating systematic responses to issues of both discipline and theology, although the formulation was long in coming and enforcing these responses was another challenge altogether. The Council did not conclude its deliberations until 1563—some eighteen years after it commenced. Despite very difficult circumstances, including warring heads of states who sought to influence the Council, the reigns of fives popes (including Paul IV, who was hostile to the gathering) and an outbreak of the plague at Trent, the Council managed to lay the foundation for reform of the Catholic Church.4 The Council of Trent published many dictates to shape the behavior of members of the Catholic Church. It issued its legislation regarding women in religious orders during its last session, which met in 1563. Here, the Council prescribed directives stipulating that women be sixteen before taking formal religious vows and that they testify that they were joining religious orders of their own volition.5 This mandate directly responded to the problems caused by families who used convents to house “surplus” daughters; those that they could not afford to dower sufficiently to make a good marriage.6 By requiring a statement of volition, the Church attempted to filter out the entrance of women who had little spiritual calling, and sought to address scurrilous rumors about the character of religious life. Having addressed the problem of unqualified women entering religious orders, the Council turned to regulating the conduct of women who did enter communities and who seemed to have legitimate callings to religious life. The Council’s choice of disciplinary measures was distinct from those handed out to men, and is illustrative of the Church’s understanding of gender. The Council’s decree “Provision is made for the enclosure of nuns, especially those who reside outside the cities,” sought to cloister all female religious. The councilors stated, “the holy council...commands all bishops...make it their special care that in all monasteries subject to them...the enclosure of nuns be restored wherever it has been violated and that it be preserved where it has not been violated.”7 With this statement the Council resurrected Pope Boniface VIII’s 1298 bull Periculoso, which required all members of female religious orders to live within convent walls; like the Tridentine accords, it did not require the same of men’s orders.8 If nuns 4 De Lamar Jensen, Reformation Europe: Age o f Reform and Revolution (Lexington, MA: Heath, 1992), 214-217. 5 H.J. Schroeder, The Canons and Decrees o f the Council o f Trent (Rockford, IL: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1978), 226 and 228. See also, Elizabeth Rapley, The Dévotes: Women and Church in Seventeenth-Century France (Buffalo, NY: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990), 186. 6 For a discussion of the impact of forced vocations see, P. Renée Baemstein, A Convent Tale: A Century o f Sisterhood in Spanish Milan (New York: Routledge, 2002), 13-15. 7 Schroeder, 220-221. 8 Elizabeth Makowski, Canon Law and Cloistered Women: Periculoso and its Commentators 1298-1545 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1997), 71.
The Foundation of the Daughters o f Charity
19
had obeyed Periculoso there would have been no need for Trent’s “Provision is made for the enclosure of nuns.. however, many nuns ventured beyond the walls of their medieval and Renaissance convents. In the late Middle Ages some religious orders obeyed Periculoso and communities assumed clausura, but enclosure was not strictly enforced in Benedictine or Augustinian communities, and in them women left the convent and visitors entered it. Some women religious pursued active vocations doing good works while living in small houses within cities that needed their services.9 According to Elizabeth Rapley, “Periculoso tried to confine the devotion of nuns within safe though uninspiring channels. It had only limited success among monastic women, while a flood of semi-religious women—beguines and tertiaries—simply overflowed the banks and went their own way.”101Ultimately the decrees of Trent concerning women religious would share a somewhat similar fate. While the Church had attempted enclosure before Trent, those efforts were not strictly enforced and women religious could have a public role, especially in instances where they served the poor in acts of Charity and aid. The decree “Provision is made for the enclosure of nuns...” did not recognize these precedents, however, and went on to provide that “no nun shall after her profession be permitted to go out of the monastery, even for a brief period under any pretext whatever, except for a lawful reason to be approved by the bishop... .”u Under the new disciplinary regime, such reasons were few, and unless the convent was on fire or suffering from an outbreak of contagious disease, nuns were to remain inside. The councilors’ goal was to remove religious women from public life, and Pius V echoed their intention in 1566 when he issued the papal bull Circa pastoralis suppressing all women’s congregations not practicing enclosure.12 With this bull, the pope attempted to cloister or disband all religious women who still lived outside of enclosure, including members of all tertiary orders. Francesca Medioli analyzes the texts of different versions of the provision and makes an interesting argument that “in Trent, what the English historian Hobsbawn called ‘the invention of tradition’ took place: suddenly, despite the evidence of the existing Benedictines or tertiaries, the congregated fathers began to 9 Francesca Medioli, “An unequal law: the enforcement of clausura before and after the Council of Trent,” in Women in Renaissance and Early Modem Europe, ed. Christine Meek (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), 143 and Jo Ann Kay McNamara, Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 322-323. 10 Elizabeth Rapley, A Social History o f the Cloister: Daily Life in the Teaching Monasteries o f the Old Regime (Ithaca, NY: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001), 112-113. 11 Schroeder, 220-221, see also Rapley, The Dévotes, 27. 12 E. William Monter, “Protestant Wives, Catholic Saints, and the D evifs Handmaid: Women in the Age of the Reformations,” in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, eds. Renate Bridenthal, Claudia Koonz, and Susan Stuard (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987), 209.
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Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France
think that clausura had a long tradition, not simply as a general rule, but also as an applied, and effectively enforced law.”13 Medioli notes that the councilors sought to protect women and the Church from sexual scandal by enclosing them, but she also points to more mundane factors for their decision. Although some at Trent objected to clausura, the meetings on the topic were held in late November 1563, and the council officially closed on 4 December. By December, the exhausted councilors, who had endured two years of meetings in poor accommodations, debated the topic hastily: none of the delegates believed that this was a topic worth fighting over.14 Ultimately the Council voted to enclose all religious women without making reference to the convents where nuns did not observe enclosure. The legislation of the Council of Trent sought to dramatically alter the position of women within the Church. In contrast to the multiple vocational options available to religious women before 1563, this decree hoped to eliminate problems of female discipline by eliminating the possibility that women would encounter secular society. While the male priesthood was to be disciplined by scrutiny and training, women were to be regulated by removing them from society—placing them beyond the reach of sin.15 Like many of Trent’s decrees, “Provision is made for the enclosure of nuns...” mandated behavioral expectations. Ostensibly, the Council was acting to protect unenclosed women from what it called “the rapacity and other crimes of evil men,” namely rapists who broke into convents and homes to assault religious women, but it also strove to protect the women from less dubious characters.16 In Renaissance convents with lax enclosure scandals occasionally arose when nuns confessed to having consensual sexual relations with priests, laymen or other nuns.17 Gabriella Zarri argues that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, “monasteries had not yet been defined as placed separate from the social body and the urban context, and their perimeters could be traversed in both directions.” The Council was clearly concerned about restoring enclosure where it had been “violated.” The message to women religious was clear: if they violated the
13 Medioli, 145. 14 Medioli, 145. 15 For a more complete discussion of seminary reform see, Kathleen Comerford, Ordaining the Catholic Reformation: Priests and Seminary Pedagogy in Fiesole, 1575-1675 (Biblioteca della Rivista di Storia e Lettratura Religiosa. Firenze: Leo S. Olshiki, 2001). Comerford’s conclusions about the failure of seminary reform in Fiesole contrast with the traditional view that seminaries were an important key to sixteenth-century reform. 16 Schroeder, 221. For a description of men breaking into a convent dormitory see, McNamara, 385. 17 Gabriella Zarri, “Gender, Religious Institutions and Social Discipline: The Reform of Regulars,” in Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy, eds. Judith C. Brown and Robert C. Davis (New York: Longman, 1998). For the less documented issue of love affairs between nuns see Judith Brown, Immodest Acts: The Life o f a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
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regulations of the Church by refusing clausura, they themselves were vulnerable to violation. This conciliar and papal legislation reveals considerable concern about sexually active nuns who could bring shame and dishonor to the convent, the Church and to the nun’s families who might be important convent benefactors.18 Church officials sought to control more than just the sexuality of nuns. Enclosed women were more easily watched than those living in society; all aspects of their daily behavior, private and communal, could be better disciplined within the convent walls. After Trent, the Church formally permitted two avenues for women interested in spiritual pursuits: a dévote life within marriage or a religious life in a convent.19 The first option involved pursuing a religious life in the secular world.20 Women who did so could adopt the teachings of François de Sales and lead a secular life centered on religious devotion.21 De Sales encouraged dévotes to visit the poor and serve them by cooking their meals and sitting at their bedsides during times of illness. The dévote women who joined Vincent de Paul’s Confraternities of Charity chose this path of direct service to the poor as a demonstration of their piety. Early modern women who sought a more intense commitment to religious practice could enter a convent. Unlike dévotes, women who entered religious orders lived communally and promised to follow the order’s rule by taking solemn vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Nuns professed solemn vows before the Church and the world, announcing that they had adopted a religious life and were “dead to the world.” The choice to take solemn vows reflected a socioeconomic reality that went beyond a simple professional commitment to a cloistered life serving God. The families of full-fledged nuns, called choir sisters, paid a dowry to the convent. Convent dowries were the principal source of income for religious orders and critically important for maintaining viable communities.22 Although convent dowries were not as large as those needed to make a good marriage, they could be considerable. Therefore, women from more modest families rarely entered convents or did so as lower-status lay sisters who labored as the servants of the choir sisters within the convent.23 The hierarchical structure within convents with wealthy choir sisters served by poor lay sisters reflected the social hierarchies 18 Barbara Diefendorf, “Contradictions of the Century of Saints: Aristocratic Patronage and the Convents of Counter-Reformation Paris,” French Historical Studies, 24:3 (Summer 2001), 471. 19 M.-C. Gueudré, “La femme et la vie spirituelle,” XVIIe Siècle 62-63 (1964), 50. 20 For a fuller discussion of the dévote movement, see Rapley, The Dévotes and Barbara Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 21 Roger Devos, L ’origine sociale des Visitandines d ’Annecy aux XVIle et XVIIIe siècles (Annecy: Académie Salésienne, 1973), 25. 22 Rapley, The Dévotes, 181. 23 McNamara, 389 and 396.
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Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France
outside. Convent life, with its solemn vow of poverty, was a choice available almost exclusively to wealthy women. Simple vows, like those the Daughters of Charity would take, were nonsacramental and taken by persons not affiliated with formal religious orders.24 Initially there was no precise moment in their formation when Daughters of Charity took their vows, and de Paul permitted a few to make perpetual vows. Only after the death of de Paul and de Marillac did the Company impose regular annual vows for all Daughters.25 De Paul and de Marillac feared imposing rules about vows because it could jeopardize the Daughter’s non-cloistered status. De Paul wrote, “If the Bishop asks you: ‘Do you make religious vows,’ say to him: ‘On no sir, we give ourselves to God to live in poverty, chastity, and obedience, some forever, the others for one year.” The founders repeatedly asserted their status as seculars, and were careful that the Daughters’ desires to take vows did not undermine this declaration. The boundary that Trent attempted to erect between the active secular life and the contemplative religious life was never fully achieved. Church authorities were often unable or unwilling to impose the decrees on the diocesan level, and the Catholic states of Europe did not uniformly accept or enforce the decrees.
French Response to the Council of Trent
During its three sessions, the Council of Trent laid out a comprehensive vision of a reformed Church that operated within more precise theological and behavioral parameters. The reformers at Trent, however, did not have the authority or power to create an enforcement mechanism for these regulations, and hence the decrees of Trent were potentially toothless. This fact did not elude either the reformers or the Church hierarchy. Unable to enforce fully the dictates itself, the Council requested that Europe’s Catholic monarchs accept and publish the decrees. For example, in “Provision is made for the enclosure of nuns...,” the Council stated that the “secular arm” should be “summoned for the purpose” of cloistering women.26 European states inconsistently honored the Church’s requests, and in some instances, they did not implement them at all. In France, a nation that suffered through fierce religious wars from 1562 to 1589, there was a great deal of opposition to recognizing the decrees, in part due to fear of increased antagonism with the French Protestant Church.27 According to Hubert Jedin, “the reception of 24 Rapley, The Dévotes, 25. 25 Élisabeth Charpy, “Marguerite Chétif,” Echoes o f the Company (1985), 389. 26 Thomas I. Crimando, “Two French Views of the Council of Trent,” Sixteenth Century Journal, XIX/2 (1988), 169. Schroeder, 221. 27 Alain Talion, La France et le Concile de Trente (1518-1563) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1997), 521.
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the Council of Trent ran into strong opposition from the partly Huguenot, partly Gallican-minded, jurists of the highest tribunals, the parlements, in which every law valid in France had to be registered.”28 The basic premise of the Gallican Church was the primacy of the Pope within the universal Church, and of the monarch in temporal and local church matters. Whereas members of the Dévot Party looked to Rome for leadership, many leaders of the French Church and State sought considerable independence from Rome. According to Jonathan Powis, “the substance of Gallican liberty remained...a body of discourse, institutions, and practices devoted to maintaining the power of the crown and its agents over the ecclesiastical structure of France.”29 Exponents of Gallicanism also denounced conciliar authority; in 1564 Francis I said, “for an assembly could not be considered a real council in which the Pope did not submit to the decision of the universal church whose head is Christ; so believes the Gallican church, taking little account of any council in which the Pope is supreme, etc... .”30 Galllicanism framed the way that many men in the Church and State in France approached the Council of Trent, and it supported their tendencies to discredit the meeting. The French State and Church treated the Tridentine reforms as if their implementation was optional. The Royal Council, and principal members of the Parlement of Paris, whose function it was to ratify the decrees, met at Fontainebleau in 1564 and decided to postpone accepting the decrees.31 The Queen, Catherine de Medici, did not want the decrees published, or, if published, she wanted them only to apply to French Catholics, so as not to alienate the Huguenots. While de Medici privately urged her bishops to implement the reforms in their dioceses, she publicly hedged on officially publishing the reforms. Significantly, the Pope did not insist that she publish the decrees.32 French resistance to the reforms of Trent was grounded in the Huguenot presence in the south, as well as in French nationalism, rather than in mere opportunism, or hostility to the reforms themselves. The French monarchy had always been dubious of the meetings at Trent. French delegates were not active in the first two sessions of the Council, in part because of their fear that the doctrines
28 Hubert Jedin and John Dolan, eds. History o f the Church, Volume V, Reformation and Counter Reformation, trans. Anselm Biggs and Peter W. Becker (London: Bums and Oates, 1980), 515. 29 Jonathan Powis, “Gallican Liberties and the Politics of Later Sixteenth-Century France,” Sixteenth Century Journal, 26/3 (1983), 529. 30 Powis, 520. 31 Crimando, 175. 32 Victor Martin. Le Gallicanisme et la Réforme Catholique: Essai Historique sur T Introduction en France des Décrets du Concile de Trente (1563-1615) (Paris: Auguste Picard Editor, 1919), 61-64.
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of the Council could threaten the French Church’s sovereignty.33 After the Council’s first session, King Henry II asserted that the decrees were meant as a guide for pastors and would not be made royal law.34 Also, if King Henry II recognized Trent, he would formally demonstrate that the Peace of Amboise of 1563 was dead, thus making Huguenots heretics.35 Such a denial of the Protestants’ rights to worship would rekindle the civil wars and upset the political ambitions of Catherine de Medici.36 By 1560 France had a sizable Protestant minority and Catherine de Medici sought a forum for compromise, which Trent was certainly not. However, de Medici did send French ambassadors and bishops to the final meetings of Trent (1562-63), because she had come to believe that a decline in clerical discipline was a primary cause of the spread of the Huguenot Church.37 When the French arrived in Trent, they urged the Council to prioritize behavioral reforms.38 According to Thomas Crimando, the French delegates left the Council a few months before its formal end because they had concluded that some of the proposed reforms would infringe upon the freedoms of the French crown and Church.39 The French monarch did not ratify the mandates of Trent, but this did not discourage the clergy from advocating the publication of the decrees at the Assembly of Melun in 1579 and the Estates-General in 1614 where the cahiers of the clergy demanded their publication.40 However, the Estates-General refused to accept the reforms of Trent. In the following year, the Assembly of the Clergy (the national representative institution of the French Church) voted to accept and enforce the reforms within the French Church.41 Ultimately, the French Church only ratified the promulgations of Trent in 1615, and they were never successful in getting the King’s approval for publication.42 Although the French Church did not ratify the Tridentine decrees until 1615, the Council did exercise a degree of moral suasion within France, which had practical consequences for discipline and doctrine over the course of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. French bishops enforced reform in their
33 Crimando, 172. 34 Tallon, 539. 35 The Peace of Amboise, signed in March 1563 created a truce in the Wars of Religion that lasted until 1567. Jensen, 241. 36 M artin, 41. 37 Crimando, 173. 38 Crimando, 173. 39 Crimando, 174. 40 Martin, 165 and 343. 41 Jedin and Dolan, 516, see also, Colin Jones, “Perspectives on Poor Relief, Health Care and the Counter-Reformation in France,” in Health Care and Poor Relief in CounterReformation Europe, eds. Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham and Jon Arrizabalaga. (New York: Routledge, 1999), 216. 42 Martin, 392.
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dioceses beginning in the 1560s, when local councils ratified the Tridentine decrees.43 As a result of the independent reform initiatives of the bishops, there were localized efforts at correcting religious abuses and moral laxity in France before the Assembly of the Clergy adopted the Tridentine reforms. Efforts to reform the French Church came from individuals like Vincent de Paul, priests and bishops who dictated the rules in their parishes, and from the dioceses themselves. Such internal reforms were varied, but certainly included efforts to restrict the physical freedom of women religious, such as the Visitandines and the Ursulines, communities that lived outside of enclosure in Annecy and Italy, but were cloistered by bishops in France. That the reform was local does not undermine the fact that Trent did succeed in transforming the tenor of French Catholicism. Over time, members of the clergy became better trained and more committed to their vocations and the laity became better educated about the dogma of their faith and their Church’s expectations for their behavior. The era of the Catholic Reformation in France was also marked by two devastating civil wars. The religious wars of the sixteenth century shaped the way the Reformation and the Catholic response was understood in France. The ultraCatholics who fought the kings of France during the religious wars played a large role in Catholic Reformation forming a movement known as the Dévots, and the prominence of Marie de Medici after 1610 gave them access to court and her support. Tension between the Dévots and more moderate Catholics continued throughout the early seventeenth century. The French religious wars failed to halt the spread of Protestantism and ended with the Edict of Nantes, which granted some basic rights to the Huguenot minority. By 1589 France had two recognized Churches, making it quite different from most of Europe, where nations embraced one confession and endeavored to rout out perceived heresies. In France a primary concern of Dévots was keeping Catholics within the fold, which helps to explain the era’s emphasis on educating children about their faith, and converting Huguenots. In France, innovations were tolerated when it was clear that they would help to secure Catholicism; religious communities that educated children and adults gained much support. So did the Daughters of Charity, because their teaching, service, and nursing were all done with the goal of strengthening the faith of poor Catholics, and tempting Huguenots back into the fold. France permitted innovations in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries when it was believed that they would support the faith, even if they violated decrees coming out of Rome. The health of the French Catholic Church 43 Pierre Blet, “France,” in Catholicism in Early M odem Europe: A Guide to Research ed. John O’Malley (St Louis, MO: Center for Reformation Research, 1988), 61. The decrees of Trent were first accepted by local councils in Reims in 1564 and 1583, Cambrai in 1565, Rouen in 1581, Bourdeaux and Tours in 1583, Bourges in 1584, Aix in 1585 and Toulouse in 1590.
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was the chief concern of the monarch and of church officials, and they permitted a space for innovation within France. The Daughters of Charity had a bit of room to experiment and grow because they continually demonstrated their social and religious usefulness.
Enclosing Communities of Women Religious
The Daughters of Charity were part of a broader movement of general spiritual renewal constructed by Catholics faced with the new threat of rival Christian faiths in Western Europe. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries many individual religious orders initiated internal reforms and re-created themselves as more dynamic and spiritually rigorous institutions. Across Europe there was a dramatic increase in the number of women entering contemplative convents in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.44 This was certainly the pattern in early seventeenth-century France, as a new generation of nuns revitalized existing orders and entered new ones; the increase in the number of women religious was considerable.45 In Saint-Denis, for instance, enclosed religious orders built three new convents between 1625 and 1629, the largest of which had seventy-four members.46 Some women were attracted to the reformed monastic houses, like the Capucines and St. Teresa of Avila’s Discalced Carmelites, which had entered France from Italy and Spain, respectively. These were austere orders, models of Reformed Catholic piety and exemplars of enclosure. At the same time, other religious communities emerged with the intention of practicing an active and noncloistered vocation. The Ursulines of Italy and the Visitandine nuns of Savoy both began with an active vocation of service to the needy. Once in France, they underwent the transformation into formal religious orders with clausura at the hands of local bishops who imposed the rules of Trent. Although the Daughters of Charity, the Visitandines, and the Ursulines all sought an active vocation for religious women, it is clear that the Visitandines and Ursulines adopted a very different strategy than did the Daughters of Charity, which might account, in part, for the clausura of the former, and the unenclosed status of the latter. François de Sales and Jeanne de Chantal created the Visitandine 44 Pierre Chaunu, L ’église, culture et société: essaies sur Réforme et Contre-Réforme ( 15171620) (Paris: Société d’Édition d’Enseignement Supérieur, 1981), 401. Rapley, The Dévotes, 20. Dowry inflation of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries certainly played a central role in increased vocations, however reduced dowry inflation and increased demands made upon novices made this less of an issue in the seventeenth century. See also Diefendorf, “Contradictions of the Century of Saints/’ 471. 45 Rapley, The Dévotes, 20. See also, J.A. Bergin, “The Crown, the Papacy and the Reform of the Old Orders in Early Seventeenth-Century France,” Journal o f Ecclesiastical History, 33/2 (1982), 234-255. 46 Rapley, The Dévotes, 20.
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order in 1607 in de Sales’ diocese of Annecy. They founded their community for wealthy lay women (many of whom were not physically well enough to endure the rigors of monastic life) who sought to practice the virtues of the Virgin Mary— humility, piety, and charity—and to provide benevolent works for the sick and poor.47 De Sales and de Chantal created a new form of feminine religious life based upon de Sales’ theology. De Sales wrote that Christians could lead meaningful secular lives centered on religious devotion; it was not necessary to join a religious order to be a dedicated Christian.48 Members of the Visitandine order served God through their simplicity and their good works, and opened their doors for lay women’s spiritual retreats. In 1615, the Archbishop of Lyons, Denis-Simon de Marquemont, requested that de Sales found a community of the Visitandines in his diocese. He was responding to a request made a few years earlier by three women who had approached him about opening a Visitandine community.49 De Sales accommodated the Archbishop, and shaped the new community in Lyons after the one in Annecy. During the community’s first year, the Archbishop reconsidered the Visitantine’s organizational structure and he insisted that de Sales impose clausura upon the community as directed by Trent. De Marquemont feared that a non-cloistered community of women from the region’s most elite families would cause scandal; moreover he believed that his responsibility as an archbishop was to enforce the decrees of Trent. De Sales refused to cloister the community. He did not prevail however, and in 1616, the Bishop of Lyon convinced de Sales to enclose the Visitandines and assign them the Augustinian rule.50 Before imposing enclosure, de Sales wrote to Cardinal Bellarmine requesting exemptions to clausura that would allow laywomen to enter the cloister for short retreats.51 Therefore, the Visitandines’ mission would not be totally frustrated by enclosure— although it would be altered. Ultimately, in 1618, Pope Paul V made the Visitandines a formal religious order.52 De Sales was confronting a crisis of authority that required him to submit to the decisions of the Archbishop. In Lyon, the Visitandine order was under the
47 New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967 ed, s.v. “Francis de Sales, Saint,” 34-36. 48 François de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, ed. John K. Ryan (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1950). 49 Wendy M. Wright, “The Visitation of Holy Mary: The First Years (1610-1618),” in Religious Orders o f the Catholic Reformation, ed. Richard DeMolen (New York: Fordham University Press, 1994), 236. 50 Roger Devos, U origine sociale des Visitandines d'Annecy aux XVIIe et XVIIle siècles (Annecy: Académie Salésienne, 1973), 29-33 51 Wright, 237. 52 John Patrick Donnelly, “The New Religious Orders, 1517-1648,” in Handbook o f European History, 1400-1600, eds. Thomas A. Brady, Heiko A. Obermann and James D. Tracy (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995), 303.
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Bishop’s jurisdiction and had to obey his commands.53 De Sales also had to recognize that he would have trouble expanding the order if he alienated de Marquemont. De Sales concluded that “for the Visitation to grow beyond its mountain home and extend into France, it would have to become an approved order.”54 In large part, the Church cloistered the Visitandines because they were women from elite families, and their presence as unmarried women in the world was troubling. Without formal religious vows a woman could, hypothetically, enter marriage. Additionally, their status as nuns in a religious order defined them as “dead to the world” and made them ineligible for family inheritance. Cloistering the Visitandines made them a religious order acceptable to the upper classes of French society.55 Barbara Diefendorf asserts that de Sales did not bemoan the enclosure of the French Visitandines, because although the bishop no longer permitted the nuns to leave the convent, pious lay women retained the right to enter for retreats, which he considered especially important.56 The evolution of the Ursulines in France was similar to that of the Visitandines. Angela Merici, a laywoman, founded the Ursulines in 1535 when she brought together twenty-eight young women in Brescia, Italy. The women promised to live in the world and serve God as consecrated virgins and brides of Christ.57 In 1544, Paul III confirmed the congregation as a confraternity with some of the privileges of a religious order. As a confraternity, the Ursulines resided with their families, not in a convent, and performed good works in the community. They also met regularly to participate in confession and to share the Eucharist.58 Five years after the community’s foundation, Merici died, and gradually the nature of her Company changed. The Mother Superior appointed by Merici before her death implemented changes that contradicted Merici’s original vision: the Ursulines were now required to wear a habit and adopt public vows upon entrance.59 These changes became significant only after the company attracted some fame and the attention of the Church. The Ursulines came to the attention of Carlo Borromeo, the reforming Bishop of Milan, who saw a way to employ the Ursulines in his diocese. He brought twelve Ursulines to Milan, where they taught young girls catechism and lived with local families.60 He was impressed with their 53 Devos, 39. 54 Wright, 238. 55 Donnelly, 303. 56 Diefendorf, “Contradictions of the Century of Saints,” 485. 57 Charmarie J. Blaisdell, “Angela Merici and the Ursulines,” in Religious Orders o f the Catholic Reformation, ed. Richard DeMolen (New York: Fordham University Press, 1994), 99. 58 Blaisdell, 107. 59 Blaisdell, 115. 60 Judith Combes Taylor, “From Proselytizing to Social Reform: Three Generations of French Female Teaching Congregations, 1600-1720” (Ph.D. diss., Arizona State University,
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work and by 1576, Borromeo had made it the duty of bishops in his archdiocese to found a Company of St. Ursula to teach girls and young women catechism on Sundays and feast days.*61 For Borromeo, the Ursulines were an ideal vehicle through which to teach women and girls the Catholic-Reformation theology and piety that Trent insisted all Catholics learn. In his efforts to legitimate the Ursulines as teachers of Christian doctrine, however, Borromeo transformed the community’s structure and made it directly subject to male controls. Borromeo put the Ursulines of Milan under the leadership of a male prior-general—something Merici had avoided doing.62 Female control of the congregation shrunk as local bishops and the prior-general increasingly controlled the Ursulines. In the early 1580s, Borromeo further transformed the Company by writing a new rule, which mandated not only simple vows, an induction ceremony, and a habit, but also communal living.63 Borromeo’s rule stressed hierarchical governance and obedience, whereas Merici’s original rule had encouraged the Ursulines to listen to the Holy Spirit.64 The Bishop did not trust the flexibility of Merici’s rule. Within fifty years of their foundation the Ursulines had become much more of a religious order than Merici had intended. As the Ursulines grew, some companies in Italy adopted the looser Brescian model and others adopted the more formal Milanese model.65 By the early seventeenth century, communities of Ursulines had spread to all major Italian cities and into France and by the mid-seventeenth century, many French towns had a school maintained by the Ursulines.66678 The early French Ursuline communities were based on the Milanese example, having both the oversight of the local bishop and a communal life without clausura. They served their towns by catechizing girls of all social classes.6768In the seventeenth century Ursuline communities in France adopted clausura.6* In Paris, the women who brought the Ursulines to the city, Mme de Sainte-Beauve and Mme Acarie (who entered the order as a lay sister as an expression of her humility) went beyond the structure imposed by Borromeo and insisted that entrants pronounce solemn vows
1980), 55. 61 Teresa Ledochowska,. Angela Merici and the Company o f St. Ursula According to the Historical Documents. Translated by Mary Teresa Neylan (Milan: Ancora, 1968), 85-86. 62 Marie Andrée Jégou, O.S.U. Les Ursulines du Faubourg Saint-Jacques à Paris (16071662) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1981), 22. 63 Blaisdell, 119. 64 Blaisdell, 119. 65 Taylor, 51. 66 Taylor, 96. 67 Taylor, 120. 68 Blaisdell, 121. See also Marie-Élisabeth Aubry, “La Congrégation de Notre-Dame à Nancy et l’éducation des filles aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” Annales de VEste 26 (1974): 76-96. Aubry details the enclosure of an Ursuline community in Nancy in 1616 and the impact of clausura on the community’s educational mission.
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and accept enclosure in 1612.69 This decision caused division within the community and some women left rather than live a life of clausura. Enclosure dramatically changed the order in France. The cloistered French Ursulines recruited wealthy women who could afford the cost of a dowry to support their lives in convents, and the order became more aristocratic; in Italy, unenclosed Ursulines retained more modest congregations.70 The Ursulines maintained their original purpose of teaching girls, albeit in a very different environment. Instead of teaching in charity schools for poor girls, they now instructed wealthy girls who boarded in their convents, as well as poorer day students who entered the convent for lessons.71 Despite its transformation, the order thrived, and between 1612 and 1640 hundreds of Ursuline convents were founded in France.72 By the late seventeenth century, convents in France were facing hard times as the century’s economic crisis shrunk dowries and endowments, and families withheld “their money and their children.”73 Ursuline convents grew more modest, but continued with their mission of educating girls. Although the Ursulines survived their transformation, the Daughters of Charity, with their commitment to helping the sick and the poor could not have converted their mission to one compatible with enclosure. De Paul served as the director of the Visitandines in France at the request of de Sales, and he witnessed their enclosure and the transformation of their mission firsthand. As a consequence, he understood not only that enclosure would have a devastating impact upon the vocation of the Company of the Daughters of Charity, but also that carefully managing the public persona of the Company and thereby avoiding the restrictions of Trent could avoid that enclosure. Nevertheless, de Paul and de Marillac did not set out to discredit or undermine the work done by the Council. They sought to fulfill many of the goals of Trent. Regarding the avoidance of enclosure, though, they were aware of what they were doing, and evidence does support the conclusion that they sought, quite deliberately, to deceive certain members of the Church hierarchy to further their goals. In a letter from 1641, Monsieur Lambert, a priest of the Congregation of the Mission, wrote to Barbe Angiboust, a Daughter of Charity serving a parish in Richelieu, inquiring if the 69 Jégou, 27. 70 Anne Bertout, Les Ursulines de Paris sous Vancien régime (Paris: Typographie PirminDidot, 1935), 81. See also, Olwen Hufton and Frank Tallett, “Communities of Women, the Religious Life, and Public Service in Eighteenth-Century France,” in Connecting Spheres: Women in the Western World, 1500 to the Present ed. Marilyn J. Boxer and Jean H. Quataert (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). 71 Marie de Chantal Gueudré, Histoire de l ’ordre des Ursulines en France (Paris: Éditions Saint-Paul, 1957), I: 242. See also, Jégou, 148. 72 Linda Lierheimer, “Redefining Convent Space: Ideals of Female Community among Seventeenth-Century Ursuline Nuns,” Proceedings o f the Western Society fo r French History 24 (1997), 214. 73 Rapley, A Social History o f the Cloister, 17.
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Daughters were still “passing” for a secular community.74 The letter demonstrates that, at least among the ranks of the Congregation of the Mission, it was an open secret that the Daughters of Charity were misrepresenting themselves. It is unlikely that the founders were the only people in the community to be aware of this misrepresentation. The founders were able to get away with disguising the true nature of their confraternity, in part, because the services provided by the Daughters were desperately needed in seventeenth-century France.
Economic Calamity in the Seventeenth Century and New Systems of Charity
The foundation of the Daughters of Charity took place in the midst of a century best known for its political, social, and economic disasters.75 During much of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, France was involved in civil and foreign wars. Early modem warfare proved especially dangerous for civilian populations, who suffered at the hands of marauding bands of soldiers living off the land.76 Moreover, as taxes fell primarily upon the peasantry, soaring assessments levied to fund the wars increasingly drove the people in greatest need toward starvation.77 Failing harvests (from weather and warfare) and the inflationary effects of largescale war further squeezed the vulnerable peasant population. Warfare and famine led to the outbreaks of several epidemics in the middle and late seventeenth century. Together these scourges increased the number of people desperate for assistance in the seventeenth century. One reason the Company of the Daughters of Charity succeeded in retaining its active vocation was that its missions addressed the needs of the desperate, and because new ideas about poverty and charity encouraged the development of its mission. As the number of poor grew during the seventeenth century, traditional systems of poor relief based in rural parishes were overwhelmed.78 In France, the effects of war, crop failure, and epidemic drove people from their rural
74 Archives de Maison Mère des Filles de la Charité (AMMFC), 187. The original letter dated 13 May 1641 reads, “Je ne sais si vous passez pour séculière.” 75 There has been an on-going debate about whether historians can call the disasters of the seventeenth century a “general crisis.” For an argument against such a definition see the introductory chapter of, Geoffrey Parker and Lesley Smith, The General Crisis o f the Seventeenth Century (Boston, MA: Routledge, 1978). 76 Jean Jacquart, “La Fronde des princes dans la région parisienne et ses conséquences matérielles,” Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine VII (Octobre-Décembre, 1960), 265-270 and 276-278. 77 Jean Meuvret, “Les ocillations de prix des céréals aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles en Angleterre et dans les payes du Bassin Parisien,” Revue d ’ histoire m odem et contemporaine, XVI (Octobre-Décembre 1969), 540. 78 Robin Briggs, Early M odem France 1560-1715 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 36.
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communities into larger towns.79 In the face of growing migrant populations, municipalities, overwhelmed with new arrivals, and having insufficient resources to succor them, compensated by assisting only those who had been bom within their parishes.80 As strangers, the destitute were not welcome in towns and cities where authorities were short of reserves. The inevitable tensions that arose in urban centers between the desperate refugees and the town residents were increasingly reflected in attitudes towards the poor and needy. The poor, once seen as worthy Christians who offered their social betters the opportunity for salvation through the practice of good works, were transformed in the eyes of town dwellers (Catholics and Protestants alike) into criminal and dangerous parasites.81 By the late medieval and into the early modern period, Christians of all persuasions were increasingly perceiving the destitute as a dangerous social element.82 Not all of the poor could be written off as being morally corrupt and dangerous, and European perceptions of the value of charity were not extinguished in one blow, but people increasingly reorganized their efforts at poor relief along a moral continuum, reflecting an intellectual distinction made between the “deserving” and the “undeserving” poor. The former consisted of children, the elderly, pregnant women and women with small children, and the disabled; in short, people not expected to earn their own way.83 Institutions helped the “deserving” poor to make ends meet by giving them food, money, and clothing. In France, the “deserving” poor could also enter the national system of hôpitauxgénéraux, where they received food and shelter.84
79 Pierre Goubert, “En Beauvais: Problèmes démographiques du XVIIe siècle,” Annales Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations VII (Oct.-Dec. 1952), 467-468. See also, Raymond Mentzer, “Organizational Endeavour and Charitable Impulse in Sixteenth-Century France: The Care of Protestant Nîmes,” French History, 5/1 (March 1991), 4. For an examination of conditions in the countryside see, Daniel Hickey. “Changing Expressions of Charity in Early Modem France: Some Hypotheses for a Rural Model,” Renaissance and Reformation, 1 (1978), 12-22. 80 Briggs, Early Modem France, 46. 81 Jean-Pierre Gutton, La Société et les pauvres en Europe, XVIe-XVllle siècles (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1974), 97. 82 Natalie Zemon Davis, “Poor Relief, Humanism, and Heresy,” in Society and Culture in Early Modem France (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1975), 24. See also, Brian Pullan, “Catholics and the Poor in Early Modem Europe,” Transactions o f the Royal Historical Society, 26,5 (1976), 17. 83 Robert Jütte, Poverty and Deviance in Early Modem Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 11. Robert Jütte defines “the poor by impotency” and “the poor by casualty.” 84 Colin Jones, The Charitable Imperative: Hospitals and Nursing in Ancien Régime and Revolutionary France (New York: Routledge), 1989. and Olwen H. Hufton, The Poor o f Eighteenth-Century France (New York: Oxford University Press, Clarendon, 1974), 139140
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Charitable providers also assisted the “shame-faced poor,” nobles and others who had fallen on hard times and were unwilling to seek public assistance.85 Confraternities often aided the shame-faced poor privately, to protect their honor and so as to not draw attention to their plight. The “undeserving” poor, on the other hand, were able-bodied adults, especially men, who authorities considered lazy and inherently immoral.86 Lacking a coherent theory of economics, and possessing only the most rudimentary of tools to measure trends, authorities did not correlate the economic misery of their age with the inability of some people to find and keep work. People commonly interpreted poverty as originating in the faults of the poor themselves. Authorities refused aid to the able-bodied; they punished many for their laziness, often imposing brutal corporal punishment or, in the French case, imprisonment in the hôpitaux-généraux, which gradually became institutions of confinement over the course of the seventeenth century.87 Intellectual factors as well as material realities influenced the change in public attitude. Early modem people had been reevaluating their ideas about poverty and the poor since the late Middle Ages. During the Middle Ages, people defined poverty as a normal, and indeed unproblematic, condition. Christian ideology maintained that the poor were an important element of society, giving the wealthy a means through which they could perform good works that might help them to attain salvation. The medieval Church exalted the virtues of poverty, noting that Christ had sanctified poverty during his lifetime.88 As Michel Mollat points out, poverty was a permanent feature of the Middle Ages, and no one expected to eradicate it until the era of the Renaissance and the Reformation.89 Medieval Christians understood charitable giving as a condition of their entry into heaven, and the poor as people who would always be among them.90 Historians often credit Juan Vives’ 1526 treatise, De subventione pauperum, for redefining poverty as a problem of employment. Vives encouraged towns to undertake initiatives to provide the poor with work, and to fund those
85 Christopher Black, “The development of confraternity studies over the past thirty years,” in The Politics o f Ritual Kinship: Confraternities and Social Order in Early M odem Italy, ed Nicholas Terpstra (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 24 and Christopher Black, Italian Confraternities in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 147. 86 Jütte, 2. 87 Jütte, 169. However, there were always a fairly small number of inmates. Jones states that in 1791 there were about 120,000 people in France’s hospitals, out of a population of 20 million, of whom a third to a fifth were indigent. Clearly a very small portion of the poor lived within the hospitals. Jones, The Charitable Imperative, 8. 88 Gutton, 93-94. 89 Michel Mollat, The Poor in the Middle Ages an Essay in Social History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), 1. 90 Mollat, 38.
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who could not work. Equally central was his assumption that amongst the poor were those who would not work even if they could. Government labeled the willful poor a social problem and denied the “undeserving” poor assistance or contained them in hospitals. It would be a mistake, however, to see early modern poor relief as merely a latter-day execution of Vives’ ideas. While early modem people may have found Vives’ analysis of the nature of poverty to be compelling, his proposals for solving the problem were inadequate because towns lacked the means to administer charity. As the historian Colin Jones has documented, many municipalities were devastated during the Wars of Religion. Towns were often too disorganized to create establishments to assist the needy, and national plans for coping with poverty simply did not exist. Jones concludes that municipalities needed the help of the Church to address the problem of poverty, and bishops and religious communities entered the void and provided relief. The record of what actually happened, however, is a bit more complicated than Jones’ model. Natalie Zemon Davis has discovered that some towns in France did institute governmental reforms and established Aumóne générale, at least as early as 1534. It is therefore clear that cities and towns in Protestant and Catholic Europe did begin to contemplate and implement civil poor relief. It is not clear how far these networks of civil relief extended. Certainly it appears that in the chaos of the seventeenth century even where these networks existed, the French State relied upon the assistance of the French Church in looking after the welfare of its people.91 A general transformation in the ways in which early modem people came to give alms is one of the clearer legacies of Vives’ thought. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, lay Catholics and the religious shifted their support to charitable institutions, reducing their earlier practice of distributing money and food directly to the needy, and giving more to groups over which they could exercise more control.92 In some instances, traditional Catholic alms-giving confraternities reorganized the way they distributed charity. Members of the Company of the Holy Sacrament, for example, changed their benevolent activities from providing alms for local distribution to sponsoring large institutions like the 91 H.C.M. Michielse stresses the cooperative nature of relations between Church and municipal officials when implementing new poor relief policies in, H.C.M. Michielse, “Policing the Poor: J. L. Vives and the Sixteenth-Century Origins of Modem Social Administration,” Social Service Review 64, (1990), 1-21. 92 Jutte, 129. “The Counter-Reformation made significant inroads into strategies of philanthropy...another traditional agency of charity profited from the shift in pious donations after the early sixteenth century: the parochial relief organizations known since the later Middle Ages as ‘poor tables’ (maison de I ’aumdne). In terms of the scale of relief provided for the poor, these institutions undoubtedly gained in importance in the early modem period, but one should not forget that even in the post-Reformation period outdoor relief was still complementary and not in opposition to institutionalized charity.”
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Hotel-Dieu (the main hospital responsible for the sick) in Paris.93 Their stated goals were to make the distribution process more effective and to isolate the deserving sick and poor, administering assistance only to those they deemed worthy. On both institutional and local levels, poor relief was becoming a reward for those who adopted appropriate modes of social behavior. Although the Council of Trent discussed the fate of poor parishes in its twenty-fourth session, it never directly addressed the fate of poor people. As in Protestant Europe, Catholic regions saw more institutionalized charity in the sixteenth century, but no single coherent policy was adopted by the Roman Church.94 Given this lack of organization, changes in Catholic policy toward the poor often came from the bottom up, and people like de Paul and de Marillac.
Creating Confraternities of Charity
Vincent de Paul was probably the seventeenth century’s most important innovator of Catholic charitable services. As a founder of both the Company of the Daughters of Charity and the Congregation of the Mission, he challenged the leaders of the Company of the Holy Sacrament, who believed that the poor needed to be imprisoned to be saved. The priests of the Congregation of the Mission evangelized throughout rural France, with the goal of bringing Tridentine Catholicism to the common people and encouraging them to make confessions.95 After the Lazarists preached, they helped local villagers, usually women, create Confraternities of Charity, the first of which they founded in 1617.96 Wealthy married and single women comprised these organizations; they served the local poor by collecting alms and bringing food to the needy.97 De Paul insisted that the local confraternities work closely with the clergy; he understood that relief of the poor was to be both physically and spiritually nutritive. The origins of the Daughters of Charity stem from the reform efforts of de Paul, who in 1617 became curé of the diocese of Chatillon-les-Dombes near Lyons. De Paul’s reputation as an exemplary cleric rested upon his behavior as a priest and spiritual advisor. Standard hagiographies stress that de Paul went to 93 Richard Francis Elmore, “The Origins of the Hôpital-Général of Paris,” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 1975), 67 and Emmanuel Chill, “The Company of the Holy Sacrament, 1660-1666: Social Aspects of the French Counter-Reformation,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1960), 122-124. 94 Jtitte, 129. 95 Pierre Coste, Monsieur Vincent: le grand saint du grand siècle. Volumes I-III (Paris: Desclée de Brouer et cie Éditeurs, 1934), I: 137. 96 Frances Ryan and John E. Rybolt, Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac: Rules, Conferences, and Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1995), 18. 97 R.P. Chalumeau, “L’assistance aux malades pauvres au XVIIe siècle,” XVIle Siècle, 90, 1 (1971), 77. See also, Pierre Coste, I: 84.
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Chátillon-les-Dombes to counter an increasing Huguenot presence that was, in part, a result of the immoral behavior and ignorance of the local priests, who were unable to instruct their flocks in orthodox Catholicism.98 However, Bernard Pujo argues that the parish was healthy, with many communicants and two new chapels in place by the time of de Paul’s arrival.99 It is true that de Paul was often mortified at the state of the rural clergy when he preached his missions, and eventually he opened seminaries to educate priests, but Chátillon-les-Dombes was a robust parish. Confraternities to help the poor developed quickly in this parish and survived after the curé’s departure. Throughout his career, de Paul did concentrate on improving the priests’ education and behavior, and challenging especially the priests’ practice of keeping concubines.100 The paucity of Catholic lay education, however, was an immense issue that could not be resolved in a single visit. Lacking the resources to retrain the local clergy, de Paul sought to fulfill the dictates of Trent by cultivating the devotional practices of his parishioners, involving the flock more directly in its own education and spiritual growth. Like other great reformers of the age, he spent considerable energy ministering to women.101 In the summer of 1617, he founded his first Confraternity of Charity in Chátillon-les-Dombes.102 He built his Confraternity around a core of twenty “virtuous women”, who were well off and married.103 These “virtuous women” took turns making daily visits to the sick and poor, bringing them food to meet their corporeal needs. They also talked to the poor about religious matters, thus addressing their spiritual needs.104 This move was quite radical: while the twenty women were not permitted to preach, and were limited in their ministry to service of the poor, they were invested with the powers of lay ministry. Confraternities commonly practiced forms of charity and lay ministry, but most were organizations of men, not of women. Although de Paul only resided in Chátillon-les-Dombes for five months, the Confraternity survived 98 Luigi Mezzadri, A Short Life o f Saint Vincent de Paul (Dublin: The Columba Press, 1992), 20. 99 Bernard Pujo, Vincent de Paul, the Trailblazer (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 63. 100 Pierre Coste, Monsieur Vincent: le grand saint du grand siècle. Volumes I-III (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer et d e Éditeurs, 1934), I: 76. 101 François de Sales also devoted considerable energy to ministering to women, see Roger Devos, Vie religieuse féminine et société: Vorigin sociale des Visitandines d ’Annecy aux XVlle et XVIIIe siècles (Annecy: Académie Salésienne, 1973) and Wendy M. Wright and Joseph F. Powers, Francis de Sales, Jean de Chantal: Letters o f Spiritual Direction (New York: Paulist Press, 1988). 102 R.P. Chalumeau, “L’assistance aux malades pauvres au XVIIe siècle,” XVlle Siècle, 90, 1 (1971), 77. 103 Coste, Monsieur Vincent, I: 84. 104 Black, Italian Confraternities , 10. Confraternities existed to provide good works which were to benefit the donor and the recipient. Good works were more than simply giving alms, they were a path to justification and salvation for the donor more than for the recipient.
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his departure, and served as a prototype for subsequent Confraternities of Charity that he would create.105 De Paul concurrently worked to establish a religious order of men who served rural communities. Eight years after his work in Châtillon-les-Dombes, de Paul founded the Congregation of the Mission, an order of secular priests who proselytized in regions of the countryside where people were often ignorant of Catholic teachings.106 The priests of the Mission, who were educated at the seminary of Saint-Lazare in Paris, traveled across rural France hearing confessions and spreading orthodox doctrine. The goal of the Lazarists was primarily evangelical, and in most cases the priests did not reside permanently in the villages they visited; instead, they formed Confraternities of Charity before leaving. In so doing, they created communities dedicated to serving the poor and practicing reformed spirituality. De Paul and the Lazarists relied on these new Confraternities to spread their message—a procedure that, while practical, left the training of rural Catholics in the hands of those with little formal training themselves.107 De Paul’s attempts to expound reformed Catholic teachings, therefore, was conducted in a fairly rough and ready manner, and it is clear that those in the geographic peripheries of France would need supplementary education for a fuller understanding of the Catholic Reformation message.108 The Daughters of Charity, like the Congregation of the Mission and the Confraternities of Charity, was an expression of de Paul’s conviction that one served God by serving the poor.109 De Paul himself did not write theological treatises and did not want his ideas published. It was only with the posthumous publication of his conferences and letters that his writings became accessible. André Dodin, a biographer of de Paul and a priest of the Mission, asserts that there are three main tenets of de Paul’s theology: “life must expand constantly through action; life and action receive their depth and truth only through faith; and life lived in faith must grow and adapt, in order to remain faithful to the goal of eternal life.” According to de Paul, “to be a Christian, and to see a brother in affliction and not weep with him, or feel for him in his illness, is to be devoid of charity, and without humility. Let us strive to have sentiments of grief and compassion for our neighbor. In the exercise of Christian virtue let us do what, in people of the world,
105 Mezzadri, Short L ift, 21. 106 See Jean Delumeau, Le Catholicisme entre Luther et Voltaire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971) for a fuller discussion of efforts made to educate the European population about religion in early modem Europe. 107 Coste, Monsieur Vincent, 1:533, 108 Mezzadri, Short Life, 20. 109 André Dodin, Vincent de Paul and Charity: a Contemporary Portrait o f His Life and Apostolic Spirit (New York: New City Press, 1993), 58-61 and Abbé Maynard, Virtues and Spiritual Doctrine o f Saint Vincent de Paul (St. Louis, MO: Vincentian Foreign Mission Press, 1961 [1864]), 105
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is often prompted by human respect.” It was within this rubric of morality that de Paul created the Congregation of the Mission and the Daughters of Charity. Confronted with the need to create a more formal system of Catholic charitable services and education, de Paul employed both women and men. The priests of the Mission attended to the rural poor and the Confraternities of Charity expanded their scope to serve the needs of the poor in more parishes, especially around Paris. In 1629, de Paul appointed Louise de Marillac, a Lady of Charity who had been performing benevolent works under his direction for four years, as supervisor of the Confraternities in and around Paris. In so doing, de Paul was taking a significant step: he was uniting the local Confraternities into a single, organized, administered entity that would be supervised by a single individual. To this end, de Paul invested de Marillac with significant powers: he requested that she visit the Confraternities regularly and assure that their members were adhering to the Confraternity’s rule. In her correspondence with de Paul, they agreed that she would visit each Parisian confraternity once every eight to ten days.1101According to the rule: “[The Confraternity of Charity] shall be instituted in the Parish Church [by virtuous women and girls]...its end is to honor Our Lord Jesus Christ, as its Patron, and His Holy Mother; to assist the sick poor of the Parish where it is established... .”1U De Marillac was, in many ways, an ideal choice of supervisor for the Confraternities. A member of the aristocracy, de Marillac had sufficient contacts with other nobles and the French royal family to lend credibility to her authority, and despite her illegitimacy, presented a face that was recognizably pious and respectable to most members of French society. De Marillac, however, was overwhelmed with raising her lackluster son, and lacked confidence early on, and thus she relied heavily upon de Paul as her spiritual advisor. Over the course of the 1630s and 1640s she became a self-assured leader, and she consistently acted in a more definitive manner than did de Paul. The choice of de Marillac reflected recognition on the part of de Paul that spiritual trends within French society and the women at their center largely influenced early modem charity. The women interested in the Confraternities were generally attracted to the dévote movement, which prioritized pious living and prayer-filled “regulated” lives.11012 Significantly, the Dévots were also a political party in France, the leaders of which sought to protect “pure” Catholicism from pragmatic political solutions that might include compromise with the Huguenot minority.113 The ideas of Dévots reflected those of the Catholic League of the 110 Louise de Marillac, Écrits spirituels, ed. Élisabeth Charpy (Paris: Filles de la Charité, 1983), letter 144. 111 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, “Règlement de la Charité,” 704. 112 Louis Chatellier, The Europe o f the Devout: The Catholic Reformation and the Formation o f a New Society, trans. Jean Birrell (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 33. 113 Rapley, The Dévotes, 75.
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sixteenth century.114 That is not to say, however, that all pious individuals who considered themselves dévotes were members of the political party or endorsed strict measures against the Huguenots. While de Marillac’s uncles were active in the Dévot party, she and her father were not. The missions preached by the Lazarists infused dévote women with energy to help those in need and at first they diligently worked to ease the suffering of the sick and poor; but the sermons were not tirades against the Protestants or against the king’s foreign policy decisions. De Marillac had the pedigree to speak to dévote women, and understood the realities of working with the wealthy and spiritually conscious. De Paul’s wisdom in choosing de Marillac was made clear almost immediately, as she acted quickly and decisively to put the organization on a firm footing. De Paul tended to be a cautious and slow mover, whereas de Marillac more quickly assessed situations and sought remedies for problems; it was her hand that guided the Company in its formation while de Paul had many other projects vying for his attention. De Paul did not always appreciate de Marillac’s insistence upon action: “Mon Dieu! Mademoiselle, how fortunate you are to possess the antidote for eagerness.”115 In the absence of a strong leader with spiritual authority, the local Confraternities had lapsed in observing de Paul’s original imperatives. This was especially problematic in the cities. In towns and villages, well-off local women could navigate their neighborhoods and assist the needy. In the capital city, Confraternities of Charity had memberships of noble and wealthy women who could not do the necessary practical work because they often could not visit the poorest and most dangerous of the city’s districts. Over time, many of the Confraternity members became unreliable providers of aid. Many of the ladies sent servants to perform their duties, making service to the poor inconsistent at best, and undermining the spiritual content of the work. De Marillac was disappointed that their passion was waning and that they were willing to send their servants to visit the poor in their place.116 In a letter to de Paul in May of 1630, de Marillac stated: The Ladies of Charity have become a bit less fervent in the exercise of charity. They often fail to visit the sick on their appointed days... Moreover, [the treasurer] and the Superioress have sometimes been satisfied with simply giving money to the sick. They have also given money to other needy persons and have frequently neglected to supply meat, preferring to give the sick eggs or some other thing they fancied.117
114 Mark Greengrass, France in the Age o f Henri IV: The Struggle fo r Stability (New York: Longman, 1995), 43. 115 De Paul, Correspondance, I: Lettre 406. 116 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 8. 117 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 3b.
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Such behavior was unacceptable because it confounded de Paul and de Marillac’s ideal of piety as Christ-like service to the poor. The Confraternity was one of Charity because each member was to serve God through serving the needy; anything less undermined the Confraternity’s mission. De Paul responded to de Marillac by writing, “if you now relieve each one at the Charity of the obligation of getting the food cooked, you will never again be able to restore this practice... and in this way your Charity will be reduced to failure.”118 De Marillac was confronted with a serious quandary: how to preserve the position of the Ladies of Charity without losing the community’s direct religious devotion to the poor. De Marillac’s dilemma was complex, involving more than merely compelling the Ladies to resume their work. As a practical matter, the vast majority of the Ladies lacked the skills necessary to be on the front lines of poor relief. Unlike de Marillac, who had experience maintaining a household (while a youth in the pension and as an adult who lived in constrained circumstances), few of the Ladies knew how to cook or how to nurse the sick. These were jobs done by their servants. Consequently, while it was spiritually valuable for the Ladies to undertake these tasks as a way of practicing humility, it was not a viable way to provide assistance to the poor. In addition, real issues of security and social pressure often made it awkward, if not impossible, for a Lady to have regular contact with the poor in an intimate setting. It was obvious to de Marillac that the institutions would not survive if they relied upon the Ladies to provide hands-on aid to the needy, so she had to reconceptualize the structure of the organization. De Marillac’s challenge was to maintain the Ladies’ participation in the Confraternities, and their financial and political backing for charitable works, while redirecting the nature of their service to better suit their abilities. The Ladies’ function also had to be consonant with the Tridentine goal of fostering lay spirituality. Over the next few years, de Marillac changed the Ladies’ vocation from social service to management. The Ladies became something of a board of directors as well as the group’s principal fundraisers. The Ladies’ comrades in this charitable effort were the Daughters of Charity, women of lesser birth who undertook the task of caring for the poor and sick. While the Ladies became administrators, de Marillac expanded the scope of whom she admitted to the Confraternity, by encouraging women from peasant and artisan families to join; they would become known as “Daughters” of Charity.119 What the Daughters lacked in financial assets, they made up for in their 118 Vincent de Paul, Saint Vincent de Paul Correspondance, Entretiens, Documents. 14 Volumes, ed Pierre Coste (Paris: Librairie Lecoffre, 1920-1926), I: 70. This work was translated by Helen Marie Law, John Marie Poole, James R. King and Francis Germovnik, all of whom are members of the Daughters of Charity or Congregation of the Mission, as Vincent de Paul: Correspondence, Conferences, Documents (New York: New City Press, 1985. 119 For a fuller discussion of the Company of the Daughters o f Charity's definition o f itself as a confraternity, see Susan Dinan, “Confraternities as a Venue for Female Activism during the Catholic Reformation,” in Confraternities and Catholic Reform in Italy, France and
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ability to cook and to provide practical medical care. Some of the Daughters were attracted to the Company because they had heard the preaching from the Lazarists’ missions; others saw the Confraternities in action in their villages or towns, and sought to join them.120 In community accounts, the hand of God sent the first “peasant girl” to the community when Marguerite Naseau, an uneducated shepherdess, asked de Paul if she could serve a Parisian Confraternity of Charity in 1630 after she heard him preach. She approached de Paul, requesting his permission to provide charitable assistance to the poor in Paris as she did in her village of Suresnes, where she nursed the sick and was learning to read in order to teach others.121 Her arrival delighted de Marillac, who had been advocating that they take in women of modest means to do the work of the Confraternity.122 When de Paul and de Marillac accepted her into the Confraternity, they quickly recognized that Naseau possessed all of the practical skills that the Ladies of Charity lacked—she was a competent cook, a patient teacher, and a skilled healer. Naseau’s simple manners and peasant background also made her an attractive addition to the community. As she exemplified, at least to de Paul, a model of pious femininity, Naseau changed the Company forever. Naseau died while working among the plague-stricken in 1633, and she became the archetype for all subsequent Daughters of Charity. Naseau embodied the virtues of simplicity and generosity that de Paul and de Marillac valued.123 Naseau was also the subject of one of de Paul’s Conferences, talks to the community that sought to delineate appropriate behavior for the Daughters, about the virtues of simple country girls.124 Following Naseau, many other young women entered the Confraternity of Charity, though she may well have been an exception to the general rule of who joined the Daughters of Charity.125 The Company’s records indicate that a minority of the Daughters of Charity came from her peasant Spain, eds. John Patrick Donnelly and Michael W. Maher (Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1999), 191-214. 120 For example, see de Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 45. De Marillac wrote to the Abbé de Vaux in 1641 in response to his letter requesting permission to send a local girl to Paris to be trained as a Daughter of Charity. This girl knew of the Company of the Daughters of Charity because of its work in the hospital in Angers. 121 Élisabeth Charpy, Petite vie de Louise de Marillac (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1991), 23. 122 Pujo, Vincent de Paul, 102. 123 It was not unusual for Daughters to get sick and die on the job. Working amongst the sick was dangerous, in a letter to two sick Daughters in Calais dated 1657, de Marillac tells them that two other Daughters of Charity have recently died and another has been severely ill for eight days. Many recruits died young, either because of the intensity of their work or because of their proximity to the sick. AMMFC, 1033/78. 124 In July 1642 de Paul addressed a conference to the Daughters entitled, “On the Virtues of Marguerite Naseau” and in January 1643, “On Imitating the Conduct of Country Girls.” See The Conferences o f St. Vincent de Paul to the Sisters o f Charity, trans. Joseph Leonard, C.M. (Westminister, MD: The Newman Press, 1952), 71-85. 125 Joseph I. Dirvin, Louise de Marillac (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1970), 113.
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background. Most were the daughters of artisans; many had fathers who worked in textile trades. Most of the recruits came from parishes in northern France, a major center of cloth production.126 These young women were skilled in cooking and healing, and some were literate. Like Naseau, they had few opportunities for professional careers, and the Daughters of Charity provided them with chances for personal and spiritual advancement that marriage would have denied them. Ironically, the organization’s viable structure endangered its very existence. By the mid— 1630s, the Daughters of Charity were visible in many Parisian parishes. In 1634, the community adopted its first “petit reglement,” and in the early 1640s its first simple vows. As young, single women came to Paris to live with de Marillac and work under her direction, the Confraternity began to resemble a religious order.127 Such a resemblance was dangerous because, as noted earlier, the Council of Trent had decreed that all religious orders of women must live within convent walls. Thus, de Paul and de Marillac’s efforts to create a professionalized Confraternity of Charity could have been easily frustrated at the hands of wellmeaning, reform-minded bishops. De Paul faced a similar challenge in defining his Congregation of the Mission. He wanted his priests to make a vow of stability, which would keep them from leaving to join another order. Taking orders, though, would convert the Congregation of the Mission into a religious order, which would make it “directly subordinate to Rome,” something de Paul opposed.128 In short, de Paul wanted the priests of the mission to remain secular priests, and in 1655 Pope Alexander VIII allowed members of the Congregation of the Mission to take simple vows of poverty, obedience, chastity, and stability.129 De Marillac and de Paul strategically used simple vows to elude the limitations that they applied to religious orders. According to de Paul, “It cannot be maintained [by any members of the Company] that the Daughters of Charity are religious, because they could not be Daughters of Charity if they were, for to be a religious, one must be cloistered.”130 Thus, de Paul actively recognized that it was critical for the Daughters to be aware of public appearances, and to carefully manage their Company so as to avoid falling under Tridentine rules for enclosure. In these efforts, de Paul and de Marillac were successful—they evaded the decree on enclosure so that the Daughters could undertake the missionary works lauded by the Councilors at Trent, most importantly educating the laity about their faith.131 126 Archives Nationales (AN), LL. 1664, Registre de la ville d ’Eu. 127 AMMFC, 187, letter from Monsieur Lambert, a priest of the Congregation of the Mission, to Barbe Angiboust, a Daughter of Charity at Richelieu, dated 5/13/1641. 128Pujo, 136. 129 Pujo, 213. 130 De Paul, Correspondence, IX: 662. 131 Marie-Hélène Froeschle-Chopart, “Étude des confréries: problèmes et méthode,” Provence historique, XXXIV, 136 (1984), 119, see for a discussion of the difficulties of
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It is relevant to ask whether the founders were acting in good faith when they defined the Daughters of Charity as a Confraternity, not a religious order. Were these two bastions of Catholic orthodoxy, Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, engaged in an elaborate act of deception, or did the Daughters of Charity actually resemble a traditional confraternity? According to Christopher Black, confraternities in early modern Europe were “groups of people who [came] together in conformity with certain rules to promote their religious life in common, who [did] not take the vows of an order and generally live[d] in the secular world.”132 Confraternities were generally organizations of the laity, united for penitential ceremonies and charitable works.133 Most confraternities were exclusively male, and those that had female members usually relegated them to secondary positions.134 Some exclusively female confraternities did exist, but in those the members were generally married women or widows whose participation comprised primarily private, contemplative devotion.135 De Paul and de Marillac studying confraternities in France. Froeschle-Chopart argues that the sources make investigating early modem French confraternities challenging; for example, the inventories are ambiguous, and it is difficult to compare inventories from different communities. 132 Black, Italian Confraternities, 23. See also Nicholas Terpstra, “Death and Dying in Renaissance Confraternities,” in Crossing the Boundaries: Christian Piety and the Arts in Italian Medieval and Renaissance Confraternities ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), 194. 133 Black, Italian Confraternities, 25. See Gabriel Le Bras, Études de Sociologie Religieuse (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955-1956), 454, and D. Henry Dieterich, “Confraternities and Lay Leadership in Sixteenth-Century Liège,” Renaissance and ReformationJRenaissance et Réforme, XXV, 1 (1989), 17, for a discussion of French confraternities as challenge to and supporters of parish authority. 134 Black, Italian Confraternities, 35. See also Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Sacred and the Body Social in Sixteenth-Century Lyon,” Past and Present, 90 (1981), 51 in which Davis states that Lyonnais confraternities were mostly limited to men; Maureen Flynn, “Rituals of Solidarity in Castilian Confraternities,” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme, XXV, 1 (1989), 62, in which Flynn states that Castilian women only had equal rights in confraternities if they founded their own because as members of male confraternities they did not possess voting or other rights; and Pierre Lançon, “Les Confrères du Rosaire en Rouergue aux XXIe et XVIIe siècles,” Annales du Midi, 96, 166 (1984), 123, for a discussion of women in confraternities of the rosary where they performed rituals in private that fitted with their domestic lives. 135 Merry E. Wiesner, “Beyond Women and the Family: Towards a Gender Analysis of the Reformation,” Sixteenth Century Journal, XVIII, 3 (1987), 317. In 1987 Merry Wiesner wrote that historians needed to apply gender analysis to the Reformation: “We have to use our new information to completely rethink categories of analysis and ways of asking questions in order to integrate the new material and come up with a better understanding of the period. We need to develop a methodology of gender analysis now... .” Historians have made great advances in examining the gender history of the Reformation in the past decade, those who analyze the place of gender in Catholic Reformation confraternities include, Kathryn Norberg, “Women, the Family, and the Counter-Reformation: Women’s Confraternities in the 17th Century,” Proceedings o f the Annual Meeting o f the Western
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were creating a highly unusual confraternity—one that had not only a female leadership, but also had a significant body of unmarried female participants engaged in public service. In the first operational years of the Confraternity of Charity, when married wealthy women performed philanthropic acts, the Ladies of Charity did resemble a conventional female confraternity.136 After 1633, when young unmarried women entered the organization, lived communally in a Motherhouse, took simple vows and lived according to a rudimentary rule, they bore more resemblance to members of a traditional order than to a confraternity.137 Thus it would seem that de Marillac and de Paul’s insistence that the women continue to call themselves members of a confraternity was a deliberate effort to mislead Church authorities in order to preserve the non-cloistered status of the Company. Colin Jones goes so far as to characterize their efforts to circumvent Trent as “torturous and frequently cunning.”138 Although I am not convinced that their efforts were “torturous,” they certainly were cunning, and his interpretation is reinforced by the fact that de Paul and de Marillac were both aware of the existence of Visitandines and the Ursulines, similar charitable communities, which had been cloistered in conformity with the rules of Trent. It could be a small world, and de Paul served as Superior of the Visitandines in Paris at the request of François de Sales and Jeanne de Chantal.139 The same Bishop, Denis de Marquemont of Lyon, who secured de Paul’s appointment in Châtillon-lesDombes also enclosed the Visitation nuns in Lyon.140 De Paul and de Marillac used the title Company or Confraternity of Charity before and after their organization was granted official approbation from the Bishop of Paris and Pope Clement IX in 1668. The misrepresentation of the nature of the Community Society fo r French History, 6 (1978). Robert Harding, “The Mobilization of Confraternities Against the Reformation in France,” Sixteenth Century Journal, XI: 2 (1980), 98-99. Flynn, “Rituals of Solidarity in Castilian Confraternities,” 61-62, and Nicholas Terpstra, “Women in the Brotherhood: Gender, Class, and Politics in Renaissance Bolognese Confraternities,” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme, XXVI, 3 (1990), 199. 136 The Daughters of Charity did retain some habits common to female confraternities. AMMFC, 1090/132 a letter from Mathurine Guérin to Françoise, dated 9/26/1660 Guérin states that the Daughters' responsibilities include not only service to the poor but also duties to the church such as washing the altar linens. 137 The Company of the Daughters of Charity somewhat resembled the communities of beatas in Seville described by Mary Elizabeth Perry, Gender and Disorder in Early Modem Seville (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990). 138 Colin Jones, “Perspectives on Poor Relief, Health Care and the Counter Reformation in France,” in Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter-Reformation Europe, eds. Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham, and Jon Arrizabalaga (New York: Routledge, 1999), 232. Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press), 1980. 139 Coste, Monsieur Vincent, I: 136. 140 Pujo, 63.
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continued through 1668, when official Church recognition secured the noncloistered status of the Daughters of Charity. When Clement IX approved the Company, he defined it as a confraternity, not a religious order. As the Company consolidated and professionalized, it also began to place more and more emphasis on training Daughters to behave in ways that were neither religious nor secular. De Marillac and de Paul stressed the unique and novel status of the Daughters of Charity.141 In a very interesting statement, de Paul wrote, “it has been 800 years or so since women have had public roles in the Church. Previously, there had been some, called Deaconesses, who were charged with grouping women together in the churches and instructing them on the ceremonies which were then in use. However, about the time of Charlemagne, by the secret plan of Divine Providence, this practice ceased and your sex was deprived of any role and has had none since. Now this same Providence has called upon some of you, in our day, to supply for the needs of the sick poor... .”142 For de Paul there was no connection between the Daughters of Charity and the Beguines of the Middle Ages who had been the target of Tridentine reforms; the Daughters picked up where the Deaconesses of the eighth century left off. Under the direction of de Paul and de Marillac, the Daughters crafted a social identity. Their motivations were simple and direct: if the Daughters behaved like nuns, local bishops could enclose them; if they acted like worldly single women, their neighbors would question their vocational sincerity. The new identity, that of pious lay women with an active spiritual mission of charity, granted them the freedom to move in public and to express their vocation, while protecting them from social scandal. Pierre Coste, an historian of the Daughters of Charity asserted, “the new Institute presented an almost entirely new type of religious life. The Daughters of Charity were not, like the members of other communities of women, confined to their homes; they were perfectly free to walk about the streets, and this was even a duty inasmuch as their functions called them to leave their houses and enter those of the poor.” Coste uses “Institute” in describing the Daughters of Charity, in part, because it is an ambiguous term that reflects the Daughters’ status.143 Religious institutes share vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience and are recognized by a Church authority. They may be under the auspices of a bishop or the Pope, and they may be clerical, lay, contemplative or active. Secular institutes, on the other hand, are groups of lay people who live a consecrated life in the world. The Daughters of Charity possessed aspects of both religious and secular institutes in their early years. Ultimately they were recognized as an active religious institute.
141 De Paul, Correspondance, X: 809-810. 142 De Paul, Correspondance, X: 809-810. 143 Coste, Monsieur Vincent, I: 396.
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The creation of this new identity can be seen in some of the specific rules instructing the Daughters on how to present themselves in public. For instance: when traveling to or from a foundation, the Daughters were to sit together in a coach “their veil shall be modesty in their glances, words and actions.”144 De Paul wrote about the Daughters, They should consider that although they do not belong to a religious order, that state not being compatible with the duties of their vocation, yet as they are much more exposed to the world than nuns; their monastery being generally no other than the abode of the sick; their cell, a hired room; their chapel, the parish church; their cloister, the streets or wards of hospitals; their enclosure, obedience; their grate, the fear of God; and their veil, holy modesty—they are obliged on this account to lead as virtuous a life as if they were professed in a religious order; to conduct themselves wherever they mingle with the world with as much recollection, purity of heart and body, detachment from creatures; and to give as much edification as nuns in the seclusion of their monasteries.145
De Paul lets on more here than he might have liked to admit—that the analogy between the Daughters and nuns was simply too close to avoid making. This parallelism would crop up repeatedly, despite the best efforts of the founders to repress it. If the Daughters were endangered by the possibility that they would be defined as nuns, they were also at risk of being labeled as “worldly women.” The founders took great pains to prevent any possibility that scandalous behavior might emerge and taint the reputation of the community. De Marillac and de Paul were careful not to admit women who might have “fallen” or been corrupted in their ways. This concern in evident in a letter drafted in August 1650 by de Marillac to the Abbé de Vaux, who helped to oversee the Daughters of Charity at the hospital in Angers. De Marillac was concerned about new recruits that the Daughters in Angers planned to send to the Motherhouse in Paris. De Marillac wrote, “try to find out if the constant chatter of the one...is not due to the frivolity and habits she contracted in the household where she worked. This attitude would certainly not be suitable for us. We accept no one if there is the slightest suspicion that she has fallen.”146 It was essential that the Daughters’ behavior demonstrate their modesty and commitment to God. Once in the Motherhouse, or later at the seminary at Eu, de Marillac and other Daughters who had been in the community for several years
144 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, “Pratiques que nos Soeurs doivent faire sur les chemins en allant en leurs petites foundations”, 726. 145 Ryan and Rybolt, 169. 146 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 103.
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provided instruction to further the novices in spiritual and professional development, and to shield the Company from scandal. Along with her fears that the Company could suffer ill repute through immoral conduct, de Marillac was concerned that Daughters might join the organization for the wrong reasons. De Marillac was especially concerned that women would join her community with the hope of coming to Paris to experience city life rather than to experience sincere vocation. Against that possibility, Daughters explicitly demonstrated to all potential recruits what the Company expected of them before sending them to Paris to begin their training.147 Each woman had to bring enough money to cover the cost of her return fare home, in case the Company chose not to admit her after her training as a postulant.148 The Company required women to return to their families if they found community life to be too grueling; they could not remain in Paris alone.149 De Marillac was careful to dismiss any woman she found unfit either physically or spiritually, despite the constant demand for Daughters to serve new villages and for additional Daughters in existing communities. The Daughters of Charity developed a unique mode of behavior that separated them from laywomen and nuns. The Daughters’ labors were an extension of sanctioned women’s work and generally earned them praise, not censure.150 The Daughters of Charity nursed the sick in their homes and in hospitals and hospices.151 According to Merry Wiesner, contemporaries recognized nursing, like instructing girls and caring for orphans, as within the acceptable realm of women’s work.152 Families expected women to provide food, medical services and basic education to their family members.153 For generations, spiritually-motivated 147 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 362. 148 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 29. 149 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 557b. 150 For example, Ryan and Rybolt, 51 “as the work spread, so did the reputation for quality service of the young women trained by Louise. Vincent would rejoice that ‘there are so many requests for them from everywhere’ and, indeed, there soon would be.” Although Ryan and Rybolt write in a hagiographie tone this citation provides a sense of the excitement that accompanied the expansion of the Daughters of Charity. 151 See, for example, AN, S. 6160, “Contrat d’Établissement d ’Arras: Contrat d ’Établissement de l’École de Saint-Jacque,” “Contrat d’Établissement des Invalides,” and “Contrat d’Établissement des Enfans-Trouvées.” 152 Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modem Europe, 94. 153 For example see, AN, S. 6161a. Contrat d ’Établissement de Bellême. The Daughters of Charity were contracted to serve the sick poor in the parish, as well as to direct and staff a school for girls, “It is known that the superior and officers are obliged to supply three daughters from this Company perpetually for the service of the sick poor at this hospital. In the realm of the temporal service to the sick poor the Daughters of Charity will be entirely under the authority of their directors and administrators of this hospital. One of these Daughters of Charity will instruct the girls of this village of Bellême and the parish of St. Martin of old Bellême in the principles of this Catholic religion, apostolic and Roman, and
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women had visited the poor in their parishes.*154 In medieval and Renaissance religious orders, nuns had nursed the sick and educated the young prior to the Council of Trent. Thus, while the Daughters did create a new identity that challenged Tridentine Catholicism, this identity recalled earlier forms of women’s service. That the Daughters possessed more mobility in French society did not mean they were free to make choices about where they lived and worked. In a letter to a priest of the Congregation of the Mission in 1658, de Marillac warned him to caution potential recruits who “must be informed that it is not a religious house; nor is it a hospital from which they will never be moved. Rather they must continuously go to seek out the sick poor, in various places, in any kind of weather and at predetermined times.” De Marillac continued, “they will be very poorly clothed and nourished and will never wear anything on their heads except a linen comette in cases of great necessity.”155 Here, de Marillac is alluding to the fact that the freedom granted to the Daughters was the freedom granted to peasant women—the freedom to move out of necessity, and the freedom to dedicate themselves to a life of service and that this freedom required emulating the lifestyle of peasant women. The new identity did permit the Daughters to move freely, yet did not threaten the French social order—indeed, it reinforced it.
How did the Daughters of Charity Retain their Active Vocation?
The Daughters of Charity succeeded in creating and maintaining their active vocation because of society’s need for poor relief. The Daughters provided France with an inexpensive corps of social workers. They administered and staffed many municipal hospitals as well as Paris’s main orphanage, insane asylum, and hospice. In Paris, the Daughters’ freedom from enclosure did superficially undermine the disciplinary goals of Trent. Single, unmarried women had access to public realms and to the poor. Their liberties, however, also supported the spirit of Trent because the Daughters brought a message of reformed Catholicism to the poor. More importantly, the Daughters of Charity were one of few groups that were not only willing, but also able, to provide poor relief in an organized and professional manner. Finally, they served important functions in creating a new vision of female piety in early modem society. Hence, the Daughters were quickly able to not only enter France’s hospitals, hospices, and orphanages, but also work in girls’ schools and as catechizers for the poor. They were involved in the Catholic Reformation’s
also will show them how to write.” 154 Barbara B. Diefendorf, “From Penitence to Charity: The Practice o f Piety in CounterReformation Paris,” Vincentian Heritage, 14: 1 (1993), 37-56. 155 De Marillac Écrits spirituels, Lettre 561.
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social, evangelical, and educational work, that nuns were unable, and others were unwilling, to do. That the Daughters of Charity fulfilled important needs within French society is insufficient by itself to explain how they survived with their vocation intact. De Marillac and de Paul also astutely formed alliances with members of the clergy and the government, and relied on those key allies to support and protect the new Company. Jean-François-Paul de Gondi helped the Daughters retain their unenclosed lifestyle and active vocation. He was the Bishop of Paris from 1622, and as Cardinal de Retz from 1652 until his death in 1679. Despite his infamy as a sexual and political rogue, he recognized the importance of the Daughters’ vocation and granted them official recognition and the protection that accompanied it. His espousal of the Company originated, in part, from his personal relationship with de Paul. De Paul had served as spiritual guide and tutor in the household of Philippe Emmanuel de Gondi, General of the Royal Galleys and father of the future Bishop. Although de Paul left the household when Jean-François-Paul was four, de Paul maintained a relationship with the future Cardinal. Jean-François-Paul ultimately proved to be an important supporter of de Paul’s fledgling communities. Not only did he make de Paul the director of the Collège des Bons-Enfants, Jean-FrançoisPaul also approved the foundation of the Congregation of the Mission, and allowed de Paul to establish the Congregation at Saint-Lazare.156 Most importantly for this discussion, in 1646 Gondi granted the Company of Daughters of Charity his formal approbation.157 The next year the Queen appealed to the Pope to request that upon the death of de Paul a Superior of the Mission direct the Company, and not a bishop.158 Gondi’s approbation of the Daughters of Charity did not proceed linearly. The initial document of official approbation, issued in 1646, was mysteriously reported lost by de Marillac, and in 1655 the Bishop of Paris, who by then had become the Cardinal de Retz, signed a second statement of approbation.159 De Marillac wrote a letter to de Paul in which she describes the first declaration of approbation and suggests modifications. The difference between the two versions 156 J.H.M. Salmon, Cardinal de Retz: The Anatomy o f a Conspirator (Great Britain: The Macmillan Company, 1969), 20. For a more complete discussion of the support the Bishop provided de Paul see, de Paul, Correspondence, I 103. 157 Pierre Coste,. Les Filles de la Charité (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1933), 28. 158 De Paul, Correspondence, XIII 566-7. 159 De Marillac, Écrits sprituels, Lettre 333. In 1651 de Marillac wrote to de Paul stating that she did not have a copy of the 1646 letter of approbation: “I have found no document pertaining to the foundation. However, I recall that one day (30 May 1647) you read to us the petition you had presented to the Most Reverend Bishop of Paris. You followed this with a reading of our Rule. Thinking that the text should remain with us, I asked you for it. I believe that the reason we never received it was because there were still modifications to be made in it.”
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of this document is important. In the original draft the Bishop provided a conditional approval of the Daughters of Charity, declaring that after de Paul’s death, the Daughters of Charity would be directed by local bishops. In the second version of the document, signed in 1655, the newly appointed Cardinal de Retz left the control of the Company in the hands of the Superior General of the Congregation of the Mission.160 This change, which was orchestrated by de Marillac during the writing of the second document, reflected her conviction that the Company had a better chance of remaining true to its mission and escaping enclosure if the Congregation of the Mission oversaw it.161 De Marillac’s approach was not accidental. Her decision to maintain direct control over all of her Daughters while allowing the Lazarist’s Superior to oversee them was informed by her awareness of the fate of the Visitandines and Ursulines who had come under the direction of local bishop subsequently lost their autonomy. Placing the Daughters under the direction of the Motherhouse and the Lazarists was critical because it was typically reform-minded bishops who enclosed communities of women religious. In fact, de Marillac also requested that the Queen petition the Pope to put the Daughters of Charity under the direct supervision of the Superior General of the Congregation of the Mission.162 De Marillac and de Paul were also able to exploit their connections with the French royal family for assistance in establishing the Daughters of Charity. De Paul had a reputation as a venerable priest and spiritual advisor. He had also become a member of Louis XIV’s Council of Conscience, the king’s body of spiritual advisors. That is not to say that de Paul had an easy time obtaining royal support for his efforts. De Paul was often was in opposition to Louis’ chief minister, Cardinal Mazarin, and eventually Mazarin was successful in having de Paul dismissed from the Council of Conscience.163 Despite her illegitimate birth, humble upbringing, and troublesome familial relations, de Marillac was a less controversial figure at court. In the eyes of the women of the court, de Marillac was an exemplar of dévote piety, and hence a desirable ally. Many at the court esteemed her charitable works and aspired to her model of sanctity. De Marillac used her connections to convince nobles to support extra-Tridentine activities. The support of the royal family and the court was especially critical during the Company’s early years.164 The monarch’s direct and continued support of the Company granted it legitimacy and made it less vulnerable to interference 160 Echos de la Compagnie, Génèse de la Compagnie 1633-1968. “Approbation episcopale,”
12.
161 AN, L. 1054. Approbation du Cardinal de Retz, 1655. Also see, Dirvin, Louise de Marillac, 257. 162 Rapley, The Dévotes, 87. 163 Geoffrey Treasure, Mazarin: The Crisis o f Absolutism in France (New York: Routledge, 1995), 290-291. 164 AMMFC, 1099/155. Copie d'un Placet au Roy and 1100/155. Plaise au Roy. Also see, Darricau, 119-122
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from Church officials. Once the Company of the Daughters of Charity had changed from a confraternity for married Ladies to a Company of unmarried Daughters under de Marillac’s supervision, it began to resemble a religious order. It is possible that French bishops could have forced the Company to adopt enclosure at this point. The protection of the Ladies at court and the royal family was essential for giving the Company time to establish itself before coming under scrutiny for violating the Tridentine accords. Shortly after receiving the approbation of the Bishop of Paris, the Company began taking the steps necessary to obtain acceptance from Louis XIV. Before the state accepted the Company, the Procurator General, an appointee of the King who served as an officer of the Parlement of Paris, interviewed de Marillac. A portion of this exchange, preserved in correspondence between de Paul and de Marillac, demonstrates that the issue of the Company’s identity was a sensitive one, and the ramifications of the Company’s distinctiveness were clear to all the involved actors. De Marillac wrote, “he asked me if we considered ourselves regular or secular. I told him that we aspired only to the latter.... He said many good things about the Company and added that he did not disapprove of our plan.”165 The Daughters’ mission of serving the poor resonated with those in positions of power in France and they accepted its status as a confraternity. The king signed the royal letters patent in 1657 and registered them with Parlement in December 1658. The official name of the organization remained the Company of the Daughters of Charity, Servants of the Sick Poor. Finally, in 1668 Pope Clement IX recognized the Company of the Daughters of Charity as a confraternity. Clement IX’s decision to embrace the Daughters’ unconventional mission was at least in part due to its acceptance by many local clerics, the Bishop of Paris and the King. De Marillac was also aware of the importance of creating alliances on the local level. In the 1630s the Company simultaneously developed relationships with prominent Church officials and with local curés. In their parish work, the Daughters had to balance their demands for independence with the need to work agreeably with local priests. For instance, the Daughters in Chars worked with a curé who held Jansenist sympathies; de Marillac met with the man and then told the Daughters, “the only way to deal with him is by gentleness, by not arguing and by doing what he asks when you can. When you cannot carry out his request, you must explain your reasons to him gently and humbly.”166 However, de Marillac eventually removed the Daughters from Chars in 1657 because the Jansenist priest humiliated them by denying them communion and declaring publicly that they were in need of penance.167 De Marillac instructed the Daughters to behave in an obedient and humble fashion towards the curés; however, she offset the Daughters’ 165 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 283. 166De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 302. 167 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 529b.
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deferential demeanor with her own assertiveness. For instance, she insisted that local priests not formally direct the Daughters; instead, she supervised the Daughters from the Motherhouse and she and de Paul were the Company’s ultimate authorities.168 She told Daughters to defer to the authority of the curés unless they contradicted her and then their allegiance was to the Motherhouse. In most parishes this arrangement worked well and the Daughters became an integral part of the local charitable relief system without themselves threatening male authority, or becoming dependent upon the parish priests. De Paul oversaw the Company in his capacity as Superior-General of the Congregation of the Mission and he gave advice, but it was de Marillac who was responsible for the day-to-day administration of the Daughters of Charity. She was a talented administrator who was flexible in her decision making and in her response to crises.169 Her open-mindedness was critical for the community’s success. De Marillac was quick to move Daughters of Charity between communities when she determined that their skills could be better used elsewhere.170 She listened to the Daughters of Charity, treated all with respect and did not fear changing the community for the better. De Marillac’s flexibility, however, was anchored by her demand for uniformity and obedience within the Company. All Daughters of Charity followed the same general rules, which defined their daily activities.171 Daughters made annual retreats to the Motherhouse in Paris and officers visited each community to ensure that they were all following the rules. Without strong centralized control, individual Daughters could have fallen from obedience and endangered the Company. Local bishops or elites could have stepped in to govern the Daughters who would have followed their directives and not those of de Paul and de Marillac. If this had occurred, the community would have become impossible to regulate.
168 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Letter 130b. De Marillac tells de Paul that she thinks it is unwise to make the Confraternity entirely dependent upon the pastor because they would want no one else to know what else is going on in each Confraternity. She believes that this would cause fragmentation. Instead, the Daughters should be accountable to the Motherhouse. 169 Ryan and Rybolt, 52. According to Louise Sullivan, “the ‘Rule for the Sisters of the Hospital of Angers,’ as well as subsequent Rules for sisters employed in hospitals found in de Marillac’s writings, reveal her extraordinary organizational ability. She considered all aspects of care: food, medicine, maintenance of the sick room, dealings with doctors and employees as well as administrators and the Ladies of Charity. However, she also defined the spiritual dimension of service to the sick and the qualities with which they were to be served. So, too, she set down Rules for the life of the sisters together and their relationship with God. The hospital at Angers is, consequently, the prototype of the care of the sick by active religious women.” 170 For example see, de Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 125b. 171 AN, LL. 1662-LL. 1666, “General Rules.”
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Finally, the Company of the Daughters of Charity survived because of its infrastructure. Early seventeenth-century France saw the development of numerous small, active, religious communities for women. The organizational structure of the Company of the Daughters of Charity, with Ladies directing and financially supporting Daughters, was not particularly unique. For example, in 1630 Marie Lumague, a Lady of Charity who served at Paris’s Hôtel-Dieu, had built La Pitié to shelter penitent prostitutes, and she recruited unmarried, pious, young women, whom she called the Daughters of Providence, to staff the institution.172 Lumague maintained the Company with her personal wealth, much like the Ladies of Charity did. Numerous other religious communities resembled the Daughters of Charity, but were also smaller in scale. What was unusual about the Company of the Daughters of Charity was its size and breadth of support. In communities in which one woman was a sponsor, as in the case of Lumague, the organization generally disintegrated upon her death. After Lumague’s death, de Paul encouraged the Ladies of Charity to take over the direction of La Pitié, and they funded and administered the community. The larger scale of the Daughters of Charity meant that there were many patrons and workers and that the death of any of them, even Marguerite Naseau or Louise de Marillac, was not fatal to the Company. The Daughters of Charity was one of several small religious communities in France that struggled to remain outside of the cloister. The Filles de SainteGeneviève, founded in 1636, worked to reform life in the parish of Saint-Nicolasdu-Chardonnet in Paris.173 What distinguishes the Daughters of Charity from these other communities was their ability to grow very large, expand beyond Paris and serve as a model for subsequent communities of active women religious, many of which devoted themselves to teaching or other social services. For example, in Rouen the Soeurs du Saint-Enfant Jésus educated daughters of the working poor by teaching catechism.174 In addition, in 1685, Louis XIV employed the Dames de Saint-Maur in the Midi to educate converted Protestants and established communities of the Dames de Saint-Maur in Montpellier and Montauban.175 Over time they taught girls across France. Additionally, in Paris, the Filles de la Croix offered poor women the education that made it possible for them to obtain salvation, and domestic servants, during their free time, often went to study with the Filles de la Croix.176 All of these communities shared the active vocation and non-cloistered status of the Daughters of Charity. The first half of the seventeenth century also witnessed a tremendous expansion in cloistered teaching orders in France where nuns taught boarders and often less fortunate day students as well.177
172 Coste, Monsieur Vincent, I: 346. 173 Rapley, The Dévotes, 95. 174 Rapley, The Dévotes, 121. 175 Rapley, The Dévotes, 126. 176 Taylor, 258-259. 177 Rapley, A Social History o f the Cloister, 14.
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Map 2.1 Establishments of Daughters of Charity in 1660178
1 Establishment 2 Establishments 3 Establishments 5+ Establishments
178 I have chosen to plot the maps of the Company’s development using the current French departments and not the provinces that existed in the seventeenth century. I do so for clarity. I provide these maps to give the reader a general sense of the growth of the Company across France and using the departments gives a more precise view of geographical expansion. The departments are smaller, more similarly sized units than are the provinces
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The Daughters of Charity and the Catholic Reformation Historians often describe the era of the Reformations as a time of developing “social discipline” when churches, monarchs, and local authorities sought to exert greater control over their populations.179 There were certainly elements of social disciplining visible in movements for Catholic reform, including most obviously the Inquisitions and the Index of prohibited books. The Church’s effort to enclose all nuns also exemplifies this attempt to regulate groups deemed potentially unruly. As noted, however, the practical realities of these reform movements limited the extent to which leaders could unilaterally impose reforms. The Church did not have the power to force all of the Catholic nations of Europe to adopt the Tridentine decrees, so there could be innovations at the local level. The era was sometimes one of creativity, as the Daughters of Charity demonstrate; and as John O’Malley argues, “perhaps the most striking feature of ministry in seventeenthcentury France, for instance, is the amount done by women, who had to contend with the Tridentine decrees as obstacles rather than stimuli.”180 The Daughters were convinced of their function as Catholic reformers and they participated in many popular Catholic Reformation practices. Although de Marillac and de Paul were actively circumventing Trent’s decree about enclosure, their goal was not to dismiss the ideals of the Catholic Reformation. Rather they saw the community of the Daughters of Charity as part of reformed Catholicism and not a challenge to it. Within the sphere of French Catholicism, the legislation of the Council of Trent was seen and treated as malleable, which complements the way in which local communities and Church authorities negotiated the enforcement of Tridentine legislation. The Daughters of Charity are an instructive subject because their story is not that of outright female rebellion against patriarchal society or an example of an organization that “slipped through the cracks.” Instead, the non-cloistered lifestyle of the Daughters of Charity earned the support of the communities that they served and of French society in general. Indeed, the Daughters sought to reinforce orthodox teachings against the evils of heresy. The creative reformulation of the decrees of Trent undertaken by de Marillac and de Paul, however, did more than merely change the Daughters of
179 R. Po-chia Hsia, Social Discipline and the Reformation: Central Europe. 1550-1750. (New York: Routledge, 1989). Hsia’s Introduction clearly lays out the evolution o f the notion o f social discipline with an emphasis on the contributions of Heinz Schilling and Wolfgang Reinhard. For a discussion between the relationship between charity and discipline see, Robert Jtitte, “Poor Relief and Social Discipline in Sixteenth-Century Europe,” European Studies Review, 11 (1981), 25-52. 180 John W. O’Malley. Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 67.
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Charity’s position within Catholicism itself. The Daughters were able to use their expanded social responsibilities as women religious and servants of the poor to obtain access to the towns and villages of France. Early modern European society did not want women assuming the role of independent public actors. Seventeenthcentury social conventions expected that men, be they fathers, husbands, or religious superiors, should be in a position to protect and control women, in part by limiting their access to public realms. “Public man” was honorable and defined a civic leader, whereas “public woman” was derogatory and could be a euphemism for a prostitute. The Council of Trent’s decree that nuns live within convent walls was part of a larger program to make the Church more orderly by restricting nuns’ access to men, reflecting precisely the restrictions that early modern society idealized for women in general. The demand for clausura was restricted to women; religious men were either not considered to be at risk of sexual violation, or were not as stigmatized by sexual impropriety. The decrees of Trent hint at broader concerns. It is plausible that the Council was responding to the situation within the Church’s cloisters while at the same time addressing (albeit obliquely) larger social transformations. The sixteenth century was a period of economic expansion and population growth.181 As towns and cities grew, they attracted increasing numbers of young people and, the patriarchal structures that were the backbone of rural Europe weakened. Trent might have been alluding to this larger issue of a society’s declining ability to control its young people, namely its young women. Certainly, Protestant reformers made the family central in their struggle for greater social discipline.182 Trent articulated the proper religious sphere for women, enclosed within the cloister under the watchful eyes of the Mother Superior and ultimately the Bishop; a parallel secular sphere existed for women, enclosed within the murkier borders of the household, under the watchful eyes of fathers and husbands and male civic authorities. 181 For background information on the economy see, Ferdinand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism in the 15th to 18th Century, 3 volumes (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992), C. M. Cipolla, ed., The Fontana Economic History o f Europe, Volume II; The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London, 1974). Hermann Kellenbenz, The Rise o f the European Economy (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976). Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, French Peasantry 1450-1660 (Aldershot: Scolar, 1986). H.A. Miskimin, The Economy o f Later Renaissance Europe 1460-1600 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977). 182 For example, see the work of Steven Ozment and Lyndal Roper: Steven Ozment, When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983) and The Biirgermeister’s Daughter: Scandal in a Sixteenth-Century German Town (New York: Harper Perennial, 1997), Lyndal Roper, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) and the essays “Blood and Codpieces: Masculinity in the Early Modem German Town” and “Drinking, Whoring and Gorging: Bmtish Indiscipline and the Formation of Protestant Identity, in Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early M odem Europe (New York: Routledge, 1994).
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The Daughters and other active communities of women proved that respectable women could “walk the streets” visiting the poor in their homes and they could nurse the bodies of men and women—as long as they were technically defined as a confraternity or a community and not a religious order. What made their active vocation possible was their ability to adopt a feminine persona that was both pious and public.183 The Daughters created a new, holy identity that allowed them to transgress social expectations that would have restricted their movements to the home. Their quality of holiness in the public eye thus freed them socially and religiously. Pious activities, and piety in general, challenged the social limitations placed upon the Daughters and upon French women religious in general. This challenge was not a questioning of the validity of the religious or social order, nor was it an attempt to question accepted social values. The acceptance of the Daughters in public spaces in villages, towns, and cities reflects a change in thinking about gender and religion in France. When the Ursulines first undertook with a mission to educate and assist the poor, in the late sixteenth century, they were mistaken for repentant prostitutes in Avignon, and children pelted them with mud in Paris, Rapley concludes that “respectable society was not yet ready for these uncloistered nuns; their appearance on the streets gave rise to much scandal and derision.”184 The French Church, State, towns, and cities embraced their efforts. Although defiant in one aspect of their existence, the Daughters’ lifestyle and work made them valued members of French society.
The Significance of Enclosure
Active and contemplative service co-existed in early modem Europe as they had co-existed in the Middle Ages, and both clearly express the tenor of the age. In her 1979 article Ruth Liebowitz argued that “there were few medieval precedents for active female religious orders,” but this is an overstatement.185 There were numerous medieval religious communities of women with active vocations and Craig Harline points to the presence of many medieval active communities, especially the Beguines, still on the scene in the sixteenth-century Netherlands.1861 have found less evidence of active medieval communities in France still functioning in the sixteenth century. There were some Beguines in northern France 183 Rapley, The Dévotes, 114. 184 Linda Lierheimer, “Preaching of Teaching: Defining the Ursuline Mission in Seventeenth-Century France,” in Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity, eds. Beverly Mayne Kienzle and Pamela J. Walker (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998), 214 and Rapley, The Dévotes, 56. 185 Liebowitz, 145. 186Craig Harline, “Actives and Contemplatives: the Female Religious of the Low Countries before and after Trent,” The Catholic Historical Review, LXXXI/4 (1995), 555.
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and some Augustinian nuns in hospitals, although they appear to have been in a torpid state. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed great religious dynamism in Europe, and in France many religious communities, active and contemplative, opened for women, rendering this the age of saints. Up to this point, I have discussed enclosure from the viewpoint of the founders of the Daughters of Charity. The implicit assumption of this perspective is that enclosure is an inherently negative outcome for a religious community, especially in so far as enclosure prevented active communities from engaging in acts of public service and works of charity. Moreover, encoded in this reading has been an unchallenged assumption that since enclosure undermined women’s physical freedom and restricted other freedoms that might flow from access to the public sphere, it resulted in communities that were generally more static than their active counterparts. The Daughters of Charity, I have argued, were able to preserve much of their creative energy and potential precisely because they eluded enclosure. However, contemplative nuns did not consider themselves passive; Teresa of Avila, for example, believed that the prayers of her Carmelite nuns would stop the spread of the Reformation.187 Moreover, according to Craig Harline, “the cloistered house was therefore a church, a counseling center, and a potential source of comfort, for townspeople or peasants knew that inside women were praying not only for their souls but for those of the world.”188 Enclosed communities were not static. Many nuns likely found the process of enclosure traumatic because it changed their relations with their families, communities, and fellow sisters, but convents traditionally were not hermetically sealed.189 Many historians prefer to define early modem convents as “permeable.”190 Nuns did remain inside the 187 For a further discussion of Teresa of Avila see, Jodi Bilinkoff, The Avila of Saint Teresa: Religious Reform in a Sixteenth-Century City (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), and Alison Weber, Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of Femininity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990). 188 Harline, 541-567. Harline’s research in the Netherlands demonstrates that not only did new active communities exist, but that they co-existed with medieval active communities who had never died out. In France the situation was different. I have found less evidence of medieval active communities in France, although there were some Augustinian nuns in hospitals they appear to have been in a torpid state. 189 Ulrike Strasser, “Cloistering women’s past: conflicting accounts of enclosure in a seventeenth-century Munich nunnery,” in Gender in Early Modem German History, ed. Ulinka Rublack (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 221-246. 190 I would like to thank Alison Weber for sharing with me her unpublished article, “Locating Holiness in Early Modem Spain: Convents, Caves, and Houses.” In this essay she uses the metaphor of a “permeable membrane” as a way to conceptualize the early modem Spanish convent. Weber credits other historians with sharing this view of permeability, and they include, Anne Jacobson Schutte and Thomas Kuehn, “Introduction,” in Time, Space and Women's Lives in Early Modem Europe, ed. Anne Jacobson Schutte, Thomas Kuehn, and Silvana Seidel Menchi (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2001), xv;
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cloister, but they frequently had visitors. Convent patrons exchanged financial support for access to the convents and its nuns. Even reformed convents that imposed strict rules upon their founders, limiting the number of annual visits and their durations, found these directives hard to enforce.191 Seeing as members of the royal family, including the Queen Mother and the Queen, were among the principal sponsors to Carmelite convents, it is understandable that the nuns would have faced considerable difficulty denying their requests to retreat into the convent. The distractions causes by royal visitors and their Ladies-in-waiting could have been considerable. In an extreme example, Barbara Diefendorf recounts that the Princess de Conde, Charlotte de Montmonency, obtained a papal brief permitting her to enter any Carmelite convent up to thirty-six times a year despite the fact that she had never founded a Carmelite house.192 Founders and donors wanted access to convents because they offered retreats from the demands of marriage or the loneliness of widowhood and visits were a sign of religious and social status. The viewpoint that active service is more important than contemplative service, however, is limited in some respects in that it tends to rely on the inherent assumption that enclosure caused unfortunate changes within religious orders. Enclosure, however, re-created the vocations of the originally active Ursulines and Visitandines, and transformed them in a myriad of interesting and complex ways. Communities that had once been public and highly flexible became inherently private and more hierarchical. In the process, these communities had to re-create new missions and new goals that would legitimate their existence and serve the Church and society. In the case of the Ursulines and the Visitandines, their shifted their focus away from serving the poor, to serving a wealthier clientele. In part, this transformation was due to the traditional economic structures used to support enclosed communities. With few exceptions, enclosed orders were dependent upon postulant dowries to sustain their operations.193194Of course, this system of funding had the practical effect of increasing the influence of wealthy families on 194 convents. Elizabeth Lehfeldt, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain: The Permeable Cloister (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); Jodi Bilinkoff, “Confessors, Penitents, and the Construction of Identities in Early Modem Avila,” in Culture and Identity in Early Modem Europe (15001800): Essays in Honor of Natalie Zemon Davis, eds. Barbara Diefendorf and Carla Hesse (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 83-100; Helen Nader, ed., Power and Gender in Renaissance Spain: Eight Women of the Mendoza Family, 1450-1650 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004). 191 Diefendorf, “Contradictions of the Century of Saints,” 479. 192Diefendorf, “Contradictions of the Century of Saints,” 480. 193 Jo Ann Kay McNamara, Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). 194 On the flip side, the class status of most nuns could offer them considerable protections.
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Socially, the impact of this economic system was to cause the prestige of enclosed orders to rise at the expense of active vocations. The wealthy, for their part, sought out convents that demanded substantial dowries as exclusive havens for their offspring, hoping that they would live with women of similar social and economic backgrounds. The rich were also attracted to a cloistered existence because they considered it safer. The daughters of the rich could count on the fact that they would be shielded from the public, and that they would never have to experience contact with the poor or engage in practical activities such as the collection of alms. Certainly this was the intention of Teresa of Avila’s family when they placed her in the Encamation convent, and of Louis de Marillac when he sent his daughter to live, albeit temporarily, with the Dominicans.*195 In the seventeenth century the number of enclosed convents for daughters of wealthy families dramatically increased in Paris.196 Although they all collected dowries, not all convents fared equally. Mothers Superior of some enclosed communities invested convent dowries and could increase the nuns’ collective wealth, and some convents became important local financial institutions; however, many convents encountered financial hardships because of mismanagement or because of problems with investments or patronage.197 Patrons reneged on promises, as did the benefactor of Bicetre, and heirs refused to honor the commitments of the deceased.198 Unenclosed communities for women religious did not receive substantial dowries, and the organizations relied upon alms and bequests, which placed them in a precarious situation. Poorer unenclosed communities confronted the persistent threat that local church officials would take them over or disband them for insolvency.199 However, members of active communities could receive supplementary funds; for example, the Daughters of Charity were paid by the hospitals they staffed, and de Marillac was not above sending the Ladies of Charity out to raise alms. In Germany early in the Reformation, elite convents often defied town councils and remained open, see McNamara, 428; Amy Leonard, “Under Attack? Female Religious Orders in the Reformation Era,” in The Blackwell Companion to the World o f the Reformation, ed. R. Po-Chia Hsia (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2003); and, Amy Leonard, Nails in the Wall: Catholic Nuns in Reformation Germany (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 195 Bilinkoff, 112-113 and Élisabeth Charpy, Petite vie de Louise de Marillac (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1991), 7. 196 Diefendorf, “Contradictions of the Century of Saints,” 477. 197 For example, see Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt, “Convents as Litigants: Dowry and Inheritance Disputes in Early Modem Spain,” Journal o f Social History (Spring 2000), 645-664. 198 Diefendorf, “Contradictions of the Century of Saints,” 492-493. 199 Barbara Diefendorf outlines the devastating effects that patrons who failed to follow through with promised donations had on convents: Diefendorf, “Contradictions o f the Century of Saints,” 492-43.
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Although it is tempting to see the Daughters of Charity as early modem feminists, such a characterization would be misleading. The Daughters of Charity created novel venues for women who did not want to marry, but who also could not or did not want to enter a convent. They were technically a group of lay women with a religious calling to help the sick and the poor. Although they did create an acceptable career for non-married women, they did not set out to redefine womanhood. They were “daughters” and as such were designated a submissive, albeit an important, category within the family of the de Paul and de Marillac’s foundations. The ultimate goal of their work was to spread the teachings of the Church, and they used poor relief as a vehicle with which to keep Catholics loyal to the Church and to lead the Protestants back into the fold. The picture is quite complicated because many members of the French Ursulines and Visitation nuns supported the move to enclosure; it was not just a case of men advocating women’s enclosure. It would be inaccurate to characterize the Catholic Reformation as simply a struggle between women seeking a religious vocation in the world, and men conspiring to confine them to cloisters. Linda Lierheimer points out that many Ursuline communities divided over the issue of enclosure when younger sisters wanted clausura and older sisters opposed it.200 The greater prestige and security of cloistered communities were attractive to many women with religious callings. Whether initiated by women founding orders or by men trying to control them, there was a definite move towards female clausura in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. By the later seventeenth century, active communities came into their own as more women joined institutions to become teachers and nurses. Orders which experienced enclosure, such as the Ursulines and the Visitandines, underwent dramatic social and financial changes that required them to re-examine their very reason for existence. On a purely practical level, enclosure meant that members of a community were unable to move about their towns and prevented from rendering direct service to most of those in need. To serve a socially useful function, enclosed orders had to develop methods of assisting their neighbors in less direct ways. In the instance of the Ursulines, they accepted wealthy boarders who lived within a special area of the convent. Cast in this light, it becomes clear that not all orders would have been equally able to make a transition from active service to contemplative worship. The Daughters of Charity were not a community that could have survived such a transition. Living in the world was critical for the Daughters’ survival.
200
Lierheimer, “Redefining Convent Space,” 211-220.
Chapter 3
Varieties o f Work: Living the Active Vocation in Parishes
Between 1633 and 1660, the year of the founders’ deaths, the Daughters of Charity expanded tremendously, not only in numbers, but also in the number of locales and institutions in which they were called to serve. From the parishes of Paris the Daughters extended across much of France, earning a reputation for high-quality social services. It is worthwhile examining this development to determine why the Daughters of Charity were able to earn the trust and confidence of the French public as care providers, and in addition, why the Daughters of Charity were so attractive to young women seeking a religious vocation. This chapter examines the work of the Daughters of Charity in parishes, both as providers of food to the sick and poor, and as teachers of poor girls. It also describes the funding mechanisms used by the Company. The following chapter discusses the Daughters’ innovative work in institutions, especially their work as nurses and administrators in hospitals.
Financing the Company of the Daughters of Charity
From its inception, the Company of the Daughters of Charity depended upon income from two related, but independent sources: the French royal family and aristocratic women. De Marillac and de Paul gained access to the royal family primarily through the Queen, Anne of Austria, and Marie-Madeleine de Vignerot, the Duchess d’Aiguillon, Cardinal Richelieu’s favorite niece and heir.1 The Queen provided the Company with an annual endowment, and after her death the Daughters petitioned the King to continue this funding.2 He agreed to acknowledge her contribution, and provided 500 ecus per year to the Company and 50 additional
1Anthony Levi, Cardinal Richelieu and the Making of France (New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, Inc, 2000), 18. The duchess was widowed young and entered a convent; Richelieu removed her and insisted that she live at court with him. 2 Archives de la Maison Mere des Filles de la Charité (AMMFC) 1099/155 Copie d'un Placet au Roy. See also, Raymond Darricau, “L’action charitable d’une reine de France: Anne d”Autriche,” XVIIe Siècle, 90-91 (1971), 120.
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écus per Daughter in four houses.3 This money went to support the Motherhouse and the four communities, as well as to assist other establishments that were not fiscally viable. The royal family also made smaller grants to the Company; for example, in 1665 the King, Queen, and Duke of Orleans provided funds for the establishment of schools that the Daughters would administer.4 Despite the generosity of the royal family, wealthy individuals, many of whom were Ladies of Charity, funded more communities than did the King and Queen. Donations from Ladies of Charity and their supporters were necessary because they financed local establishments in their parishes, which assured the Company’s continued growth.5 The Ladies decided which of the poor the Daughters would assist and how they would aid the needy. The Ladies insisted that the Company care for all the orphans of Paris in 1640 because the crisis of foundling children was acute during this time of civil war and economic instability.6 The contributions of the Ladies shaped poor relief in France, as they raised substantial funds to support large-scale charitable efforts. For instance, Colin Jones states that the Ladies of Charity spent over half a million livres between 1648 and 1660 in Champagne and Picardy during France’s war with Spain. This sizable sum aided the poor, and it publicly demonstrated the women’s generosity, in what Jones calls “conspicuous donation.”7 The priorities of France’s wealthy dévote women shaped early modem poor relief efforts because the women decided who was worthy of their aid. More specifically the Ladies of Charity determined the direction of the Company of the Daughters of Charity and steered the efforts of the Daughters in their parishes. Whereas convents accepted dowries to cover their expenses, the Company of the Daughters of Charity relied upon alternative methods of funding its establishments in parishes, and later in larger institutions. Typically the body that desired the Daughters’ presence, be it a Lady in her parish or a body of administrators in a hospital, paid the women a stipend to cover the costs of shelter (Ladies often provided or rented rooms), clothing and food. The donations of the Ladies of Charity or an institution’s administrators had to cover all of the expenses of the Daughters in a given establishment. A donation was usually conferred annually or semi-annually and from it the Daughters purchased food, provisions, 3AMMFC, 1100/155, Plaise au Roy. 4 AMMFC, 147, 10/27/1665, Lettre de Monsieur d ’Horgny a Sister Geneviève Fauter. 5 Louise de Marillac, Écrits spirituels, ed. Élisabeth Charpy (Paris: Filles de la Charité 1983), Lettre 655. See for an interesting discussion of tensions between Ladies and Daughters over financial expectations. The Ladies gave money to the Daughters and wanted regular accounting of the funds, but the very busy Daughters were not as compliant as the Ladies would have liked. 6De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, lettre 86. 7 Colin Jones, “Perspectives on Poor Relief, Health Care and the Counter-Reformation in France,” in Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter-Reformation Europe, eds. Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham and Jon Arrizabalaga (New York: Routledge, 1999), 227-228.
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the fabric for their clothing, and any other supplies they needed. In 1645, drafting a petition to the Archbishop of Paris to gain official approval of the Company, de Marillac described the financial policies of the Daughters of Charity. She wanted it clearly stated that the money given to the communities of Daughters had to meet all their needs, “would it not be necessary to mention that the money placed in the common purse serves to buy the necessary provisions of the house and clothes for the sisters... .”8 The Motherhouse could not afford to subsidize local communities and they had to remain financially independent. De Marillac insisted upon fiscal autonomy so that the Daughters would be aware of the importance of budgeting and so the Ladies would feel committed to giving them a reasonable annual income. De Marillac clarifies this point in a letter to Barbe Angiboust at Chateaudun in 1658: “I do not know if our sisters in Varize are aware that the usual custom among our sisters is that the stipend they receive must cover not only their food but the cost of material for their habits, although we furnish it, because, you are aware, my dear Sister, that we could never assume those expenses.”9 The Motherhouse generally provided the Daughters with fabric so that their habits would be of uniform color and style, then billed the Daughters’ local establishments for the material. In some instances the Ladies of Charity did not provide enough financial support for the Daughters in their parishes, as the alms collected went directly to the poor and the Daughters did not use them for their own needs. Occasionally, de Marillac had to remind the Ladies of their obligations because theirs were the only donations the Daughters could use to feed, clothe, and house themselves. In 1655 she wrote to Monsieur Portail, “as for Brienne, since both these sisters can be called brand new and unaware of what responsibility for the goods of the Company means, I am afraid that out of respect and because of their simplicity and lack of experience, they have failed to obtain from Madame de Brienne what she had promised for them.” The Lady’s failure to support the Daughters was problematic because the Motherhouse could not afford to underwrite the establishment at Brienne. De Marillac continued, “moreover, they did not make her understand that we must supply their habits from what remains from their food allowance.”10 As a result, the Daughters at Brienne lacked the funds necessary to purchase the fabric for their clothing. Since the establishment at Brienne was new (dating from 1652) it is likely that neither the Lady nor the Daughters fully understood the financial arrangements. De Marillac asked the Daughters’ director to explain this to all of them. Some of the tensions between the Ladies and Daughters were due to a lack of understanding of the Company’s financial needs. Resolving these problems took a great deal of effort and finesse on de Marillac’s part because she had to carefully explain the financial structure of the Company to all involved. 8 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 124b. 9 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 594.
10De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 45.
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De Marillac urged the Daughters to keep precise records of all expenditures.11 The Daughters clearly noted what funds they spent on the poor and what funds they spent on themselves. Never were the Daughters to profit from the goods of the poor.112 In 1649 de Marillac wrote to Barbe Angiboust, “also be sure that our sisters are very exact when they spend money and that they keep record of it.”13 De Marillac specifically addressed accounting for food expenses for hospital patients and for Daughters: “When soup in made, three-quarters of a pound of meat, at most, may be added for each patient and sister as well. However, the sisters’ soup is usually made separately since it is not reasonable for them to eat that of the patients, unless they are sick themselves.”14 In cases when the Daughters lapsed and did not manage their money carefully they were to spend all of the remaining funds on the poor.15 The Daughters could never assume that the money intended for the service of the poor was theirs to spend freely. The Company, in local communities and in Paris, managed all funds internally. At the Motherhouse, the treasurer oversaw the finances; large communities of Daughters appointed treasurers as well. At large institutions like hospitals, contracts specified the exact amount the Company was to receive for each Daughter annually. The contracts were vague initially and did not mention remuneration, whereas later in the century they specified that exact sums were to be paid to the local communities of Daughters every six or twelve months.16 Different hospitals offered the Daughters different yearly salaries. The Daughters appear to have been careful with their expenditures. However, de Marillac was convinced that there was wasteful spending and she allowed few luxuries in the Daughters’ communities. In 1646 she wrote to de Paul, urging him to discuss finances with the Daughters of Charity, “so that they may understand that the amount they bring in is almost exactly equal to the amount of expenses.” She continued, “I ask this because I do not know whether the entire Company is capable of understanding that their savings truly support the [Mother] House—some of them exhibit little restraint.”17 For example, de Marillac did not allow the Daughters to purchase new habits until she was sure that their existing
11 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 344. 12 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 339. 13 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 251. 14 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 251. It is not known how the two soups, that for the Daughters and that for the patients, differ. Both contain the same amount o f meat, so it is possible that they were of the same composition. They were probably made in separate pots so that the Daughters did not risk consuming too much and thereby deprive the poor o f what was rightfully theirs, but there is no definitive evidence of this. 15 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre, 309. 16 See Colin Jones, The Charitable Imperative: Hospitals and Nursing in Ancien Regime and Revolutionary Francs (New York: Routledge, 1989), 177-178 for a discussion o f the contracts drafted by the Company.
17De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 132d.
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clothing was well worn.18 She despised “superfluity” in apparel and believed that all Daughters should dress simply and humbly.19 De Marillac was clearly concerned about the solvency of the Company and all of the small communities that composed it. She did not want Daughters in any house to feel that they could not afford to buy necessities, but she stressed that the Daughters had to minimize the expenses of the Company so that they could supply the poor with more food and medicine. To this end the Daughters cooked for themselves and the poor; they also made preserves and sewed their own clothing and linens, and whenever possible an in-house apothecary prepared medicines to avoid the external expenses of acquiring them from shops and apothecaries.20 The correspondence to and from the Motherhouse records Daughters obtaining supplies for one another. If certain foodstuffs or fabrics were available or less expensive in one region of France, the Daughters would procure them there and ship or bring them to Paris. In 1652 butter was less expensive in Brienne than in Paris. De Marillac wrote to the Daughters in Brienne and told them that if they could purchase butter at six sols a pound, they were to buy at least a hundred pounds to send to Paris.21 De Marillac also corresponded with Daughters in Chars about producing honey: “it seems to me that you once mentioned that you were going to make honey. Please find out if that white honey is natural, or if it can be made some way because sugar is becoming very expensive, and it could be used to make syrups and even preserves.”22 The Daughters were not always practical in their exchanges between communities. It was not uncommon for Daughters in outlying regions to send occasional gifts to the Motherhouse. The Daughters would send fruits, like grapes or apples, from their parishes to de Marillac.23 Those at the Motherhouse usually received such exchanges graciously. However, in 1645 de Marillac wrote to Jeanne Lepintre, “the only dried apricots you sent me were few in number and quite ugly,” 18 When I visited the community of Daughters of Charity in Albany, NY in 1993 I was shown a wool habit, the standard dress until the Second Vatican Council. The skirt o f the habit was pleated, and I was shown by Sister Elaine Wheeler how the habit was taken apart and sewn anew every year. Each year the location of the pleat changed about half an inch so that the wear on the pleats would not cause the fabric to thin in these locations. Although tremendously time consuming, such efforts did extend the life of the habits considerably. 19 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre, 551. 20 Elizabeth Rapley, A Social History o f the Cloister: Daily Life in the Teaching Monasteries o f the Old Regime (Ithaca, NY: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001), 207. Elizabeth Rapley explains that convents also recruited woman with apothecary skills, sometimes going so far as to admit woman as choir nuns with small or no dowries if they could serve the community in the infirmary and allow the community to avoid the expense of buying remedies from apothecaries in town. 21 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 354b: “If you think it will cost only six sols a pound, you would be doing us a favor by sending us as much as you can, 100 pounds or more.” 22 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre, 354.
23 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 356b.
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so quality control was definitely enforced. Occasionally Daughters sent gifts that de Marillac considered excessive. For instance in 1657 the Sister Servant at Chantilly sent some fish to the Motherhouse and de Marillac responded, “I thank you very humbly, my dear, for the excellent fish. If I could have sent it back to you promptly, I would have asked you to prepare a treat with it for your poor patients, because you are well aware that our Company does not indulge in such delicacies.”24 Instead de Marillac decided to feed the fish to the sick Daughters at the Motherhouse. All Daughters had to observe the rule of poverty and gift giving was never to challenge this tenet. The Company used its funds sparingly and in an extreme case directed two Daughters to live on the income of one. In 1641, when the Company was asked to send one Daughter to Sedan, de Marillac decided to send two.25 The Duke and Duchess had requested only one Daughter and would only pay for one. De Marillac was uncomfortable sending only one, especially given the region’s reformed sentiments, and it was customary for the Company to send two Daughters to all establishments. In a letter to de Paul, de Marillac argues that the two Daughters she wishes to send to Sedan can make their income stretch to cover both of their expenses. De Marillac wrote, “as for their living expenses, since they have been accustomed to frugality, I believe that whatever small amount is given to one to them would help to support the other. They can work to earn the rest.”26 Donations from Ladies generally served to fund work with the poor. The Daughters commonly performed manual work to support themselves, commonly earning their livings by sewing, spinning, and making preserves.27 Manual labor served the practical end supporting the community, and the ideological end of keeping the Daughters in the role of servants, and not Ladies who would live off of a pension.28 De Marillac commended the hardworking character of one Daughter in 1641: “although she had a great deal of work and many sick persons at Saint Germain, Sister Marie did not hesitate to take in laundry to earn money.”29 No community was to consider itself above doing extra work for income. The Daughters at Fontenay-les-Roses took in a child boarder in 1654, this seems to be the first time such an arrangement was made. No other letters of the seventeenth century mention boarders and the Daughters were unsure of the amount to charge for this service.30 The Company determined an amount, but whether this merely covered the expenses of the child or if it also paid the Daughters to raise the child 24 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 515. 25 Pierre Coste, Monsieur Vincent: le grand saint du grand siècle. Volumes I-III (Paris: Desclée de Brouer et cie Éditeurs, 1934), I: 471. 26De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 36b. 27 Élisabeth Charpy, “Marguerite Chétif,” Echoes of the Company (1985), 445. 28 Élisabeth Charpy, “Come Wind or High Water, Louise de Marillac,” Echoes of the Company (1988), 319. 29 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre, 36b. 30 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre, 413.
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is not specified. The Daughters made no further mention of the child and therefore it is not known if the arrangement proved successful. The Daughters of Charity created a novel form of religious community, transcending the borders of religious and lay life. Their new form of community required a different means of funding, as they could not rely upon traditional convent dowries. Their informal mechanism granted them the flexibility to quickly place Daughters in parishes in need of their assistance, but it could also prove unstable, requiring de Marillac to intervene and insist that those who had promised to fund her Daughters lived up to their word.
The Work of the Ladies of Charity
The most well-known Ladies of Charity were those of the royal court. All of the Ladies of Charity were aristocratic women with access to wealth and political power. The Duchess d’Aiguillon was a committed Lady of Charity who directed the Ladies until her death in 1675. Her position as lady-in-waiting to Anne of Austria gave the Daughters of Charity direct access to the Queen.31 D’Aiguillon also used her wealth to establish communities of Daughters of Charity and priests of the Congregation of the Mission, as well as to found hospitals and support other charities.32 The Duchess was the director of the Ladies of Charity for twenty-three years, shaping its direction after the deaths of de Marillac and de Paul. Other Ladies of Charity were also of royal lineage, such as the Princess of Condé, the Duchess of Nemours, and Louise Marie de Gonzague, who became the Queen of Poland in 1645; she brought the Daughters of Charity and the Congregation of the Mission to Warsaw to serve the poor.33 De Paul had considered founding a Confraternity of the Court exclusively for these aristocratic women, under the direction of the Queen.34 However, he never did. Instead, noble women joined de Paul’s other charitable efforts like assisting the poor at the Hôtel-Dieu, where a few made afternoon visits bring food to the infirm.35 At the Hôtel-Dieu, de Paul conducted a Salon of Charity, a series of weekly meetings during which he and the Ladies who served the needy discussed social problems and solutions that could be provided for them.36 More important than their direct acts of charity, these noblewomen had useful social and political connections that benefited the entire
31 Coste, Monsieur Vincent, I: 374. 32 Coste, Monsieur Vincent, I: 375. 33 Coste, Monsieur Vincent, I: 333. 34 Coste, Monsieur Vincent, I: 313. 35 Coste, Monsieur Vincent, I: 314. 36 Marie-Genevieve Roux, “On the Road with Monsieur Vincent...Women Missionaries,” Echoes of the Company (1990), 25.
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Company. The Ladies provided de Paul and de Marillac with consistent access to those in high offices, regardless of the political climate at court. Along with guiding the Daughters, many Ladies of Charity were part of the large dévote network and oversaw benevolent projects within and outside the Company. Marie Lumague, widow of François Pollalion, was a spiritual advisee of de Paul’s who regularly undertook charitable works under his guidance. A founding Lady of Charity, she was concerned primarily with saving “fallen women” and “vulnerable girls.” She created asylums to protect girls from the dangers of prostitution and bought her first house of refuge, called La Pitié, in 1630 in Fontenay-les-Roses for forty women.37 Lumague recruited young women to come to La Pitié to teach the girls and show them how to maintain a modest decorum; she called these women the Daughters of Providence. The Daughters lived a near-cloistered existence and took simple vows.38 Her goal was to convert the “fallen women” to an honest life and strengthen the moral resolve of the “vulnerable girls.”39 Lumague’s community was well connected in dévote circles, with de Paul serving as its superior and Anne of Austria as its protectress. In 1657 Lumague died and left the Daughters of Providence without a sophisticated infrastructure or a program for development. Her community would likely not have survived her death if the Ladies of Charity had not taken over the Daughters of Providence.40 The Company of the Daughters of Charity prioritized creating a strong infrastructure so that the death of de Paul or de Marillac would not lead to its demise.
The Work of the Daughters of Charity
The hands-on work of caring for the sick and poor was not the responsibility of the Ladies, instead it fell to young women from poorer backgrounds who became Daughters of Charity. The women who sought to join the Daughters of Charity faced a careful screening process that limited entrance to those with a religious calling and a strong physical and moral disposition.41 The women entering the Company needed to be in good physical health and have the stamina to spend their days walking to the homes of the sick carrying a large pot of soup and medicines.42 37 Coste, Monsieur Vincent, I: 346. 38 Barbara Diefendorf, From Penitence to Chastity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 224-25. 39 Coste, Monsieur Vincent, I: 346. 40 Coste, Monsieur Vincent, I: 351. 41 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettres 84, 104. In the latter letter de Marillac expresses her enthusiasm for a young women who is considering entering the community because of her “openness and goodwill.” 42Archives Nationales (AN) LL. 1664, “Registre de la ville d'Eu 1685-1777.” In this list of entrants to the Daughters’ seminary in Eu the recorder occasionally made notes about the
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Some needed literacy skills to teach girls their prayers and rudimentary reading and writing. Most important to de Marillac were the motivations of her Daughters.43 She expected women to enter the community out of a sense of religious duty; she understood their mission as one of serving God through serving the poor. She did not want a body of women committed to the work of poor relief if their motivation for doing so was not a Christian understanding of helping one’s less fortunate neighbor.44 Whatever their personal motivations, the women who joined the Daughters of Charity lived rewarding lives outside of marriage. The Company of the Daughters of Charity offered women work that was challenging and meaningful at a time when most work for women offered little financial compensation or social recognition.45 It is likely that women entered the novitiate of the Daughters of Charity for both spiritual and personal motivations. The Daughters of Charity did not write about their reasons for entering the Company, and the notices of the deaths of Daughters emphasize the role of Providence in their vocational calling, so the historian is perhaps left without a complete record of the Daughters’ incentives. Louise de Marillac created flexible and responsive bureaucratic structures for her Company, and in 1633 Louise de Marillac drafted the first set of rules, the “petit réglement” for the Daughters of Charity. At the time of their inception, de Marillac was working with only a handful of Daughters and a disorganized network of Ladies. Realizing the inherent limitations imposed upon her by her shortage of staff, de Marillac envisioned a decentralized system in which Daughters would spread across Paris, and later much of France, usually in pairs, and serve as assistants to individual Ladies of Charity. Much like a traditional religious rule, the Daughters’ rule organized their days between periods of work and prayer. Unlike a traditional religious rule the Daughters’ was flexible. De Paul told the Daughters that they were to leave their prayers, and even the Mass, to help the poor in need. Each day, after morning meditation and prayer, the Daughters would leave their modest apartments or rooms, walk to the home of the Lady preparing the day’s food (the Ladies in each locale shared this responsibility and cooked on an alternating schedule), pick up the meals and deliver them to the poor and sick beginning at 9:30 AM. Daughters distributing medicine would also begin
attributes of the novices, along with noting literacy and knitting abilities, the size and health of some women is also recorded. One note states that a daughter can read a little and that she is very strong and will be good for heavy labor. 43 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 619, for a discussion of physical and mental immaturity among women seeking entrance to the Company. 44 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 424: “Our vocation of servants of the poor calls us to practice the gentleness, humility, and forbearance that we owe to others. We must respect and honor everyone: the poor because they are the members of Jesus Christ and our masters; the rich so that they will provide us with the means to do good for the poor.” 45 Jones, The Charitable Imperative, 90.
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after morning prayers, first going to the doctors for the prescriptions, and then taking the medicine to the sick. The rule also established a hierarchy within the community, defining the positions of Ladies and Daughters. Ladies of Charity oversaw the Daughters, and were able to dismiss those who were unable or unsuited to do the work. The Daughters were to look up to the Ladies as “Mothers” and “cheerfully go where they [were] sent.”46 However, the Daughters were never to cultivate friendships with the Ladies, as de Marillac worried that such relationships would cause the Daughters to “waste a lot of time.”47 The Daughters held the governing offices in the Company: Superior (soon to be renamed Sister Servant, a more humble title that sounded less like the leader of a religious order), Assistant, Treasurer (the woman in charge of expenditures who had one of the two keys to the collection box—the other was in the possession of the Sister Servant), and Procuratrix (the woman in charge of ordering provisions and recording daily expenditures).48 What de Marillac’s system lacked in size and sophistication, it made up for in social cohesion. Under her guidance, the Communities of Daughters were small and close knit. They maintained close contacts with the Ladies of Charity and although each house functioned independently, de Marillac’s Motherhouse provided oversight. De Marillac also controlled the physical appearance of the Daughters. She insisted that all Daughters dress alike because they shared one identity. The Daughters were part of a well-disciplined congregation and their clothing identified them as such. They all wore the simple dress of a rural woman from the Parisian countryside, including a tight-fitting headpiece.49 The uniform also served to remind the Daughters of the commitment they had made by dedicating their lives to service and obedience. In 1655 de Marillac wrote to a Daughter who was purchasing cloth for the habits: “Be particular, I beg you, because variations are very dangerous. Send us her measurements for the chemisettes, and we will make them because ordinarily there are so many different ways of making them from one sister to another that they would seem to come from two different countries.”50 When Daughters went to regions far from Paris and asked permission to vary their 46 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, “Projet de règlement,” 723. 47 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 141. 48 Vincent de Paul, Saint Vincent de Paul Correspondance, Entretiens, Documents. 14 Volumes, ed. Pierre Coste (Paris: Librairie Lecoffre, 1920-1926), V: 260. The title Sister Servant replaced that of Mother Superior in 1642 after de Paul heard the Sisters of the Annunciation calling their Mother Superior “ancelle” or handmaid. He thought this was an edifying process and suggest that the Daughters follow a similar practice, the Daughters agreed, and the title of the Mother Superior was replaced with “Sister Servant.” For a description of positions see the rules of the Motherhouse, Louise de Marillac, Écrits spirituels, ed. Elisabeth Charpy (Paris: Filles de la Charité, 1983) “Réglement pour la maison principale,” 747-758. 49 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 148. 50De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 450.
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dress to conform to local styles, de Marillac denied their requests in the name of uniformity. However, she permitted changes in the headdress to allow for better head and face coverage in more severe climates.51 It should come as no surprise that this new social identity as lay women in a religious community did not solidify immediately, and caused some discomfort for both the Daughters and the communities they served.52 Occasionally, Daughters left the community to return home. Marguerite Chétif, the leader of the community in Arras states in a letter to de Marillac that a Daughter had returned to her home and that this had caused great pain and sorrow for the community.53 Daughters of Charity were not allowed to serve in the towns and villages from which they came. As a result, the Daughters struggled with homesickness and the adjustment to life in different communities as they moved about to serve in different towns. There were also instances of Daughters leaving the Company to join cloistered orders as lay sisters.54 Fearing attrition in the ranks of their well-trained Daughters, de Marillac and de Paul decreed that the Daughters should not visit convents or befriend cloistered nuns.55 They feared that the Daughters would find enclosure a more attractive religious lifestyle because of its greater prestige. De Marillac and de Paul were also aware that in some cases the Daughters were under pressure from family and friends to enter a cloister, as enclosed life was safer and less likely to bring women into contact with worldly corruption. The tenor of this tension between the newly formed Daughters and traditional religious orders can be seen in a 1639 letter of de Marillac’s composed after a Daughter in Argenteuil had left her community to join the Benedictine order. De Marillac wrote to the Benedictine Mother Superior to express her dismay, stating, “I did not want to believe, Madame, that it was you who ordered her to be turned away from her vocation.”56 De Marillac addressed the Benedictine Mother Superior as an equal, and expected her to listen to her concerns and demands. She takes the Mother Superior to task for threatening the Daughter’s salvation and for jeopardizing the well-being of the poor. She states that she does not understand how anyone who 51 De Paul, Correspondence, Lettre 534. 52 See Marie-Claude Dinet-Lecomte, “Les religieuses hospitalières à Blois aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l'Ouest, 96, 1 (1989), 15-38 for a more thorough discussion of the tensions between the Daughters of Charity and an enclosed order of Augustinian nuns. 53 AMMFC, 1062/83. 54 Although some Daughters of Charity did leave the community to join a cloistered order it was more common for a Daughter to leave and return to her home. An example is found in AMMFC, 1062/83, a letter from Marguerite Chétif, the leader of the community in Arras, to de Marillac. 55 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, “Observations sur les Règles,” 740. De Marillac wrote that “the sisters should not communicate with or receive anything from women religious.” 56De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 9.
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knows “the importance of a vocation would want to set up obstacles to the designs of God and place a soul in danger for her salvation by withdrawing help from the abandoned poor who are in great need and who can only find relief in the service of these good girls... .”57 De Marillac concedes that the Daughter in question must have found the call to join the Benedictine community a compelling one when she says, “I want to believe that she was not called to the work in which she was employed, otherwise she would be most blamable.”58 De Marillac was worried about poaching. Her community spent considerable effort training its members and losing any Daughter was difficult for the chronically understaffed community. As can be seen in the language of the letter, de Paul and de Marillac were careful to tell the Daughters that their calling was different from that of contemplative nuns, but no less significant in the eyes of God. De Paul stated, “there are no nuns of whom God demands so much as of you...God desires greater perfection of you than He does of them...Do you think it is only religious men and women who should aspire to perfection?” He continued, underscoring the validity of their vocation, “all Christians are bound to do so, and you even more than religious women. It is not the religious order that makes saints; it is the care its members take to become perfect.”59 Despite the persuasiveness of de Paul’s rhetoric, it was an argument that flew in the face of many early modem assumptions about religious life. Between 1633 and 1638 the rule did not undergo any significant trials. Operations in these five years continued within Paris, and all of the Daughters could easily travel to the Motherhouse and were thus handily under the control of de Marillac herself. De Marillac typically moved the Daughters between parishes every two weeks, in order to keep the Daughters from getting too close to the Ladies.60 The need for a formal Company rule in this period was minimal and the “petit reglement” sufficed. The first rigorous testing of the Company rule took place in 1638 in SaintGermain-en-Laye, the first establishment of the Company of the Daughters of Charity outside the city walls of Paris.61 De Marillac sent her trusted friend Barbe Angiboust to Saint-Germaine-en-Laye to found the community. One of the first Daughters of Charity, Angiboust had already founded three parish establishments
57 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 9. 58 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 9. 59 De Paul, Correspondencej X: 143. 60 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 52. 61 Saint-Germain-en-Laye is outside the city of Paris. The Confraternity of Châtillon was independent from the Parisian Confraternities and therefore not considered the first of the Parisian-based Confraternities to develop outside of Paris.
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in Paris.62 The new community’s proximity just to the west of Paris made regular contact with the Motherhouse possible. The Daughters of Charity went even farther afield in the same year when, at the request of d’Aiguillon, they founded a community in Richelieu, which lies between Tours and Poitiers. De Marillac sent Angiboust to establish this community as well. In Richelieu the Daughters served the sick and ran a school, as they often did in Paris. The formation of a community at Richelieu was important in part because it was created at the urging of d’Aiguillon and Cardinal Richelieu, and more significantly because it became a model for subsequent outlying establishments.63 The Ladies shaped the direction of the Daughters of Charity with their donations; their money allowed the Company to expand widely, but much of the expansion came on their terms and the Ladies determined the form of work the Daughters would perform and where they would work. The establishment at Richelieu was the first that was a considerable distance from Paris. The distance necessitated that the Daughters work together to uphold the rule themselves and rely upon correspondence in the place of regular visits to and from the Motherhouse.64 Given the nature of frequent visits and rotations of Daughters in Paris, the isolation of Richelieu must have been something of a shock. The community at Richelieu maintained two Daughters, one of whom visited the sick and the other who instructed poor girls at a small school. From the correspondence exchanged between de Marillac and the fledgling community, life in Richelieu was challenging at first. In October 1639, de Marillac wrote to the Daughters to admonish them for their infighting. In her letter she scolded Louise Ganset for being insufficiently obedient to Barbe Angiboust, her Sister Servant. Interestingly, however, it was Angiboust whom she really took to task. After calling Angiboust “haughty” de Marillac writes, “How could you forget that when you were placed with her as her superior you were obliged to become like a mother with even greater responsibilities than a natural mother since you must help your sister to work out her salvation and grow in perfection? When you accepted this duty, were you not immediately aware of the degree of humility, which it required...?”65 Clearly de Marillac believed that it was the Sister Servant's job to make the local communities work by setting an example and encouraging 62 Barbe Angiboust founded communities of Daughters of Charity in Paris in the parish of Saint-Paul and the parish of Saint-Sulpice in 1636 and Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie in 1637. 63 Richelieu is now situated in the department of Indre-et-Loire, AN S 6174 Contrat d'établissement de Richelieu. See also de Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettres 149, 156, 158, 284, 347, 438, 463b and 542 for discussions about the mail service. Letters frequently did not arrive at their destination, especially during the disruptions of wartime. Therefore, the Daughters at Richelieu were not in close contact with the Motherhouse. 64 Élisabeth Charpy, Petite vie de Louise de Marillac (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1991),
45. 65 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 11.
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her charges.66 The Sister Servant served the Daughters in her community by cultivating their strengths, not by acting arrogant. Apparently, de Marillac’s letter had an impact, as there are no further reprimands in the correspondence, and the two Daughters served together at Richelieu until Ganset went to work with galley slaves in 1644. Significantly, Angiboust followed her there in 1645, suggesting that the two had developed a functional working relationship. The community continued to serve the poor in Richelieu successfully, but its distance from Paris was always an issue. In 1646 de Marillac wrote to comfort the new Sister Servant at Richelieu, Elisabeth Turgis: “My dear Sister, I beg you not to think of the distance between us. Rather, think of us as strongly united, incapable of ever being separated, because separation is impossible in the close union created by holy charity.”67 The tensions at Richelieu, and their resolutions, are testimonies to the religious commitment of the Daughters and to the persuasive power and force of de Marillac’s personality and religious convictions. De Marillac presumed that her Daughters could rise to the challenge of founding a religious community far from their Motherhouse—and the Daughters rose to the challenge. In addition to demonstrating the force of de Marillac’s personality and leadership, Richelieu demonstrated that, contrary to early modem assumptions about the disorderly nature of women, and contrary to the wisdom of Trent, women could live productive and non-cloistered lives.68 No scandals rocked Richelieu; in fact, the greatest complaint de Marillac leveled against the community after 1639 came seven years later when she criticized a Daughter for showing off and acting like a “little saint.”69 The establishment at Richelieu functioned well proved to de Marillac that she could put great faith in the Daughters that she dispatched, and could trust them to navigate new territories and their inherent difficulties with little direct guidance from her. While de Marillac may have been a powerful force of moral authority, her dispatches indicate that the vast majority of women who served in the Company exercised sound judgment as well as restraint in the absence of de Marillac’s immediate authority. 66 De Marillac was not alone in her understanding of leadership: Alison Weber explains that Teresa of Avila stressed to her Prioresses that they were to be obeyed because they had won the love of their fellow nuns, Alison Weber, “The Permeable Convent: Teresa of Avila as Micro-Manager,” presented at “Female Monasticism in Early Modem Europe,” a conference held at Cambridge University 24-25 July 2003. 67 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 163. 68 For example, see Natalie Zemon Davis, “Women on Top,” in Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1975), and Lyndal Roper, “Was there a crisis in gender relations in sixteenth-century Germany?” in Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (New York: Routledge, 1994). Roper expands the question of disorderly women and compares it to that of disorderly men. 69 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 148.
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A number of additional, structural regulations evolved after the establishment at Richelieu that served to help the Daughters work efficiently far from the Motherhouse while not being overly constraining. In all establishments a hierarchy existed; one woman was named the Sister Servant, and she was to lead by example and to embody a spirit of humility and charity.70 If there were serious personality conflicts one of the Daughters was moved to a different community and a new Daughter was sent to fill the vacant place. Pairs of Daughters would stay in a parish for only a few years; de Marillac usually rotated them through several parishes and institutions during their careers. This rotation policy existed in part to keep the Daughters from settling into a town and its cliques too closely—it helped to detach them from the world, and from personal relationships that might have distracted from the main mission. De Marillac considered it advantageous that her Daughters be outsiders to the local political landscape.71 She also wanted the Daughters exposed to the diversity of the Company’s works so that they would understand its broader mission. De Marillac took pains to reinforce the religious identity of the Community. The establishment at Richelieu proved that there were decided advantages to granting freedom to women within the Company. Since most outlying establishments were small, and infrequently visited by representatives from the Motherhouse, the Daughters had a great degree of freedom in how they accomplished their work. The Daughters could be creative and innovative in their approaches to serving the needs of local communities; they therefore escaped the trap of becoming overly rule-bound or rigidly hierarchical. For instance, when a Sister Servant departed from one establishment, she did not necessarily go on to head another community; she might live under another’s direction, learning different leadership techniques. A degree of flexibility characterized the early years of the Company, but de Marillac was scarcely allowing the Daughters fall into chaos. De Marillac trained all new Daughters at the Motherhouse, so that they shared a common spiritual outlook and learned the same basic practical skills, such as creating remedies and medicines.72 She also taught the recruits to obey the rule in all aspects of their vocation. She designed the rule without a strict daily schedule of prayer and gathering, but she included interludes of meditation so that the Daughters could attend to their diverse vocations, what de Paul called “leaving God for God.”73 De Marillac respected and trusted the Daughters who were willing 70 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, “Pour la choix des Soeurs Servantes, 785. 71 This became most evident in Nantes where the Daughters o f Charity had divided into factions, with some allying themselves with their confessor instead o f the Sister Servant. De Marillac visited the community in July 1646. De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 144, and two Daughters were eventually dismissed from the Company, Lettre 193. 72 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, "Visite de la Confrère de Goumay,” 725-726. 73 Pierre Coste, Monsieur Vincent: Le grand saint du grand siècle (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer et cie Éditeurs, 1934), I: 353.
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to leave their families, and later the security of the Motherhouse, to go and serve the sick and poor. For the most part, the Daughters enjoyed what was probably an unprecedented sense of freedom and personal responsibility. De Marillac expected the Daughters to solve their own problems and request help from the Motherhouse only at critical moments. Daughters were trusted to organize their days efficiently, to serve the needy in their parish, and to spend any free time that they might have in creating goods for the Company, such as sewing linens or making preserves. The result of the mission at Richelieu was to consolidate a series of structural reinforcements to group identity based upon the original rule. As the Company spread across much of northern France and south to Montpellier, the organizational obstacles facing the Daughters mounted. De Marillac took steps to provide further support. Communities of Daughters far from Paris were encouraged to visit one another occasionally, to offer support and fellowship.74 Equally, de Marillac cultivated a group of experienced Daughters who established new communities and visited them every year or two to assure that the Daughters were following the rule.75 Functioning as local representatives of de Marillac, experienced Daughters played a crucial role in the early establishment of the Company. Barbe Angiboust founded at least eleven communities, and visited many others.76 De Marillac’s efforts shifted governance from a model that was dependent on her personally, to a newer, self-monitoring model. The specialization of Daughters, and the deployment of a few experienced leaders to create new communities, illustrate the increased refinement of the Company. A hierarchy of Daughters was developing, and the most gifted were assigned to lead new communities, given more extensive medical and management training, and groomed for the administrative positions of Sister Servant, Assistant, Treasurer, and Bursar at larger establishments. The most successful Daughters assumed these positions in the Company-wide governance body elected every three years to serve at the Motherhouse with de Marillac. Specialization improved the functionality of the Daughters of Charity as providers of important social services. As the Company grew not only did the Daughters’ loci of work change; they also cultivated a missionary component in their endeavors.77 Reflecting the 74 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettres 489b, 497,499, 565. 75 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 337. 76 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettres 43. Angiboust was called the “foundation stone” of the Daughters of Charity and established communities in the parishes of St. Paul, St. Sulpice, St. Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, St. Germain-en-Laye and also in Richelieu, Serqueux, Fontainebleau, St. Denis, Brienne, Châlons, Bemay, Châteaudun. She also instituted the Daughters’ work with the galley slaves. 77 Evangelizing was more important for the priests of the Congregation of the Mission than it was for the Daughters of Charity; however the Daughters were proud of their missionary
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social restrictions placed upon early modem women, the Daughters did not undertake evangelical preaching missions as did the priests of the Congregation of the Mission. The Daughters were still responsible for inspiring religious conversions, however, and de Marillac certainly envisioned the Daughters as conducting evangelical outreach to heavily Protestant areas of France. The two Daughters who went to Sedan, on France’s northern border with the Netherlands, where the Duke de Bouillon and his wife were recent converts to Catholicism, were missionaries.*78 For the past ninety years the family had been Huguenots, and many of the people of Sedan had converted to Protestantism.79 The conversion of the Duke to Catholicism placed him in an uncomfortable position—administering lands that were legally under his control, but with a population who did not recognize his faith as theirs and who were, within the eyes of the French Catholic hierarchy, heretics. When the Duke returned to the Catholic fold, he requested that de Marillac send a Daughter of Charity to Sedan to provide social services and education to his citizens.80 This was a special mission indeed. The circumstances clearly dictated that the Company must send a Daughter who was independent and reliable, as she would be living far from Paris and would be in close contact with Protestants and their theological identity. As noted earlier, de Paul planned to send only one Daughter, Marie Joly, but de Marillac convinced him that it would be wiser to send a pair. De Marillac wrote to him in 1641: “I find it necessary to send someone with her. She could fall ill on the way or, once there, she could meet evil persons who will get the wrong impression of her and cause her problems. Moreover, we are not insensitive and recognize that it was no little thing for these good girls to leave everything.”81 De Marillac also noted that Joly seemed “very frightened” about going to Sedan alone.82 Consequently, the Company sent a pair of sisters to Sedan: Marie, who had been one of the first Daughters of Charity serving the poor in Paris, and her sister Gillette.83 De Marillac named Marie Joly Sister Servant and told de Paul, “the sister whom I am suggesting we send with Sister Marie Joly knows how to read, but Sister Marie does not. She could teach poor little girls. If your Charity would prefer another sister, please name her so that we can give our good Sister
work. For examples, see de Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 833. At the end o f her life de Marillac proudly wrote, “How many heretics have been converted since the Daughters of Charity have been working in the hospitals? Recall that, in 1659, a sister who had been in the hospital of Saint-Denis said that, during that year, five or six heretics were converted including the son of a Protestant minister, without counting several previous conversions.” 78 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 36b. The Duke de Bouillon converted in 1634. 79 AN, S. 6174 Contrat d ’établissement de Sedan. 80 AN, S. 6174 Contrat d ’établissement de Sedan. 81 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 36b. 82 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 36b. 83 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 128.
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Marie a companion.”84 Marie Joly remained in Sedan for thirteen years, an unusually long stay, because of the need for religious and charitable stability in the town.85 When recalled to Paris Marie Joly initially refused to go, tom between loyalty to the Duchess and her Director. In response to her lack of obedience de Paul wrote, “Up to now the Little Community has lived in such submissions that we have never seen anything like this.”86 Despite its auspicious beginnings, the community in Sedan thrived, and in 1698 l'hôpital de la miséricorde requested a number of Daughters “sufficient” to staff the hospital and specified that three were to be hired to serve the poor in the hospital.87 Following their work in Sedan, the Daughters of Charity went to work in other towns with a Huguenot presence, including Angers where they staffed a large hospital. In the 1650s the Daughters of Charity took part in massive parish-based relief campaigns. In 1652 Paris was flooded with refugees from Picardy and Champagne, where war was raging between France and Spain. Members of the capital’s religious communities came together to help the refugees. De Paul wrote, “The poor Daughters of Charity are doing more than we are as far as corporal works of mercy are concerned. Every day, at Mademoiselle Le Gras’ house, they make and distribute soup for 13,000 of the genteel poor...while in the parish of Saint-Paul alone, four or five of these young women make soup for 5,000 poor people... .”88 The Daughters demonstrated the flexibility of their mission when they worked with poor girls in schools, entered into hospitals, and aided the needy in parishes, be it the fifty to one hundred they might typically care for, or the thousands who might need emergency assistance.
Composition of the Daughters of Charity
As the Company divided into two classes of women (a fundraising cadre and a service corps), it began to adopt more sophisticated methods of actively recruiting and training women. As young women approached the Daughters of Charity requesting entrance into the Company, de Marillac encouraged the Daughters to create methods by which they would first test prospective recruits in their villages. After a few months of working with the Daughters in their villages, the young women that the Daughters deemed promising went to Paris to live at the
84 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 36b. 85 Coste, Monsieur Vincent, I: 472. 86 Élisabeth Charpy, “Sister Marie Joly,” Echoes of the Company (1985), 64. De Paul, Correspondance, V: 207. 87 AN, S. 1657. 88 Bernard Pujo, Vincent de Paul, the Trailblazer (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 203.
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Motherhouse with de Marillac and other senior Daughters. As the Confraternity was not a formal order, it lacked rigid legalistic rules, and Daughters could be admitted based on the personal judgment of recruiters. For instance, in a letter to Monsieur Portail, a priest of the Mission at Angers, de Marillac explained, “There are three or four girls wishing to join us. You know how we need them, but you also know how necessary it is that they have all the proper dispositions. I beg you either receive them or turn them away.”89 Unlike many religious orders, de Marillac exclusively accepted women who joined out of their own volition, and she permitted no family to place an unwilling daughter in the Company.90 Before 1685, all of the novices who entered the community went to the Motherhouse in Paris for training under the watch of the Superior and the Director of Novices. After eight or nine months the women who had proven themselves capable of becoming Daughters of Charity adopted the dress of the community and began their work. After 1685, the Company continued to accept women to the Motherhouse in Paris, but they also opened a seminary in the town of Eu, about 150 kilometers northwest of Paris on the English Channel. This seminary accepted women from northern France; women who lived closer to Paris and south of Paris continued to enter the Motherhouse. Of the 437 entrants who became novices at the seminary in Eu between 1685 and 1777, 213 came from the diocese of Rouen where Eu is located, 124 came from the nearby diocese of Rouen, and 46 came from the diocese of Boulogne.91 The majority of the Daughters of Charity worked in northern France, and most of the recruits to the community were bom there. Records of the novices’ families frequently provide information about the families’ status. Of the 465 records from the seminary between 1685 and 1792, 375 state the father’s occupation, and while de Paul referred to the Daughters as “peasant girls” more novices seem to have come from artisan families. Sixty-two fathers worked in an agricultural occupation, 51 of them as simple farm workers; 115 were employed in textile or clothing industries.92 In all cases the Daughters keeping records documented only one profession per father, so in cases of men who worked in the fields and did weaving in their homes, only one occupation is recorded, thus it is not possible to determine how many families performed both agricultural and textile work. Other vocations include 17 fathers active in the building trades, 16 working in food production as butchers, bakers, brewers and innkeepers, 18 employed in maritime activities, 27 active in artisinal trades other than textiles including nine wheelwrights, 27 were merchants, 36 were unskilled laborers and six were men who had unidentifiable occupations.
89De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 138. 90 Rapley, A Social History of the Cloister, 149-154. Rapley discusses the reality of forced vocations after the creation of Tridentine accords to prevent it. 91 AN, LL. 1664. 92 AN, LL. 1664.
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The entrance records for the Daughters’ seminary in Eu occasionally list the skills that the young women entering the community possessed. Skills most frequently commented upon include reading, writing, knitting, and sewing.93 Marguerite Naseau, de Paul’s ideal peasant girl, did not reflect the composition of the Company by the later seventeenth century. Perhaps young artisan women in towns and larger villages were more exposed to the work of the Daughters of Charity, and found their calling. When novices first entered the seminary in Paris their ages ranged from 15 to 54, and half of these women were between 19 and 24 years of age. Novices came from Paris and its surroundings.94 The women who sought entrance to the seminary at Eu were making a choice for a life of religious service and against marriage. The average age of entrants was 21.5 years; these women were young adults making their own decisions, not adolescents pushed or meandering into a vocation. Women who sought to become nuns entered monasteries at a younger age, generally around 18 or 19 for women joining teaching congregations, and often even younger for those entering traditional religious orders.95 Although the Daughters did not take solemn vows and could leave the Company, they rarely did so after their professions. Women whom the Company dismissed, or who left of their own accord, did so because they discovered that they were not suited for life in the community. There are no records of what became of Daughters after they left the community. Presumably, some of these women did marry, although there is no direct evidence that any woman left the community with the specific intent to marry. Most of the entrants to the seminary did eventually join the Company, and took the habit of a Daughter of Charity about eight months after they began their novitiate.96 About six years later most women would take their annual vows for the first time, and in most cases this commitment lasted a lifetime.
93 The amount of detailed information gathered on the entrants depended upon the recordkeeping acumen of the Daughter of Charity in charge of maintaining the register of entrants. The skills of the incoming women were recorded for the years 1709-1711, 17301737, 1742-1746 and 1752-1777 AN, LL. 1664. 94 Élisabeth Charpy, “Mathurine Guérin, 1631-1704,” Echoes of the Community, 227 95 Elizabeth Rapley, The Dévotes: Women and Church in Seventeenth-Century France (Buffalo, NY: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990), 200. Based upon the entrance records of 743 women from six monasteries between 1611 and 1700. Furthermore, Rapley demonstrates that throughout the middle of the seventeenth century many young girls, some under 15 and many under 17 continued to enter convents despite Tridentine rules because of parental coercion. Rapley, A Social History of the Cloister, 272 provides more data. 96 The seminary records are not complete enough to determine what percentage of women stayed in the Company. Note that although the Daughters publicly declared that they did not wear habits, but rather only the simple garb of peasant women, in their records they refer to this simple garb as a habit, AN, LL. 1664.
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The Daughters were unlike the vast majority of Europe’s female population, who married either earthly men, or, in the case of nuns, a heavenly spouse. The Daughters did not betroth themselves to Christ; instead they remained single “daughters,” and typically referred to one another as “sisters” in their letters. The Daughters had the freedom to carry out the obligations entailed by their profession while sharing a religious life of group prayer and habitation.97 By cultivating places in which unmarried women could work and creating a mode of behavior acceptable to contemporaries, the Company of the Daughters of Charity provided women with opportunities that they would not have experienced as wives or as nuns. Wealthy women traditionally had some degree of intellectual mobility; they could take advantage of some education and many could read. Poorer women, in contrast, had less intellectual mobility, but more physical mobility; they could work in markets and inns and could regularly walk in the streets without a chaperone. An initial result of the foundation of the Confraternities of Charity was to grant the Ladies a degree of physical mobility as they visited the sick and poor and as they attended meetings. Later, this mobility diminished, but the poorer women gained social and intellectual mobility. The Daughters of Charity were educated so that they could work as healers, teachers, and administrators. The Company gave young women considerable responsibilities, Barbe Bailly entered the Company in 1645 at the age of 17, and two years later she was placed in charge of the foundling home at Bicetre with its twelve Daughters and 1,100 children.98 As a result, women of different social classes could take advantage of new experiences; the Daughters from the artisan and bourgeois strata gained the most mobility.
Creation of Schools for Poor Girls
The Council of Trent recognized that the Church needed to educate Catholics about the tenets of their faith. In November of 1563, during its 24th session, the Council said, “in each parish the children should learn, at least on Sundays and feast days, the principles of their religion and the obligations of a Christian faith.”99 The Church demanded religious education for Catholics believing that its followers needed a stronger understanding of Catholic doctrine to slow the spread of Protestantism.100 As with the promulgation for the creation of seminaries in all dioceses and the decree to enclose all women religious, this directive was not 97 Coste, Monsieur Vincent, I: 378. 98 Élisabeth Charpy “Barbe Bailly,” Echoes of the Company (1985), 200. 99 H.J. Schroeder, The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (Rockford, IL: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1987), 196. 100 R. Po-Chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal 1540-1770 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 60,65 and 72.
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ultimately enforceable, but it clearly articulated a goal for the Church. Along with other religious communities, like the Ursulines, the Daughters of Charity made the instruction of poor girls one of its central duties. For communities that educated girls (and those that educated boys, like the Congregation of the Mission) children were perceived as a gateway into homes of families who could then be drawn out to participate in Catholic religious life.101 The education of girls in Catholic-Reformation France began with the Ursulines in Venaissain and Provence and with the Company of Filles de NotreDame in Bordeaux. Both communities were motivated by the desire to thwart the Protestant advance by offering Catholic education for girls who would stay true to the Church, and then keep their families within the fold.102 The Edict of Nantes of 1598 recognized two faiths in France, and education became an important component of the battle for souls. The Ursulines and the Filles de Notre-Dame began as unenclosed groups intent upon teaching girls from common families. Both sought a life like the Jesuits’, mixing a mitigated form of enclosure with a mandate to teach, and both sought centralized control under a superior. However, the Ursulines and the Filles de Notre-Dame encountered bishops who enclosed them and who kept them under their direct authority. This enclosure of some convents within an order was very important because it meant that women who entered the same religious order could lead quite different lives in different dioceses. Ultimately, the Company of Filles de Notre-Dame gained recognition with a papal bull in 1607 making it the first “feminine teaching congregation to achieve official status in France.”103 Initially the Ursulines performed a variety of good works, but once cloistered they became specialists in educating girls. Local bishops commonly established communities of Ursulines in France, and they were established in centers of “wealth, power and influence.”104 Jesuits often saw the Ursulines as complements in educating children, and sometimes set up communities in their wake.105 The royal family and wealthy individuals supported the Ursulines, and wanted their teaching to focus on better-off girls. According to Elizabeth Rapley, “more and more houses were persuaded to accept boarders, children of wealthier classes, who were lodged within the convents and instructed separately from the day students.”106 The boarders were always a small group, but they took up much more of the nuns’ energy and time than did the larger groups of day students.
101 Pujo, 114. 102 Rapley, The Dévotes, 43. 103 Rapley, The Dévotes, 45. 104 Rapley, The Dévotes, 52. 105 Rapley, The Dévotes, 53. 106Rapley, The Dévotes, 55.
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De Paul and de Marillac perceived the mission of the Daughters of Charity to be very different from that of the Ursulines. The Daughters established schools to teach poor girls, and they were their principal concern. They did not take in boarders and they did not educate the rich. There is no indication that the Daughters divided girls by social standing, as did some Ursulines to avoid placing girls from good families near poor and dirty girls of lower birth and lesser manners. 107 The Daughters first entered the field of teaching through their efforts to catechize poor girls. The Daughters instructed the poor how to lead devout Catholic lives by establishing primary schools, commonly known as petites écoles, for poor girls.107108 Within the understandings of Trent, the Daughters became valuable educators of girls, as they were training young women to mature into pious Catholic wives and mothers.109 Equally, the Daughters provided a personal connection between young women and the Church. Since most nuns lived in cloisters, there were few exemplars of women religious in the lives of girls unless they boarded in convents or attended the convent’s day schools. The Daughters were an unusual extension of women religious. They served not only as examples of Catholic women with educations, but also as models of Catholic women with spiritual vocations. When a Lady of Charity established a community in her parish, she generally needed one Daughter to help the poor. However, de Marillac wanted the Daughters of Charity to live in pairs, so a literate Daughter was often sent to run a school while a less literate Daughter served the poor. The Daughters therefore served to further a goal compatible with the decrees of Trent, even if their existence outside of the cloister challenged the Council’s conception of an orderly church. Because of the emphasis on education, the Daughters became increasingly involved in the construction of formal schools. Other women's religious communities involved in teaching did the same.110 The Daughters, as well as the other teaching communities, were very successful, and as a result, by the
107Rapley, The Social History of the Cloister, 230. 108For a broader discussion of the evolution of female teaching communities see, Judith Combes Taylor, “From Proselytizing to Social Reform: Three Generations of French Female Teaching Congregations, 1600-1720,” (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Arizona State University, 1980); Rapley, The Social History of the Cloister, and Linda Lierheimer, “Preaching or Teaching? Defining the Ursuline Mission in Seventeenth-Century France” in Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millenia of Christianity, eds. Beverly Mayne Kienzle and Pamela J. Walker (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998), 212226. 109Rapley, The Dévotes, 154-157. 110 Jean Perrel, “Les écoles de filles dans la France d’Ancien Régime,” Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques, 7: 2-3, (1980), 75.
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eighteenth century it was often easier for poor girls than boys to go to school in small villages.111 While education did become a central function of the Daughters of Charity, their entry into the process was gradual. In 1641, de Marillac petitioned the Rector of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Michel le Masle, for the right to teach poor girls in Paris. She wrote of her potential pupils, ’’should these poor little girls remain steeped in ignorance, it is to be feared that this same ignorance will be harmful to them and render them incapable of cooperating with the grace of God for their salvation.”112 De Marillac therefore framed her petition directly within the language of the Council of Trent. Le Masle responded, “after our own inquiries, the report of your Pastor and the testimony of other trustworthy persons who have knowledge of your life, morals and practice of the Catholic religion, you have been found worthy to operate schools... .”113 However, he carefully specified her clientele when he wrote, “this you shall do in the Saint-Lazare area of the SaintDenis district on the condition that you teach poor girls only and do not accept others; that you educate them in good morals, grammar and other pious and honest subjects.”114 This exchange exposes a number of assumptions about the function of the Daughters on both the part of de Marillac and le Masle. De Marillac framed her appeal to le Masle in terms of salvation. She argued that the Daughter must educate poor girls in morals and religion to prepare them to accept God’s grace through Holy Communion. Her central concern was that ignorance imperiled the children’s status as good Christians in this life, while knowledge of the faith saved souls in the next. All training, be it in catechism, reading, or even handicrafts, was toward the spiritual end of salvation. Le Masle’s response to the request, however, had a different emphasis—the preservation of class as well as gender distinctions. In particular, le Masle agreed to permit the Daughters to engage in education if they only served the poor, only taught “pious and honest subjects,” and only served girls. Questions emerge from this exchange; first, what does le Masle mean by “pious and honest subjects.” Second, what is the danger posed by having the Daughters teach the wealthy? Finally, why should the Daughters exclusively teach girls? The Daughters’ primary goal in educating girls was to improve their religious knowledge and morality.115 Le Masle expected the Daughters to teach the girls prayers and a simple catechism for their spiritual formation. According to the Rules for the Schoolmistress: “[the teacher] should be more anxious to teach these 111 Perrel, “Les écoles de filles dans la France d’Ancien Régime,” 82. 112De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 4L 113De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 51. 114De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 51. 115Rapley, The Dévotes, 154-160.
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children the articles of faith, the practice of piety, modesty, obedience, purity, and other necessary virtues than to make them answer well at catechism on things of less importance, or which are above their understanding”116 According to Elizabeth Rapley, most girls who attended schools did so to prepare for their First Communions and were typically between the ages of eight and eleven.117 The poor girls generally learned to read, but not always to write. Girls read prayers, catechisms, and other religious “pious and honest” texts. They also learned to sew or do other forms of needlework.118 The Daughters emphasized the teaching of handicrafts for two reasons. First, because the girls could produce goods that they could sell to help support the school. By extension, the Daughters taught the girls needlework techniques to provide them with a marketable skill that they could use to support themselves as adults. Second, it was imperative that the girls remain continually occupied while at school. In 1652 de Marillac wrote to Julienne Loret at Chars, “Please let me know if you have a good number of schoolgirls, and have those who have learned lace making continue with it. I believe you should have those not skilled in it learn it as well, for it is essential not to have any idle girls.”119 Handicrafts, although helpful at promoting piety, were of secondary importance to religious learning. De Marillac states that a Daughter “may teach [the schoolgirls] to make serge stocking, but she must concentrate mainly on the catechism and on the practice of virtue.”120 Ultimately the Daughters stressed the religious instruction of their charges above all else, because only with proper spiritual knowledge could they obtain the sacrament of communion and gain salvation, and only by teaching pious and honest subjects could the Daughters secure their teaching vocation.121 There is little evidence that de Marillac was interested in offering educational services to wealthy young women and de Masle emphasized that the Daughters were not to take them into their schools. This should come as little surprise, as de Marillac was primarily interested in serving Christ through rendering service to the poor. De Marillac insisted that Daughters “should be even more careful to instruct those girls who can almost never go to school, such as: shepherdesses, cowherds, and others who look after the animals, and they should 116 Charpy, “Mathurine Guérin,” 416. 117 Rapley, A Social History o f the Cloister, 228. There are few documents left about schools run by the Daughters of Charity and Rapley also finds a dearth of documentation for the cloistered teaching orders she studied. However, Rapley gives pieces o f evidence to paint a lively picture of life inside monastery schools. 118 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 192. De Marillac believed that it was not necessary for the girls to know how to write, instead she prioritized reading, catechism, and practical skills like sewing: “I am not saying that these [Ursuline alphabet cards] be used in teaching writing, because I do not think it advisable for the girls to learn to write.” 119 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 344b. 120 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 599. 121 Rapley, The Dévotes, 154-159.
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take one or another of them at whatever times and places they meet them.”122 However, de Marillac did see a broader mission than educating exclusively poor girls. De Marillac argued with de Paul at one point, making the very radical assertion for her day, that poor boys should be able to attend the petites écoles if there was no other place for them to receive an education. She believed that they should be eligible to receive the same education as their sisters. Since her ultimate goal was to teach children the religious knowledge that would allow them to work towards their individual salvation, educating all poor children was important to her. De Paul denied her request, alleging that the risks of co-education were too great as the children could be corrupted in one another’s presence.123 Consequently, the Daughters instructed only girls. The Company hired a schoolteacher for boys in the parish of Saint-Denis and at the foundling home o f , but these hires seems to be unusual occurences.124 There are no extant records of the pupils at the petites écoles and therefore it is impossible to know how many children the Daughters educated. The Daughters do not often mention in their letters the numbers of girls they instructed. It probably differed in each location and fluctuated depending on the season, the weather, and the health of the local villagers. In 1647 de Marillac wrote to Barbe Angiboust at Fontainbleau, ‘T do not know if you were mistaken in the number of schoolgirls you reported to me. Seventy is a lot.”125 Considering that the teaching responsibilities fell upon one Daughter, while the other Daughter visited the sick, seventy certainly is a great number of pupils. Elizabeth Rapley finds that religious women tended to teach large numbers of girls; her records indicate fifty as a standard number, although she discusses a case in which one woman taught a hundred children.126 The teacher kept all of her pupils of varying ages and abilities together in one room.127 The Company employed more than one teacher at an establishment in some cases, and it is possible that Angiboust had an assistant at Fontainbleau. At the foundling home at Bicêtre, de Marillac and another Daughter served as teachers.128
122 Élisabeth Charpy, “Mathurine Guérin,” 414. 123 De Paul, Correspondance, XIII: 646-649. Also see, AN, LL. 1665. Regies particulières pour la maistresse d ’école, article 26. 124De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 282. Louise de Marillac to Barbe Angiboust at Saint Denis: “I am planning to send you the money for the school teacher for the boys as well as the pears.” 125De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 207. 126Rapley, The Dévotes, 154. 127 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, ‘"Règlement pour la maison principale,” 754-755. 128De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 192.
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Teaching as a Religious Vocation The Daughters’ lack of enclosure allowed them to open schools for poor girls. Once they opened the schools, what did they teach their charges, and how did they cultivate the childrens’ understanding of orthodox Catholicism? In 1647 de Marillac wrote to Barbe Angiboust, still at Fontainbleau, telling her that the Company was developing a uniform methodology for all of the petites écoles. De Marillac wrote, “some time ago Monsieur Vincent spoke to me about our sisters involved in teaching, and he expressed the desire for them to employ a common method. As soon as I am completely familiar with it, I will be sure to inform you of it.” De Marillac does not mention this “method” in any subsequent letter, the outcomes appear more organic, as communities adapted to the needs of their populations while adhering to some basic principles. There is frustratingly little written about the Daughters’ work as teachers, especially compared to the rich records for some of the hospitals at which the Daughters of Charity worked. Rapley finds the same lacunae in the holdings of cloistered orders, where records of the convents’ day schools are so scarce some historians doubt the schools’ very existence. Rapley gives two foremost reasons for the lack of sources. First, the officials of the French Revolution seized the records of religious communities and saved only the records they deemed significant. Second, the teachers were not accustomed to writing about their work; they might have written about spiritual matters, but they would not have written about mundane ones.129 Historians are left with a body of proscriptive literature that explains how the schools were supposed to work, but without data that demonstrate how they actually worked. The Company of the Daughters of Charity looked for guidance in establishing an educational methodology to several pedagogies. One was Marguerite Naseau, the first Daughter of Charity. Naseau was a shepherd who taught herself to read while tending her animals. She purchased a primer and asked passers-by for help in learning letters, words, and pronunciation. She then taught what she had learned to other poor and uneducated girls.130 The Daughters used this simple teaching method. Since few of the Daughters were well educated before entering the Company, de Marillac instructed them in reading and writing at the Motherhouse. The Daughters shared the information that they had learned at the Motherhouse with their pupils. The Daughters also borrowed pedagogical tools from religious orders that educated the young. De Marillac embraced an element of the Ursulines’ pedagogy when she requested that de Paul provide her school at Bîcetre (and perhaps other schools as well) with the alphabet cards the Ursulines used to instruct children in reading and writing.131
129 Rapley, Social History o f the Cloister, 222. 130 Léonce Celier, Les Filles de la Charité (Paris: Editions Bernard Grasset, 1929), 235.
131 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 192.
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De Marillac and de Paul later drafted a special rule for the Daughters who taught children. The rule specified the goals of teaching and the behavioral expectations for all teachers and pupils in the schools, emphasizing moral education so that the children would possess a basic knowledge of the principles of their faith.132 The atmosphere in the schoolroom was to be congenial and encouraging to the children’s educational and spiritual efforts. The Daughters, like the Jesuits, were expected to reward children for their efforts, not to punish them for their failures.133 According to de Marillac, the Daughters were to show the girls affection both in the school and in the streets of the villages.134 The Daughters were to extend themselves to older girls as well as to their young pupils. Most of these older girls had received no religious instruction, and were as unlearned as the young ones. De Marillac stressed that education “must be done kindly and gently, without causing them to be ashamed of their ignorance... .”135 In cases where older girls attended the school regularly, the Daughters occasionally encouraged them to help teach the younger children the catechism.136 It is certainly conceivable that the Daughters could use such position as a recruiting tool; they could work to develop the vocation of a talented girl within her parish. The most important element of the children’s education was the catechism. Catechisms generally included prayers, and those written for Catholics could include histories of the saints.137 The Daughters taught catechism to the girls during special classes on Thursday afternoons and Saturday mornings.138 The Daughters’ goal was not rote recitation, but a deeper understanding of the words and ideas of the catechism. The rule written for the schoolmistress states, “she shall teach catechism, explaining it so that it is understood and phrasing her questions in different ways so that her pupils grasp the meaning rather than simply memorize the words.”139 Since the Company used catechism as the primary instrument of instruction in the Catholic faith, it was imperative to use one that would best convey the tenets of Catholicism. There was considerable debate about which catechism was most appropriate for the Daughters’ use. In a 1648 letter to Élisabeth Turgis, Sister Servant at Chars, de Marillac addressed the issue of a catechism for the pupils. In an echo of the parameters dictated about girls and women not rising above their class and gender, de Marillac made it clear that she 132AN, LL. 1665. Regies particulières pour la maistresse d ’école, article 3. 133John W. O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 230. 134AN, LL. 1665. Règles particulières pour la maistresse d ’école, article 6. 135De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 611. 136De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 421. 137 Jean de Viguerie. L ’.Institution des enfants: L ’éducation en France XVIe-XVIIIe siècle (France: Calmann-Lévy, 1978). 138AN, LL. 1665. Regies particulières pour la maistresse d ’école, article 20. 139AN, LL. 1665. Regies particulières pour la maistresse d ’école, article 20.
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did not want the Daughters to aspire to knowledge that was too complex for them. Robert Bellarmine had written a catechism for children, but Monsieur Lambert, a prominent Lazarist priest, believed that Bellarmine’s catechism was too sophisticated to teach to even the older girls in the schools.140 De Marillac and de Paul needed to determine which catechism the Daughters would learn, and which they would use to instruct their pupils. Bellarmine’s catechism required the student to remember a considerable amount of information. The catechist first had to recite the Creed, the Our Father, and the Hail Mary. The catechist then had to demonstrate her knowledge of the Ten Commandments and the six commandments of the Church (to hear Mass, to fast during Lent, to confess one’s sins at least once a year, to receive the Eucharist at Easter at the least, to pay tithes, and not to celebrate marriage in forbidden times) and the seven sacraments. The teacher would then instruct the catechist about the theological and cardinal virtues, including the seven corporal and the seven spiritual works of mercy, the seven deadly sins and the seven virtues.141 De Marillac wrote to a Daughter that Monsieur Lambert “told me [Bellarmine’s catechism] was only appropriate for parish priests. To tell you the truth, my dear Sister, it would be most dangerous for our Company to aspire to such learned teaching, not only because our self-interest is so inclined toward vanity, but because we must fear speaking erroneously.”142 But, in 1648 when de Marillac asked de Paul for his advice about an appropriate catechism, de Paul stated that the Daughters of Charity should learn and teach the Bellarmine
140 Robert Bellarmine wrote two catechisms in his lifetime. Le Brève doctrine Chrétienne was a catechism adapted for children and was very popular in France: Robert Sauzet, “Présence rénovée de Catholicisme (1520-1670),” In Histoire des catholiques en France du XVe siècle à nos jours, ed. François Le Brun (Toulouse: Edouard Privât, 1980), 127-128. “The Catechism begins with a series of questions read by a master and answered by a scholar. The catechist must then recite the Creed, the Pater Noster, and the Ave Maria. Upon learning these prayers the catechist is taught the Ten Commandments and the six commandments of the Church (to hear Mass, to fast during lent, to confess ones sins at least once a year, to receive the Hold Sacrament at the least at Easter, to pay tithes and not to celebrate marriage in times forbidden). The scholar must then identify and define the seven sacraments. The master then instructs the scholar about the theological and cardinal virtues, including the seven corporal works of mercy and the seven spiritual works o f mercy, the seven deadly sins and the seven virtues. After this portion of the catechism Bellarmine addresses the manner of serving a priest at Mass and includes a chapter on good thoughts, another on daily oblation, a table of sins and some more prayers.” Christian Doctrine. Composed by the R. Father Robert Bellarmine of the Society o f Jesus and Cardinal. Printed for A. L., 1676. 141 Christian Doctrine. Composed by the R. Father Robert Bellarmine o f the Society o f Jesus and Cardinal. Printed for A. L., 1676.
142De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 208.
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catechism.143 Bellarmine’s catechism, designed for children, proved a logical choice for the Daughters of Charity for de Paul.144 He stated that in their role as teachers the Daughters should teach themselves the elements of their faith: “There is no other catechism, Mademoiselle, than that of Bellarmine, and when all of our sisters know it and teach it, they only teach what they should teach, because they are there to instruct and will know what the parish priests must know... .”145 De Paul wanted de Marillac to instruct the Daughters in the catechism so that they could teach its subtleties to others. He continued, “It would be nice to read it to our sisters and for you, Mademoiselle, to explain it so that all may learn it...because if it is necessary for them to demonstrate it, they must know it... .”146 De Paul believed women were quite able to read, understand, and teach the catechism of the parish priests. The Ursulines also instructed girls using Bellarmine’s catechism.147 De Paul set high expectations for the Daughters, and believed they could become fluent in enough theology to teach Bellarmine’s catechism without falling into error. He did not state how the Daughters should be taught the subtleties of the catechism; he only said that the catechism should be read to the Daughters, preferably by de Marillac. His primary concern was that should the Daughters find it “necessary...to demonstrate it,” they should “know it.” This language suggests that de Paul had concerns, and that the Daughters should be tested for competence of the Bellarmine catechism. De Paul never made teaching the catechism a topic of his conferences with the Daughters, and there are no records of classroom teaching, so it is difficult to know how widely the Daughters relied upon it, but since de Marillac followed the advice of de Paul in most instances, it is likely that she instructed the Daughters to learn and teach the Bellarmine catechism.148 Because de Marillac wrote a simple catechism for the Daughters to use with young children, it is reasonable to conclude that the Daughters learned the Bellarmine
143 Despite their disagreement over the question of the catechism, Monsieur Lambert succeeded de Paul as Superior-General of the Congregation of the Mission and director of the Daughters of Charity after his death. 144Rapley, The Dévotes, 156. 145 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 242. 146De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 242. 147Rapley, The Dévotes, 156. 148De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 650. De Marillac states, “I am going to repeat what I have already told you concerning the teaching of catechism. If the time has come for the work that, for a long time, the Daughters of Charity have been doing quietly, to blossom into the open, may the holy name of God be blessed!” There is no other letter discussing catechism in this tone. It can be supposed that the Daughters are teaching the Bellarmine catechism as directed by de Paul. Since catechizing was considered the duty of the parish priests it is possible that the Daughters were doing so privately and quietly. Perhaps in 1660 knowledge of their teaching was becoming public and townspersons were reacting (positively or negatively, we cannot know) to their methods.
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catechism and taught it in turn to older girls.149 De Marillac’s catechism was easier to master in that it posed a series of questions and answers, like “What is the sign of a Christian?” and “The cross.” De Marillac’s catechism was more appropriate for young catechists. As the Daughters moved further into teaching the catechism of the priests, they strayed closer to violating traditional models of female behavior. This risk became particularly pronounced when the Daughters addressed theology. De Marillac actively feared that the Daughters would teach catechism inappropriately, or would become too involved in studying and would ignore their other duties. In 1660, she detailed her frustration about one Daughter who had taken her evangelizing too far: The method of teaching used at La Fere is to be feared not only because the sister involved may inject much of herself into it and advance maxims that she cannot explain, but also because public places, such as the rooms in hospitals...are used...Now, since this method of instruction is brilliant and sophisticated, if those sisters who have great capabilities were permitted to undertake it but were not dispensed from more lowly tasks, they might, after having been well trained for it, seek dispensations from several exercises and expect better treatment than that given to those in more humble duties. Other sisters would turn to avid reading. In the desire to appear capable, they would devote their attention to learning without taking into consideration other necessary work.150 De Marillac was clearly very worried about the implications of having the Daughters instructing people in catechism outside of approved places, such as schools. Given her exchange of letters with le Masle, it seems clear that de Marillac feared, and had reason to fear, the implications of having any Daughter act as an instructor in a public place—especially when the audience might consist of other than poor girls. It is worth qualifying this interpretation, however, with a statement that de Marillac wrote detailing her expectations for the Daughters. She explained that when traveling between the Company’s establishments, “should there be any poor nearby, they [the Daughters] shall visit them. Otherwise, they shall catechize those whom they meet.”151 Thus, it is not accurate to assume that de Marillac sought to limit all public interactions, although she did caution the 149 Charpy, Petite Vie de Louise de Marillac, 51. The catechism designed for the children was simple and direct, for example: “Quelle est la marque du chrétien? - C’est le signe de la Croix. Qu’est-ce que le signe de la Croix nous représente? -Un seul Dieu on trois personnes, et lTncamation et la mort du Fils de Dieu.” 150De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 832. 151 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 730.
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Daughters that any public proclamations about faith should be stated “humbly and modestly.”152 It can be concluded that de Marillac held special reservations about catechizing in locations where the Daughters were engaged in institutional service to the poor. De Marillac sought to minimize the chances for scandal or misstep— especially in institutions that might suffer disrepute through a Daughter’s conduct. De Marillac feared that Daughters who dedicated themselves to study of the catechism and education would form an elite group within the Company. Service to the poor, she argued, is the central function of the community, and all must engage in it. Daughters who possessed special training might demand special privileges, and might refuse to share the responsibility for manual labor. Such a division of workers and thinkers would divide the Company and send it down what she envisioned as a “pathway to destruction.”153 In 1646 de Marillac criticized a Sister Anne at Richelieu for acting as a “know-it-all” and a “scholar.”154 Education could not challenge de Paul’s theology of active service to the poor, nor could it challenge de Paul and de Marillac’s elevation of Marguerite Naseau as a model for all Daughters. The physical labor and basic religious education of a simple peasant girl, argued the founders, represented the virtues that the Daughters should aspire to. Education was to reinforce this aspiration, not to undermine it. The teaching work of the Daughters demonstrates the complexities of having women with a religious vocation working in the world. De Paul intended the Lazarists to act as missionaries, but missionary work was also part of the Daughters’ vocation in a more constricted sense. The Daughters had to behave appropriately as women, and their vocation made this difficult. Not being nuns, they could not shelter themselves within a convent and dedicate themselves to learning. The Daughters needed freedom from enclosure to teach, but freedom made their lives complicated. The Daughters had to be careful, because the majority of French bishops believed that teaching girls about their faith was a ministry compatible with enclosure. Ministering to women and girls was not an activity that guaranteed a non-cloistered existence, as the cases of the Visitandines and Ursulines demonstrated.
152 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 730. 153 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 832. 154De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 148.
Chapter 4
Varieties of Work: Living the Active Vocation in Institutions
Parish work was the foundation of the Company of the Daughters of Charity, but within a few years of the inception of the Company, its mission expanded. The Daughters of Charity came to serve as both the directors and staff of many large institutions for poor relief including schools, foundling homes, and (most importantly) hospitals. In these institutions, the Daughters demonstrated the strength of their community, and their work helped to guarantee their noncloistered status. Ultimately, the Company’s greatest accomplishments were in the field of nursing, and they became France’s most important nursing community. By 1700, the Daughters worked in about two hundred hospitals across France.1 As the Daughters of Charity evolved organizationally, the leaders of the Company became increasingly confident in their ability to conduct work that demonstrated a sophistication that went beyond parish service. This move of Daughters into large institutions, which paralleled the increasing complexity of the community itself, presented unique challenges on a number of fronts. First, it placed the Daughters outside of the direct influence of the Ladies of Charity, who understood and supported the Daughters’ mission. The Daughters became part of multifaceted institutions that were often run by people who did not comprehend the Daughters’ vocation, and hence did not always respect their rules. Second, the transition often placed the Daughters in situations where they had to learn and adopt new skills in order to demonstrate their abilities. Often, these were skills that had not been taught at the Motherhouse, but reflected the practical needs of the institution. Creating a Foundling Home for the Foundlings of Paris
In order to serve the sick and poor whose families could not meet their needs at home, Daughters directed orphanages, worked in prisons, managed insane asylums, and administered hospices. Service in large institutions like municipal 1 Colin Jones, The Charitable Imperative: Hospitals and Nursing in Ancien Régime and Revolutionary France (New York: Routledge, 1989), 90.
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hospitals proved important in securing the Daughters’ active vocation. While proving themselves competent administrators and motivated personnel, the Daughters earned allies who advocated for their right to work in the world. With this transition to institutional work came a change in the reputation of the community. Increasingly, institutions actively sought out the Daughters, with the expectation that they could render skilled, professional services that were sorely in need. The Daughters did not have a flawless record of success. The Company’s first and most ambitious institutional undertaking was at a foundling home, La Couche, which they moved to Bicetre. To the early modem eye, foundlings were a source of pity and shame. They were pitiable because France lacked systematic mechanisms to cope with their numbers, many died from starvation and exposure on the streets, or suffered within La Couche. They were a source of shame because people assumed them to be the product of illegitimate relationships; they were a public reminder of private moral lapses. At Bicetre, the Daughters’ work with the children took place on a grand scale that overwhelmed everyone involved. The difficulties encountered at the foundling home were of particular significance to the Daughters as their involvement in the project was prominent and had the backing of a number of important people. The royal family provided the Daughters with the building in which they worked and the Queen helped to fund the enterprise. Considerable financial support came from the Ladies of Charity who, supported by their cures, went to their parishes to collect alms. The home at Bicetre was therefore a very important undertaking, and was one that potentially could have damaged the mission of the Daughters by raising issues about their effectiveness and credibility. A number of institutions existed for the care of orphans and foundlings in seventeenth-century Paris. With the increased incidence of war, famine, and epidemic in the seventeenth century, the numbers of abandoned or parentless children skyrocketed.2 These children often gravitated to cities, where they hoped to survive on begging and charitable relief. Over the course of the late Middle Ages and the early modem period, several institutions for children were founded. In 1363 the confraternity of Saint Esprit founded an orphanage at le place de Grève, for children “bom in legal marriage” whose parents had died.3 The HótelDieu, Paris’ main hospital, took care of children whose parents had died there.4 In the sixteenth century, Marguerite d’Angoulème, sister of Francis I, created a new
2 Vincent de Paul, Saint Vincent de Paul. Correspondance, Entretiens, Documents. 14 Volumes, ed Pierre Coste (Paris: Librairie Lecoftre, 1920-1926), Lettre 918. According to Coste, Bicêtre housed 1,100 children during the Fronde and was staffed by twelve Daughters. Most of the children were under the age of seven. 3 Kristin Gager, Blood Ties and Fictive Ties: Adoption and Family Life in Early Modern Francs (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 106. 4 Gager, 108.
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orphanage some distance from the diseases of the Hôtel-Dieu in the quartier du Temple. This orphanage was open to all legitimate children whose parents had died at the hospital. The children at the Temple were called enfants rouges because of the color of their uniforms.5 Institutions that helped orphans of known parentage were carefully distinguished from La Couche, the state foundling home established by the Parlement of Paris, which served to support children who were presumed to be illegitimate. Reflecting early modem attitudes towards illegitimacy, La Couche only procured a permanent residence in 1570 (over two hundred years after the founding of the orphanage at le place de Grève), at what is now Quai-aux-Fleurs. Before then, the foundlings were housed with families, and usually cared for by women, especially widows.6 The enfants bleues, also named for their uniforms, inhabited the Trinité, founded in 1545. The Trinité took in the children who had been raised at La Couche once they reached the age of seven or eight. Few residents of La Couche reached this age; most children died either from the neglect they had suffered before their arrival or the deficient care they received in the home.7 By the earlyseventeenth century, La Couche was in a disgraceful state.8 The institution was acutely under-funded, despite donations made by members of Parlement and gifts of church alms.9 The majority of the children at La Couche died.10*The residence did not improve over time because the public had little concern for foundlings once they were out of the public eye. Persons involved in charitable endeavors in Paris, however, were aware of the conditions at La Couche. De Paul and de Marillac were horrified by La Couche because some of the foundlings died before baptism and hence, according to Catholic doctrine, they had no hope of salvation.11 5Gager, 109. 6 Gager, 116 and 121. 7 Bernard Pujo, Vincent de Paul, the Trailblazer (Note Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 119. See also, John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 415-422. For instance in Florence’s San Gallo, 20 percent of children died within a month of their admission and only 32 percent lived to the age of five. 8Gager, 112 and 122. 9 Joseph I. Dirvin, Louise de Marillac (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970), 158. See also Gager, 113-121 for a discussion of funding for La Couche before the Ladies of Charity took over the institution. 10 Dirvin, Louise de Marillac, 159. According to a statement made by de Paul, no children had lived through a childhood at La Couche for fifty years. Gager introduces a caveat to this assertion however; she argues that childless couples occasionally did adopt the foundlings of La Couche. Children still at the institution at the age of seven were sent to La Trinité where the children were schooled and apprenticed in the textile trade. uMargaret Flinton, Saint Louise de Marillac: Social Aspects of Her Work (New Rochelle, NY: New City Press, 1992), 56.
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In 1638 de Marillac convinced the Ladies of Charity to rescue some of Paris’s foundlings. Caring for foundlings was a momentous task during a time of war, epidemic, and famine. At first twelve children, chosen by lot, were taken from La Couche and placed in a rented house in Paris, under the care of a Lady of Charity.12 As was usual, care was soon transferred to the Daughters of Charity who worked under the Ladies. Not all the Daughters were happy to be working with the stigmatized foundlings. The Conferences of de Paul explain that some Daughters believed that “if a sister was not suitable for a parish or any other work, she would be placed with the foundlings almost as though it were a prison.”13 The effort was successful, and children cared for in the Daughters’ house were more likely to survive than those who remained in La Couche or on the street.14 This initial foray increased the Daughters’ optimism about their charitable endeavors, and led them to expand their operations. Over the course of the next decade, the Daughters cared for groups of foundlings in thirteen houses across Paris.15 Keeping the foundlings in central Paris was dangerous, however. In 1638, de Marillac wrote to de Paul telling him that a group of soldiers was threatening to requisition a foundling home: “Sister Turgis is greatly upset because the Sergeant of the Company of Monsieur de Castillon came to tell her that he would be sending soldiers to be billeted in the quarters at the front and in the ones where the children are housed. They will be noisy.”16 De Marillac also made it clear that if Turgis decided to turn away the soldiers, she would need “the support of Madame the Duchess d’Aiguillon or Madame the wife of the Chancellor until your Charity can obtain a prohibition from the Queen... .”17 The presence of soldiers, as well as the risks associated with street violence, meant that the foundlings and the Daughters were all at risk. Although the Company could call upon the Queen and other noblewomen for assistance, it was clear they needed a safer place in which to care for the children. It was decided that one central foundling home outside of Paris should house all of the orphans old enough to be weaned. The Daughters who would care for them would reside there as well. In 1640, the Ladies of Charity held a general meeting and voted to assist all the foundlings in Paris.18 This vote reveals the power of de Marillac and de Paul in influencing the noble Ladies. The Ladies initially resisted helping the foundlings, because they were illegitimate. In the face of these prejudices, de Paul and de Marillac responded by bringing the Ladies to La Couche, to show them the 12Dirvin, Louise de Marillac, 162. 13Élisabeth Charpy, “Barbe Bailly,” Echoes of the Company (1985), 198. 14Gager, 122. 15 Louise de Marillac, Écrits spirituels, ed. Élisabeth Charpy (Paris: Filles de la Charité 1983), 113b and page 14. 16De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 89. 17De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 89. 18 Paul Renaudin, Saint Vincent de Paul: Classiques de la Foi (Belgium: Bloud et Gay, 1960), 29.
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deplorable conditions first hand.19 This strategy worked; the Ladies agreed to care for all of Paris’s foundlings. Significantly, the commitment to aid all the foundlings was a promise much greater than that sought by de Marillac and de Paul, who wanted the Daughters to care for some children, but not all of them. It was also ambitious on a scale previously unimagined. There is no indication that anyone in the community understood the ramifications of this expansive pledge, and later de Paul estimated that La Couche took in 1200 infants between 1640 and 1643.20 The decision to take in all of Paris’s foundlings came at a time when the community’s resources were severely strapped. In this same year, de Paul had pleaded with the Ladies of Charity to support the refugees in northern France who suffered at the hands of armies during the Thirty Year’s War. Finite resources were being pulled in many directions.21 The foundlings put tremendous strain on the project’s finances, staff, and space.22 In 1647, the Company established a large orphanage at the chateau of Bicetre for the older children, and sent the infants to wet-nurse in the countryside.23 Bicetre was an abandoned structure in Saint-Denis north of Paris, which belonged to the royal family. Louis XIII had restored it as a home for veterans. The state, though, had never used it for this purpose and it had remained empty for years. The building had a reputation as a shelter for men of ill repute because of its dilapidated condition and its squatter population.24 As such, it was not an ideal building for the foundlings and de Marillac debated with the Ladies about using it as a home for children. De Marillac opined that the buildings and grounds were too large for the foundlings and the establishment too far from Paris. Despite her opposition, the Ladies insisted on the use of Bicetre, in part because there seems to have been no other site available.25 In July 1647, de Paul wrote to de Marillac to announce that she “[was] requested by the Ladies of Charity to send four children, two boys and two girls, with two Daughters of Charity, to the chateau of Bicetre, at one o’clock tomorrow, Sunday, with their personal belongings.”26 Problems arose immediately. The building’s faults, cited by de Marillac, were proved cumbersome. The building required substantial renovations, and was 19Flinton, Social Aspects, 57 and Gager, Blood Ties and Fictive Ties, 122. 20Gager, 145. 21 Pujo, 131. Barbara Diefendorf also explains that entire convents of nuns fled the war and arrived in Paris in need of financial support, Barbara Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 221. 22Pujo, 163. 23 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 86. and De Paul, Correspondance, Lettre 969. 24 Alice Lady Lovât, Life of the Venerable Louise de Marillac: Foundress of the Company of the Sisters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent and Co., Ltd, 1916), 259. 25 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 31. 26De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 86 and De Paul, Correspondance, Lettre 969.
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a considerable distance from Paris, which meant that it was hard for Daughters to visit the establishment and bring supplies. Complicating matters, its foundation coincided with the beginning of the Fronde, which increased the instability in Paris and made travel dangerous for the Daughters.27 Making matters even worse, a donor who had promised to underwrite the expenses reneged, for reasons the correspondence does not explain, leaving the Ladies to fund the entire project themselves.28 The mission was immense and it quickly grew, threatening its infrastructure’s ability to cope with the dramatic increases in children. Financial obligations were a chronic problem at the foundling home. Since the children were now missing from the streets of Paris, and thus invisible to the majority of Parisians, they were easier to ignore. Parisians assumed that the Daughters and children living at the chateau of Bicetre enjoyed generous provisions because the royal family owned the building. Unfortunately, this was not the case and de Marillac engaged in a continuous struggle to secure alternative sources of income. Along with the traditional method of alms collection, the Daughters used more innovative approaches to raise funds. For example, in January of 1648 the Daughters began selling wine made of grapes from Bicetre’s vineyards to the soldiers in their neighborhood. Although this earned them the animosity of local innkeepers, it did provide an additional source of revenue for the institution.29 These attempts to supplement the funding of the Bicetre were inadequate to meet the needs of the institution. Children suffered, and their mortality rate was scandalously high—which de Marillac rightly blamed on the Company’s financial troubles. In 1648, de Marillac wrote to de Paul, “Fifty-two children have died at Bicetre since we have been there, and fifteen or sixteen others are not much better off.”30 Evidently, de Paul was unable to respond to de Marillac’s concerns. The situation did not improve. The following year, de Marillac wrote to de Paul, “Do us the charity, Most Honored Father, of telling us whether, in conscience, we can watch them being put in a situation in which they will die.”31 From de Marillac’s correspondence, it appears that she believed that the primary problem with the Company’s finances rested with the Ladies of Charity, who were not overseeing the institution as they had promised. It was their responsibility to gather a large portion of the funds to support the foundlings. However, it appears that they did not perform this duty with regularity, and de Marillac found it impossible to obtain enough capital on her own. In November 1649, de Marillac wrote to de Paul for assistance: “we have absolutely reached the 27 The Fronde occurred between 1648 and 1653. 28 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 31. 29 De Paul, Correspondance, Lettre 1007. 30 Élisabeth Charpy, Document de la compagnie aux origines (Paris: Filles de la Charité, 1989), Lettre 464. 31 De Paul, Correspondance, Lettre 1154.
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point where we must get help without delay or abandon everything. Yesterday we had to use all the money in reserve...to buy wheat for the children at Bicetre...There are twelve or thirteen children here and no change of diapers for them.” 32 De Marillac demanded that the Ladies honor their promise to care for all of Paris’s orphans. She continued, “something must be done at the meeting of the Ladies tomorrow, please, such as a decision to take up a collection in the parishes every Sunday, placing small baskets in prominent places and having the pastors and preachers promote this; also, have the collection taken up at Court as proposed.”33 De Paul understood the matter’s urgency, and despite his cautious nature he acted promptly, writing to de Marillac to tell her that he had met with the Duchess d’Aiguillon, to “suggest to her a general meeting of the Ladies to decide whether to present the matter to the Queen, to ask for a general collection, or to petition the Parlement to provide for the needs.”34 De Paul also addressed the Ladies: “Ladies, Providence has made you the adoptive mothers of these children, and this is a tie that you have contracted with them, so that if you abandon them, they will die; their life is in your hands.. .And what will you say at the hour of your death when God will demand from you an account of these little creations?”35 In response, the Ladies took collections in their parishes. De Marillac also took her pleas for financial assistance to the Royal Court, knowing that the Ladies of Charity could provide only so much support for the foundlings. In 1642, Louis XIII donated 4,000 livres annually for the maintenance of the foundlings. Anne of Austria donated an additional 8,000 livres annually in the name of her son. Finally, the Duchess d’Aiguillon granted 5,000 livres annually.36 Despite these benefactors’ generosity, financial problems persisted. The financial weakness of the Company was especially evident during the Fronde, when the number of orphans increased at the same time that the Company was supporting many impoverished refugees. Ladies and Daughters of Charity visited the children in the countryside and assured that the wet-nurses were caring for them.37 Like the Daughters serving at Bicetre, the wet-nurses were overworked. There was initial difficulty in finding morally acceptable wet-nurses for the infants.38 De Marillac insisted that all 32De Paul, Correspondance, Lettre 1156. 33De Paul, Correspondance, Lettre 1156. 34 De Paul, Correspondance, Lettre 1103. 35 Sister Marie-Genevieve Roux, “Children in Distress in the XVIIth Century,” Echoes of the Company (1989), 317. 36 Flinton, Social Aspects, 81 37 Flinton, Social Aspects, 69. 38 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettres 142 and 567. Early modem Europeans believed that a wet-nurse transmitted her moral character to a child via breast milk. Therefore it was essential that the Daughters use only married and socially stable wet-nurses. However, there is an interesting letter written by de Marillac asking de Paul for permission to use a “fallen” woman as a wet-nurse: “If the poor woman, on whose behalf you were asked to write, is in a
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potential wet-nurses supply her with a certificate from their curés attesting to their moral standing and their success at nursing infants.39 There was a limited pool of wet-nurses, and they went unpaid for long periods when the Company ran out of funds. Consequently, some wet-nurses returned their charges to de Marillac. In another desperate letter to de Paul, de Marillac wrote: “we would really like to know if the poor wet-nurses will be paid something at this holiday time. Also, will the children who are still nursing and who are being brought back for lack of payment, be sent back to the nurses with the money given for the care of the new foundlings?”40 Although there were difficulties in funding the wet-nurses, the Daughters continued to send abandoned infants to foster homes in the countryside because they had no other options. Despite these dismal conditions, there were successes at the Bicêtre. In January 1648, de Marillac went to live at the foundling home to help direct the institution and to create a school. She designed a primary school, with separate rooms for the boys and girls. The Daughters taught the girls, and a priest of the Mission was responsible for educating the boys.41 The children were instructed in moral development and religion, taught basic skills like reading (and writing for advanced students) and the girls were taught to sew.42 The Company placed older foundlings in apprenticeships or domestic service positions so that they could learn skills to enable them to support themselves as adults. Children had educational opportunities that might not have been available to them at La Couche or on the streets of the capital. Ultimately, however, the impracticality of caring for all of the orphans in the capital became obvious to all involved with Bicêtre. In 1650 the Ladies abandoned the idea of supporting all foundlings and the Daughters of Charity took in only as many children as they could afford to rear.43 Although they had to relinquish their aspiration to aid all foundlings in Paris, the Daughters were able to raise, educate, and place many in apprenticeships. De Marillac maintained a very firm position with the Ladies and demanded that they take responsibility for their decision to aid all the foundlings, but she had enough foresight to realize that they could not raise enough alms to sustain the establishment. In 1656 Bicêtre, along condition to be a wet-nurse, I can think of no safer place for her than to have her come to nurse the foundlings. If the fear is that she would want to return, and if she has been banished as a punishment for her fault, this would be a means to keep her here. If she has enough milk, she could nurse for two or three years. Otherwise, my Most Honored Father, I see nothing in this area to prevent her from falling into the same, or a more serious fault, depending on where she is.” No other mention of this woman is ever made. 39Flinton, Social Aspects, 67. 40 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 273. 41 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 981. 42 Archives de la Maison Mere des Filles de la Charité (AMMFC), Manuscript, Les Petites Écoles, 4. 43 Flinton, Social Aspects, 72.
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with Salpétrière, became part of Paris’s Hôpital-Général founded by Louis XIV. In 1670 the foundling hospital was placed under the administration of the HôpitalGénéral of Paris and formally took the name Hôpital des Enfants Trouvés and a group of Daughters worked at this institution.44 The Daughters of Charity recorded the number of entrants annually after 1670, and in the 1670s it housed over 300 foundlings; in the 1680s, nearly 900; in the 1690s, over 1,500; and in the 1700s, over 1,700.45 Although the Company proved unable to care for all of Paris’s foundlings, the experiment at Bicêtre was an important one. It demonstrates the faith that the Ladies had in the Daughters when they assigned them to the task, and the support they had from the royal family, who had given them Bicêtre. What the Daughters lacked was sufficient financial resources. Realizing that they could not fund the foundling home, de Marillac made the decision to change the Daughters’ job from helping all of the children to helping only the portion of them whom they knew they could adequately raise.
Developing Hospital Nursing Communities
The Company of the Daughters of Charity was not France’s first religious community to use nursing as an expression of its spiritual vocation. The Augustinian nuns, who staffed numerous hospitals and the Beguines, who aided the sick in the Low Countries, were both active as nurses during the Middle Ages.46 However, these nursing communities declined in late medieval France. The Black Death had reduced the population of Europe by a third, and had wiped out many of those who were brave enough to care for the ill. The Protestant Reformation largely eliminated professional religious careers for women in reformed territories. Protestant Churches did not recognize nuns or other religious communities of women. The Catholic Reformation’s Tridentine decrees of 1563 demanded that all nuns live within convent walls. By the early seventeenth century, then, Protestant Europe had no religious communities of nurses, and Catholic Europe denied many communities the right to
44 Gager, 150. 45 Archives Nationales (AN), S. 6169. Abregé Historique de VÉtablissement de l'Hôpital des Enfants-Trouvés. 46 Josephine A. Dolan, History of Nursing (Philadelphia, PA: W.B. Saunders Company, 1968), 103; Vem L. Bullough and Bonnie Bullough, The Care of the Sick: the Emergence of Modern Nursing (New York: Prodist, 1978), 54; Monica E. Baly, Nursing and Social Change (London: William Heinemann Medical Books Ltd, 1980), 31 and Craig Harline, “Actives and Contemplatives: The Female Religious of the Low Countries before and after Trent,” The Catholic Historical Review LXXXI4 (1995), 543.
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practice their healing vocation. The Daughters of Charity emerged at the nadir in nursing care in Europe.47 Initially, de Marillac was wary of allowing the Daughters of Charity to work in hospitals, in part, concerned about the disorder and immorality that characterized many of them.48 Indeed, all accounts of the Daughters’ arrival at hospitals describe encounters with filth and disorder. The accounts also praise the Daughters for their ability to cleanse the space physically and to purify it morally with their presence. When de Marillac and a group of Daughters went to Nantes, they “began working most zealously and lovingly at cleaning and straightening out the women’s ward, which was in the worst state.”49 De Marillac stresses this value: “We thought, as poor persons, the essentials and cleanliness were enough.”50 For the Daughters physically sanitizing and spiritual sanitizing the space were parallel activities. They understood cleanliness, and living within austere and clean spaces, as acts of godliness. Colin Jones argues that the arrival of the Daughters of Charity at the Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi in Montpellier in 1668 “improved the moral tone of the establishment at a stroke; the talk of scandal and immorality dried up as soon as they arrived.”51 In addition to her concerns for the spiritual and physical health of the Daughters, de Marillac doubted the efficacy of medical care practiced by physicians. When her son had been ill in 1651, de Paul had encouraged her to heed the advice of his doctors. He wrote, “people think that doctors kill more patients that they cure...Nevertheless, when one is ill, one should be submissive to the doctor and obey him. Perhaps, Mademoiselle, what you consider harmful is really good for him.”52 De Marillac was never convinced of the abilities of physicians, 47 Historians examining early modem poor relief used to assert that Protestant nations gave alms in a more systematic fashion to the deserving poor. Whereas in Catholic countries a more chaotic system existed and authorities made fewer distinctions between those deserving and not deserving aid. For an example of this dichotomy see, Wilma Pugh, “Catholics, Protestants, and Testamentary Charity in Seventeenth-Century Lyon and Nîmes,” French Historical Studies XI/4 (Fall 1980), 483. Other historians argue that there were more similarities than differences in charitable provisions in Catholic and Protestant Europe. See, for example, Natalie Zemon Davis, “Poor Relief, Humanism and Heresy: the Case of Lyon,” in Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press: 1975), 17-64; Jones, The Charitable Imperative; Robert Jütte, “Poor Relief and Social Discipline in Sixteenth-Century Europe,” European History Review 11 (1981), 25-52, and Nicholas Terpstra, “Confraternities and Public Charity: Modes of Civic Welfare in Early Modem Italy,” in Confraternities and Catholic Reform in Italy, France and Spain, eds. John Patrick Donnelly and Michael W. Maher (Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1999), 97-121. 48 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, “Hôpitaux,” 740-743. 49De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 159. 50 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 159. 51 Jones, Charitable Imperative, 134. 52 De Paul, Correspondance, Lettre 1407.
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and there are many cases in which her Daughters and hospital doctors faced off over appropriate medical care. De Marillac also feared that institutional service would harm the quality of service the Daughters offered their home-bound patients. The Daughters of Charity retained their mission of visiting the sick poor in their homes in most locations, but some Daughters assigned to hospitals worked exclusively in them, and did not serve the parish. First, de Marillac believed that hospital service would distract the Daughters from their primary vocation of serving the sick poor in their homes.53 Second, she argued that the sick poor would be worse off because they would have to leave the security of their homes to obtain medical treatment from the Daughters in hospitals. In her opinion, the disruption of home life was unhealthy for the family and would keep some sick persons from seeking medical help. Third, de Marillac contemplated the impact upon the “shame-faced poor,” nobles and other prominent individuals who had fallen on hard times. She believed that they would not go to public institutions for assistance.54 Finally, de Marillac was concerned that the Daughters of Charity serve the needs of the sick poor and not work in institutions that served to confine the able-bodied poor. Because of de Marillac’s worries, the Daughters did not terminate their parish work or their visits to the sick in their homes despite their increased involvement in institutional care. De Marillac’s resistance to hospital service did not mean that she did not want the Daughters of Charity engaged in nursing. Indeed, healing and comforting the sick were principle components of the Company’s parish work. De Marillac instructed the Daughters, “as soon as the sisters are called to see the sick, they shall greet them warmly and approach them cheerfully and with good will.”55 As the following Company rule illustrates, de Marillac was intimately familiar with medical procedures and techniques. De Marillac viewed medical treatment as integral to the other services offered by the Daughters. Consequently, Ladies and priests who called Daughters to their parishes assumed that the Daughters were capable of making basic diagnoses and performing minor surgical procedures, such as bleeding to restore balance to the bodily humors, in the homes of the poor. In the rule for Daughters employed in villages, De Marillac wrote, “the sisters shall then find out how long they have been ill and shall begin administering remedies by means of cold sponges or bloodletting when the sick are adverse to the sponges. If their fever continues, the sisters shall repeat the treatments three or four times.”56 53 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 486. 54De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 521. The plight of “bashful poor” was similar in Italy, see Sandra Cavallo, “Charity, power, and patronage in eighteenth-century Italian hospitals: the case of Turin,” in The Hospital in History, eds Lindsay Granshaw and Roy Porter (New York: Routledge, 1989): 99. 55 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, “Observations sur les regies: Soeurs employées aux Villages,” 737. 56 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, “Observations sur les regies: Soeurs employées aux Villages,” 737.
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The Daughters were responsible for deciding when to begin treatments and for how long they would be continued: “When the fever persists they shall let blood from the patient’s foot, then begin once again to let blood from the arm until the fever goes down. The sisters shall be very careful not to administer any remedies while a patient is shivering or sweating.”57 In 1640, the Daughters first brought their nursing skills to a hospital. Demand for the Daughters’ services in institutions gradually wore down de Marillac’s resistance to hospital work. The trend toward involvement in medical establishments accelerated after her death in 1660. The Daughters grew to become France’s largest and most sought-after nursing community by the end of the seventeenth century.
The Hôtel-Dieu in Angers
There were three primary categories of hospitals in ancien régime France, differing in their clientele and the types of illness they treated. Local hospitals were usually parish-based institutions that served the welfare needs of parishioners by caring for invalids, incurables, orphans, and the old and the sick. Hôtels-Dieu ministered to the sick and were generally open to all persons, regardless of place of origin, although some did exclude people with certain medical conditions.58 The Hôpitaux-Généraux were centers for the care, and later “the confinement,” of the poor during the seventeenth century.59 In practical terms, Hôpitaux-Généraux absorbed some of the population displaced by the wars, famines, and plagues that beset France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Although the Daughters of Charity would eventually expand to staff all three types of institution, they primarily staffed local hospitals and Hôtels-Dieu, where they nursed the sick, excluding those who had venereal disease. The rule also stated that the Daughters could not nurse pregnant women. The first hospital staffed by the Daughters of Charity was the Hôtel-Dieu in Angers, one of France’s oldest hospitals. The Hôtel-Dieu evolved over the centuries as its directors sought a qualified and affordable staff of nurses and administrators. In the late twelfth century a pious layman, Etienne de Marsal, Seneschal of Anjou, founded a hospital on the right bank of Angers’ Maine River. The large gothic structure was completed in 1190. Pope Alexander III offered the
57 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, “Observations sur les regies: Soeurs employées aux Villages,” 737. 58 Muriel Joerger, “The Structure of the Hospital System in France in the Ancien Régime,” in Medicine and Society in France, ed Robert Forster and Orest Ranum (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980). 59 Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (New York: Vintage Books, 1988), 39.
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establishment his protection and King Henry II gave the institution the income generated by a nearby toll bridge. At first Etienne de Marsal oversaw a group of laymen who staffed the hospital; four priests who performed sacraments soon joined them. By the mid-thirteenth century, thirty Augustinian friars managed and staffed the hospital, now called l’hopital St. Jean l’Evangeliste. All was not well, however, and investigations conducted in the fifteenth century uncovered evidence that the Augustinian Prior was skimming the establishment’s income and forbidding the poor to enter the hospital, with the result that some were left to die on the streets. The town council of Angers instigated proceedings against the Prior in 1489, and by the mid-sixteenth century (1548 and 1559), the Parlement of Paris had handed down a decree placing the hospital under the direction of four laymen it called the Fathers of the Poor who were responsible for ensuring that the patients received appropriate treatment. This body continued to direct the institution throughout the early modem period. The choice of laymen to be Fathers of the Poor did not instantly resolve the administrative problems at Angers. While these men tended to be drawn from the elites of the community, they were not necessarily experienced in running hospitals or caring for the poor. Indeed, the very structure of the office meant that there was a substantial degree of administrative turnover: hospital administrators served one-year terms that began on 1 May and each year there were typically four directors. Over time the skills possessed by these men changed. In the fifteenth century, 67 percent were merchants, 18 percent were professionals (fields unspecified) and 9 percent were apothecaries. Although merchants had limited medical knowledge, they were always an important component of the administration because they knew how to take charge and negotiate and had many business ties in the city. In the first half of the sixteenth century, apothecaries grew to 23 percent and merchants declined to 61 percent. Apothecaries were an obvious choice because they were medical authorities who had professional relationships with doctors and surgeons. In the next half-century, the percentage of apothecaries remained the same, but that of merchants declined to 33 percent and the number of lawyers and judges rose to 23 percent. Lawyers and judges would have been listed within the grouping of unidentified professionals before 1650, but they rose to prominence thereafter because of their competence injudicial affairs.60 In addition, the Fathers of the Poor also faced a continuing struggle to secure funds to run the hospital. While they did own property, including mills, vineyards, and a toll bridge, the revenue generated by these sources was insufficient to cover their expenses, and the hospital directors were constantly forced to search for other sources of income to make ends meet. The hospital continued to struggle over time despite the best efforts of these laymen, and in 60 Caroline Piaia, “L'administration to les administrateurs de l'Hôpital Saint-Jean L’Evangeliste (1559-1789),” Mémoire de Maîtrese d'Histoire Moderne, Université d’Angers, 1997, 84-86.
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1640 Louis Boileve, the lieutenant-general of Angers, described the hospital as being in a state of great disorder.61 In 1640 the Fathers of the Poor invited a group of Daughters of Charity to take over the daily management of the hospital and to provide nursing care.62 The entrance of the Daughters was part of an ongoing process of reorganization and re structuring that had characterized the hospital’s history.63 The Fathers of the Poor sought a nursing staff that would be affordable, reliable, and well trained; they found these attributes in the Daughters of Charity. To the Fathers of the Poor the Daughters of Charity must have seemed like a minor miracle. Local religious communities had grown lax by the late sixteenth century and there was not a local organization capable of running the hospital.64 The Daughters possessed the traits necessary to make up for the deficiencies in the existing institutional arrangements in Angers. The hospital administrators recognized that during their novitiate, all Daughters received medical instruction at the Motherhouse where they made medicinal teas and remedies and learned how to bleed and perform other minor surgical operations. Their education did not end when they left the Motherhouse. In the correspondence between de Marillac and the Daughters in communities across France, there is extensive discussion of healing practices. Daughters also trained one another at their local communities. In a letter from de Marillac to a Daughter at Chantilly, de Marillac writes, “I beg you...to teach our sister how to let blood. Especially teach her well the dangers involved with the arteries, nerves, and other areas. Remember, if you think you have opened an artery, to draw a great quantity of blood and to put a coin in the compress in order to make the ligature.”65 This continual teaching and training made the Daughters skilled medical practitioners. Along with improving the patients’ physical health the Daughters were also responsible for the condition of their souls. Indirectly, hospital directors benefited from the Daughters’ dual vocation because the Daughters not only nursed the sick, they also created a moral environment of renewal and made the hospital a place of sacred activity. De Marillac wrote to Cecile Angiboust who was nursing at Angers: “love [the patients] tenderly and respect them profoundly.”66 61 Archive Departmentale Maine et Loire [ADML] Hs. F6. 62 AN, S. 6160, Deux requestes des Echeuines d ’Angers présentées l ’une au Roy et l ’autre a Mr l ’Evesque d ’Angers le 4e novembre 1639. See also, Frances Wilkens, Six Great Nurses (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1962), 24. 63 The first Daughters of Charity included Cecile Angiboust, Marguerite François, and Élisabeth Martin who began working in the hospital in 1639 and Élisabeth Turgis, Clemence Ferre, Barbe Toussaint, Genevieve Caillou, Madeleine Mongert, and Marie-Marthe Trumeau who started in 1640. See Aude’s appendix. 64 John McManners, French Ecclesiastical Society under the Ancien Régime: A Study of Angers in the Eighteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1960), 90. 65 De Marillac, Ecrits spirituels, Lettre 352. 66 Roux, 321.
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The Daughters were engaged in a work of mercy, and they were ultimately responsible to God. For example, those who died in the hospitals of the Daughters of Charity often did so after careful preparation for their salvation. According to their rules, the Daughters of Charity were to try to convince each patient to make a general confession and to receive communion, but they were not to be too pushy. The Daughters had to take into account the physical, mental, and spiritual state of each individual. For example, when addressing the duties of the Sister Servant at the hospital in Saint-Denis, de Marillac wrote, “the Sister Servant shall try herself to get others to try to move all those sick who have not made a general confession to do so as soon as possible...Fear should be instilled in those who have need of it and confidence in those who are too fearful.”67 Ultimately, the Daughters were to prepare the very sick to die well. They encouraged the gravely ill to make frequent confessions, to detach themselves from the things of this world, and to embrace a desire for paradise. On occasion, the Daughters also nursed Protestant patients and their goals were to heal them corporally and spiritually by bringing them into the Catholic fold. De Marillac wrote, “How many heretics have been converted since the Daughters of Charity have been working in the hospitals? Recall that, in 1659, ...[at] the hospital of Saint-Denis, five or six heretics were converted, including the son of a Protestant minister, without counting several previous conversions.”68 Proselytizing to the Huguenots was an especially vital duty in Angers, a city that had been a Protestant stronghold in the sixteenth century.69 Employing a staff of Daughters of Charity assured hospital directors in Angers that patients in their care were receiving competent medical service as well as intensive spiritual guidance. The directors were also eager to enlist the Daughters of Charity because of their administrative capacities and organizational discipline. Each Daughter lived according to a rule defined by her vocation. These rules specified how the Daughters should organize their days and accomplish their work. For example, the rule for the pharmacist states, “her primary concern is to learn properly the method of compounding remedies...She shall use only pure drugs, checking on them often. In the event that some remedy deteriorate, she shall make some up new immediately... . ”70 De Marillac cautions the pharmacist when treating her peers, “when the sisters tell her of their indisposition, she shall listen to them charitably without dispensing remedies too often... .”71 Such definite guidelines assured consistent behavior throughout the community as well as professional 67 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, “Manière de traiter les maladies à l’Hôtel-Dieu de SaintDenis,” 743-747; 68 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, “Inconvénients pour la Compagnie,” 833. 69 J.H.M. Salmon, Society in Crisis: France in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: University Press, 1975), 132 and 146. 70 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, “Règlement pour la maison principale: Office de TApothicaresse,” 755-756. 71 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, “Règlement pour la maison principale: Office de l’Apothicaresse,” 755-756.
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accountability. It was clearly the pharmacist who decided the appropriate medicines for the sick and when it was necessary to summon a doctor.72 The Daughters also were responsible for keeping the records for the hospitals. In 1659, de Marillac wrote to the superior at a Hotel-Dieu assuring her that she would find the medical records in order because the Sister Servant, “is very well aware of the order that must be maintained in hospitals. I would be very surprised if she had failed to record the names, places of origin and dates of admission and discharge or death of the patients or if she had not kept an exact account of receipts and expenditures.”73 Hospital directors entrusted the Daughters with extensive management tasks in the hospitals. The Daughters’ training, their careful division of labor, and the constant oversight from the Motherhouse made them well-qualified nurses and hospital administrators. In the records of hospital administrators there are no comments stating that the Daughters were negligent in their duties, so it seems that they were following de Marillac’s directives reasonably well. From all appearances, the Fathers and the Daughters should have developed an ideal working relationship What might have been the perfect working relationship, however, was not as smooth in execution as it was in conception. The chief problem was defining roles and expectations. At this hospital and in all subsequent hospital establishments, de Marillac and the administrators formulated a contract detailing the Daughters’ service and the institution’s responsibilities. De Paul and de Marillac were careful to give the directors sufficient autonomy, for example, giving them the right to dismiss Daughters, so that the Company did not appear to be taking over the establishment.74 The Angers’ contract was the prototype for all future agreements, and it illustrates the priorities of the Company and the hospitals.75 The contract stated that in the temporal realm the Daughters were under the direction of the administrators of the hospital and were to obey their rules and those of the doctors.76 The Ladies of Charity did not oversee the hospital work, however, in the spiritual realm, the Daughters were ultimately accountable
72 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, “Règlement pour la maison principale: Office de l’Apothicaresse,” 755-756. 73 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 632. 74 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 17. 75 AN, S. 6160 16 Mars 1640. Établissement de la Filles de la Charité d'Angers, et Règlement pour le soeurs. Articles accordez pour l'Etablissement des filles de la Charité dans Vhôpital d'Angers le 1 febvrier 1640. Section X. Les articles accordée pour rétablissement des filles de la Congrégation de la Charité de servantes des pauvres des hôpitaux et confraire des pariosses pour servir les pauvres malades dans l'hôpital St. Jean l'Evangeliste d'Angers. 76 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 18.
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to de Marillac and de Paul.77 While the contract was a reasonable attempt to clarify the terms of the relationship and to eliminate the chances of misunderstanding, it never clearly distinguished what exactly was in the temporal realm and what exactly was in the spiritual realm. From the very start, therefore, the laymen administering the hospital, and the Daughters running the hospital, understood their roles from different perspectives.78 A community of Daughters began their service at the Hôtel-Dieu in February 1640.79 Not surprisingly, upon their arrival in Angers, the Daughters found the hospital in a deplorable state, and they went about cleaning and re organizing it.80 The first three Daughters of Charity went to Angers in February and three more followed the next month.81 As the nursing staff grew so did its responsibilities. For example, in 1650 the administrators purchased a second house that they converted into a hospital, and the Daughters were responsible for serving the sick in both buildings.82 De Marillac expressed her concern over this acquisition, writing that if working in both establishments overly burdened the Daughters they would not be able to keep the hospitals orderly and clean.83 Ultimately the directors brought in more Daughters so that both foundations could be staffed. The letters of the Daughters of Charity defend their service at Angers, and they considered their work at the hospital a success. For instance, de Marillac noted the opening of the secondary hospital in which the Daughters were to serve.84 Their convictions are supported by Colin Jones’ work on the Daughters who served at Montpellier’s Hôtel-Dieu and rendered high-quality service.85 He states that, “the Daughters of Charity played a key role in the administrative overhaul of the Hôtel-Dieu...Their presence seems to have improved the moral 77 Célestin Port. Inventaire des Archives anciennes de l'hôpital Saint-Jean d'Angers (Paris: Librairie J.-B. Dumoulion, 1870; Mayenne: Réimpression par l’imprimerie de la Manutention, 1995), xx. 78 There were troubles with the contract from its inception. The directors of the hospital refused to sign the contracts for several months. Initially, therefore, the Daughters were not working under a formal contact at all. One issue to be settled was the removal of Daughters from the hospital. De Marillac is careful in her negotiations with hospital administrators and insists that the hospital have the right to dismiss Daughters just as the Company has the right to recall them. This equality will “make it clear that it was never the intention of Monsieur Vincent to take over the hospital,” De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 37. 79 Charpy, Document de la compagnie aux origins, 309. The hospital administrators and de Marillac struggled to create a contract for the establishment that was acceptable to both parties, they finally did so in March 1641. 80François Lebrun, ed., Le Diocèse d ’Angers (Paris: Beauchesne, 1981), 118. 81 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 16. 82 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 288. 83 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 288. 84 De Marillac, Écrits Spirituels, Lettre 288. 85 Jones, Charitable Imperative, 156.
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tone of the establishment at a stroke: talk of scandal and immorality dried up as soon as they arrived.”86 The hospital directors left letters of their own that demonstrate their growing confidence in the Daughters’ abilities. Over the years administrators recruited more Daughters of Charity and expanded their responsibilities. In 1645 there were one doctor, one surgeon, and three aids employed at the hospital to work along with the ten Daughters of Charity who formed the bulk of the professional staff.87 In addition there were forty-six servants (including cooks, butchers and gardeners), twenty washerwomen, twenty-five vineyard workers and an ever-changing body of day laborers. In 1640 eight Daughters went to the hospital, in 1645 there were ten and in 1648 four new Daughters arrived. By 1793 there were thirty-nine Daughters employed at the Hotel-Dieu.88 The activities of the Daughters also increased over time, and in 1669 the administrators requested six Daughters to direct the hospital’s food and pharmacy. In 1682 a Daughter became the apothecary for the hospital, where she grew medicinal plants and made remedies from hundreds of recipes.89 To some degree the rise in the number of Daughters employed at the hospital corresponds to an increase in the number of patients admitted to the hospital over the course of the seventeenth century because of population expansion in Angers.90 War and epidemics of plague and dysentery sent refugees to the city of Angers, where they sought assistance.91 In 1640, the year the Daughters began work at the hospital there were about 1,400 patients; by 1670 the annual number of patients had risen to about 2,400. The records are not complete enough to plot the population year by year, but there was an overall increase in hospital admissions in the middle of the seventeenth century, and numbers continued to rise until the end of the century.92 Hospital administrators also called upon the Daughters of Charity to step in when other charitable providers were not adequately performing their duties. In December 1668 the hospital administrators wrote to the town council to complain that the officers appointed to assist the poor were not providing the care required,
86Jones, Charitable Impérative, 134. 87 Philippe Rabate, “Les malages de l'hôpital Saint-Jean de 1598-1688,” Mémoire de Maîtrese d’Histoire Moderne, Université d’Angers, 1996, 55. 88 ADML, 1 Hs. A 3 and 1 Hs. F 6. See also, Aude Guillon, “La vie religieuse a l’Hôpital Saint Jean de 1634 a la veille de la Révolution,” Mémoire de maîtrise d’Histoire religeuse. Université d’Angers, 1996, 68. 89 Vincent Hervé, “Les malades de l’Hôtel-Dieu d’Angers 1689-1720,” Mémoire de Maîtrese d’Histoire Moderne, Université d’Angers, 1996, 61. 90 Rabate, 7 and 20. 91 Rabate, 26. 92 See Rabate and Hervé.
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and asserted that it was necessary to replace them with Daughters of Charity.93 The following July, six more Daughters went to Angers to take over this work. The successes of the Daughters at Angers, however, came with a price— the health and safety of the Daughters. There are instances of letters in which the Superior General of the Congregation of the Mission wrote to Angers requesting that the hospital expand the ranks of Daughters to mitigate the working conditions of those employed there. After the death of de Paul, Monsieurs Alméras and Jolly served as Superiors General of the Congregation of the Mission and the Daughters of Charity. In 1674 Jolly explained to the administrators that they needed to hire five additional Daughters to keep those already at the hospital from becoming exhausted from overwork.94 Each time the administrators requested additional Daughters, they commented on the deplorable state of the Daughters’ health. Working in the hospital made the Daughters sick. Jolly wrote angrily to them, claiming that the Daughters were regularly ill because the hospital directors severely overtaxed them.95 Indeed, Jolly pointed out, during the community’s first year in the hospital, the Sister Servant, Elizabeth Martin, became so ill she had to return to Paris and another superior had to be chosen to succeed her.96 This, in Jolly’s words, was particularly shameful in light of the fact that the Daughters had saved the hospital. The problem of the exploitation of the Daughters at the hands of the administrators is also visible in de Marillac’s correspondence. DeMarillac had a close ally in Angers, the Abbot of Vaux, with whom she maintained an intensive correspondence. He kept an eye on the Daughters who were far from their Motherhouse and acted as a liaison between the Fathers of the Poor and the Company. The letters between the two describe constant staffing woes. De Marillac always had fewer Daughters than she needed to meet the demands of Ladies who wanted help in their parishes, and thus could not send Daughters to Angers as quickly as the administrators requested. Meanwhile, the administrators complained that de Marillac was not sending them her most qualified and hardest working Daughters. Obviously, she could not send Daughters to Angers who had experience working in hospitals because this was their first such establishment; there was always a great deal of training involved to get new Daughters up to speed. In response to the directors’ complaints, she recalled some Daughters and sent new ones to reinvigorate the ranks.97 She also tried to honor the requests of the Fathers of the Poor when she deemed it possible; for instance, in 1653 the administrators wrote to thank her for allowing them to retain Cécile Angiboust as 93 ADML, BB. 92, fol. 145. 94 Guillon, 71. 95Archives Départmentales de Maine-et-Loire (ADML), Hs. F6. 96De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 37. 97 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, see especially letters between de Marillac and de Vaux from 1644.
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the Sister Servant at the hospital when de Marillac believed that it was time for her to be transferred to another community. The directors wanted Angiboust to direct the hospital Daughters permanently, and although de Marillac was careful to explain that this was not possible, she did acquiesce and allow her to remain in Angers for the unusually long term of eight years.98 Perhaps the most serious problem at Angers, however, was that the chain of command and expectations for service were not clearly articulated. In 1641 de Marillac wrote a letter to the Fathers complaining that administrators frequently gave contradictory orders. In her letter she adamantly encouraged a reorganization of the hospital administration so that only one person would give orders about the sick.99 She hoped that this would alleviate many of the conflicts between the directors, doctors, and Daughters. More importantly, de Marillac argued that the administrators would never be happy with the Daughters’ performance if they did not delineate exactly what they wanted the Daughters to do. The ambiguities in the organization of the administration threatened to undermine the entire relationship. On a far more fundamental level, the relationship was flawed by the difficulties that the secular staff had in understanding the role of the Daughters in the institution. From the correspondence it is clear that at least some of the administrators viewed the Daughters as a reliable and cheap source of labor to be put to work at any task the administrators pleased. For example, in September 1642 the administrators told the Daughters to work in the fields for local winegrowers.100 In 1656 the administration sought to buy a fish market and wanted the Daughters to staff it.101 De Marillac responded incredulously in a letter to her ally, the Abbot: “I am truly astonished...at the proposal of the hospital administrators to buy the fish market. I am equally surprised that they are considering employing our sisters in it.”102 Work in wine fields and fish markets was not acceptable to de Marillac and de Paul, who insisted that the Daughters only serve the sick and poor. The Daughters received direction from Paris, but the hospital administrators and the doctors also governed their actions, and they could subvert the nature of their vocation. In order to honor their spiritual vocation, the Daughters occasionally needed to disobey the wishes of the doctors and administrators. The administrator’s belief that the Daughters could not only direct the hospital and nurse the sick, but also work for wine growers and manage a fish market testifies to their faith in the abilities of the Daughters as laborers and administrators. It is possible that the Daughters’ work in the hospital had impressed the administrators so that they desired to hire similarly trained women to work for them in a variety 98 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 374. 99 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 57. 100De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 82. 101 Dirvin, Louise de Marillac, 346. 102De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 506.
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of capacities. It is also possible that the directors sought be rid of some of the more troublesome Daughters by sending them out to the fields. Unfortunately, the records left by the Fathers of the Poor do not detail their motivations for requesting the Daughters to work outside the hospital. Over time, hospital directors decreased their demands for collateral services and required that the Daughters only work in the hospitals.103 The Daughters also seemed to grow more responsive to the needs of the doctors and directors over the course of the seventeenth century. The number of letters of complaint dwindled, despite the increased presence of the Daughters in hospitals.104 Over time the Daughters and administrators managed to establish a more defined chain of command and a solid working relationship. The Daughters of Charity’s negotiations with hospital officials were critical for the community’s growth and continued success. Had the Motherhouse been unable to maintain control over the Daughters’ hospital vocation, the Company would have lost its autonomy and its unity. Instead of one centrally organized community of Daughters led by de Marillac, there would have been disparate communities directed by hospital administrators whose primary focus would not have been service to the poor. In this situation, a lack of unity would have compromised the mission of the Daughters of Charity, and the community would likely have disintegrated. Although some staffing problems resulted from conflicts between the Fathers of the Poor and the Daughters of Charity, there were also divisions within the community itself. In some ways the Daughters’ work in large institutions was an experiment in human relations, because de Marillac could not directly govern the large groups of Daughters who were so far from Paris. The factionalism among the Daughters at Angers was not unusual; there were problems in several early large-scale institutions. In May 1646 the administrators of l’hôpital de Saint René in Nantes, a town about a hundred kilometers west of Angers, asked for six Daughters to direct and serve their institution.105 Saint René was a run-down hospital and the administrators called upon the Daughters to revitalize it while nursing the sick. De Marillac wrote, “the administrators gave us total control in the hospital. We were given full charge both of the care of the sick and of the supervision of the servants.”106 Soon after the arrival of the Daughters, the local ladies who had visited the hospital with food formed themselves into a Confraternity of Charity and worked alongside the Daughters.107
103 Guillon, 74-79. 104 This statement must be qualified because the correspondence of de Marillac and de Paul ends with their deaths in 1660. For information about the success of the Daughters of Charity after 1660, see Jones, The Charitable Imperative. 105 De Paul, Correspondance, Lettre 804. 106De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 159. 107Dirvin, Louise de Marillac, 251.
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As at Angers, problems arose at Nantes shortly after the Daughters’ establishment and most were about staffing. There was trouble determining the appropriate number of Daughters for the job. De Marillac and the administrators exchanged many letters declaring that the Daughters were overworked or, on the contrary, that there were too many Daughters for the hospital.108 Overstaffing the hospital was problematic for the Company because of its chronic shortage of Daughters.109 The most critical difficulties that developed at Nantes were internal, the result of animosity between Daughters who had divided themselves into two antagonistic camps.110 The problems at Nantes were more severe than those at Angers, and they highlight the troubles that could occur when the Daughters were far from de Marillac’s oversight. At the root of the problem was the Sister Servant at Nantes, Elisabeth Martin, who was often bed-ridden and too ill to oversee the community. Martin directed the hospital at Angers as the Sister Servant from 1640 to 1642, when she left because of her poor health. Because of her experience, de Marillac selected her to head the community at Nantes; however, Martin’s health had not improved and she was often ill. Unlike de Marillac, she allowed the Daughters little freedom, did not appear concerned with their needs, and was not approachable. Some of the Daughters of Charity remained loyal to her despite her authoritarian behavior, since de Marillac told them to obey the Sister Servant at all times.111 Other Daughters, however, looked for spiritual direction and a sense of belonging from the hospital’s chaplain. Soon there were two polarized groups. At de Marillac’s suggestion, de Paul wrote a long letter to the Daughters in which he praised the Daughters’ mission, outlined the temptations they felt to betray the mission, and set down a series of behavioral expectations including speaking to the confessor only in the confessional, and not favoring some Daughters over others.112 A letter was insufficient to remedy the problems. Within a year of the establishment’s foundation, de Marillac scheduled a visitation and she dispatched an experienced sister, Jeanne Lepintre, and a priest of 108De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 271. 109De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 338. 110 The letters of de Paul, de Marillac, Monsieur Lambert, and Monsieur Fuset, a priest at the hospital at Nantes provide glimpses into the personalities of the Daughters involved in the troubles at Nantes. Claude-Brigide was a Daughter with a scrupulous temperament. The Sister Servant Isabelle Martin was often bed-ridden and had an authoritarian personality. Martin was respected for her service to the Company and her abilities as a leader; however her ill health seems to have weakened her abilities to direct the establishment at Nantes as she lacked the compassion that her position required. Sister Henriette was the Daughter who was closest to the hospital’s chaplain. Although she was respected for her outstanding skills as a pharmacist, Henriette had a strong personality and she is cited in a number of conflicts that developed in the Company. 111 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 184. 112 De Paul, Correspondance, III: Lettre 939,
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the Mission, Monsieur Lambert, to report on the community.113 Lambert made three immediate changes: he appointed a new confessor for the Daughters to replace the chaplain; he sent Isabelle Martin to convalesce at the Motherhouse, making Jeanne Lepintre the Sister Servant, and he sent three sisters away from Nantes, two to Paris and one to Richelieu.114 Lambert assured de Paul and de Marillac that although there was disorder at the hospital, and one Daughter was particularly close to the hospital’s confessor, which was in itself scandalous, the situation was remediable. De Marillac and Lambert responded calmly, and immediately resolved the grave problems that had arisen at Nantes. They realized that the divisiveness and abuses at Nantes could threaten the reputation of the entire Company. Daughters were reassigned to alleviate the problems of differences in personality, and Monsieur Lambert warned the new chaplain to remain more distant from the Daughters.115 Eventually, one Daughter left the Company because of this crisis, and de Marillac dismissed her privately. Ultimately Marguerite Chétif, the Company’s Superior, withdrew the Daughters from Nantes in 1664.116 The establishments at Angers and Nantes were critical for shaping the Company’s future work in hospitals. The Daughters’ establishments at these hospitals were initially problematic, but the difficult experiences permitted de Marillac to better prepare Daughters for their work in large hospitals and to develop new strategies to address problems with the administrators and among the Daughters themselves. De Marillac was also building up a body of experienced Daughters to send to new hospital foundations. The Daughters used their service to the poor and sick in parishes and charitable institutions to make themselves irreplaceable social servants. The ability of the Daughters to care for the needy in their homes and within municipal institutions meant that those suffering due to war, economic decline, epidemic, and famine were cared for by compassionate women who believed that they were serving God by serving the poor. As the administrators at Angers discovered when they tried to use town employees to provide charitable relief, the quality of the service provided by the Daughters of Charity was hard to match. The Daughters of Charity changed the nature of charitable services and health care in early modem France. They made hospitals cleaner and safer places, and met the physical and spiritual needs of the sick and poor to the best of their abilities. Historians often credit Florence Nightingale with important innovations in nursing in the mid-nineteenth century. However, some elements of her reform, including her service to soldiers, her insistence on keeping hospitals clean, her thorough hands-on training of nurses, and her assertion that nursing was a 113 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettres 174, 312. 114De Paul, CorrespondanceyIII: Lettre 973, 115De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 433. 116Élisabeth Charpy, “Marguerite Chétif,” Echoes of the Company (1985), 450
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respectable profession for women, were already evident in the seventeenth century. Indeed, Nightingale wrote to the Times on 13 October 1854 describing the deplorable conditions of British military hospitals and praising those of the French: Our whole medical system is shamefully bad. The wom-out pensioners who were brought out as an ambulance corps are totally useless, and not only are surgeons not to be had, but there are no dressers and nurses to carry out the surgeon’s directions and to attend on the sick during the interval between his visits. Here the French are greatly our superiors. Their medical arrangements are extremely good, their surgeons more numerous, and they have the help of the “Sisters of Charity” who have accompanied the expedition in incredible numbers. These devoted women are excellent nurses, and perform for the sick and wounded in all the offices, which could be rendered in the most complete hospitals.117
117 Quotation taken from, http://www.topbiography.com/9062Florence%20Nightingale/life.htm
Chapter 5
Bureaucratization and the Growth o f the Company o f the Daughters o f Charity
The Company of the Daughters of Charity dedicated its early years to creating a community that could resist enclosure. This end was realized when Pope Clement IX recognized the community as a confraternity in 1668.1 This acknowledgment was the product of decades of lobbying on the part of the founders, Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, to gamer support among religious, lay, and secular authorities, and the tireless efforts of the Daughters themselves in expanding their mission into new parishes and hospitals. Moreover, the Daughters of Charity survived the deaths of the founders in 1660, continued to evolve and expand late in the seventeenth century, and still obtained the imprimatur of the Pope. What happened to the organization of the Daughters of Charity between their initial experiments in parishes and hospitals, and the deaths of de Marillac and de Paul in 1660? How was the Company able to remain so resilient? Certainly, the very fact that the Daughters had been functioning since 1633 gave the institution a certain durability. On examining the structure of the Daughters of Charity, however, it becomes clear that many different factors were at work in the survival of the institution, and that the composition of the Company itself changed over time. Increasingly it appears that women of the upper classes who had founded the Confraternities of Charity became less active in the community, and women of more modest origins came to direct the Company. While the Ladies remained an important source of funding for the Daughters of Charity, over time their level of hands-on work with the community declined. This chapter will examine the implications of these changes, and suggest that this transformation was crucial to the survival of the Daughters of Charity over the long run.
1 Pierre Coste, Les Filles de la Charité (Paris, Desclée de Brouwer et cie, Éditeurs, 1933), 53.
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The Reduced Role of the Ladies of Charity The Company of the Daughters of Charity evolved over several decades. Initially it was a confraternity of well-off women and their servants. By 1633 the structure of the Confraternity of Charity had altered dramatically, as a number of young women came from the countryside to work under the direction of the Ladies of Charity in and around Paris. The Company became an alliance with elite administrators directing young women who performed charitable works. By 1636 the founders had purchased a larger building to become the Motherhouse at La Chapelle, then a suburb of Paris and near Saint Lazare.2 The centralization at La Chapelle meant that all Daughters shared a daily regimen and spiritual outlook towards the poor, because they all looked to one leader and one mode of behavior.3 The Company was no longer a group of volunteer Ladies. It had become a professional organization with its members supported by the local elite who founded the communities or the institutions in which the Daughters served.4 Louise de Marillac divided the Company into two tiers, comprising Ladies and Daughters of Charity, which helped the Company thrive despite its non-cloistered status. The original structure of the Company had been unsatisfactory in that the Ladies could or would not render satisfactory services to the poor, and only women from artisan or peasant families possessed the requisite skills to render truly effective social assistance to France’s neediest. More importantly, the transformation of the Company brought it into line with French social norms, and under the reorganized structure both groups performed tasks deemed appropriate to women of their class. De Marillac’s restructuring did not ignore the contributions of the wealthy to the service of the needy. Had de Marillac turned exclusively to poorer Daughters and had she repudiated her links to the wealthy, the community would not have had the funds to support itself nor the social and political connections to avoid enclosure. The Ladies and Daughters were both essential to the early history of the Company. By the mid-seventeenth century, however, the Daughters became more prominent as the ranks of the Ladies of Charity dwindled. Their control over charity waned as the Ladies distanced themselves from the activities of serving the poor. In general, the interest of wealthy women in charitable acts decreased. It had been fashionable for elite Ladies to be models of charitable devotion early in the seventeenth century, but by the end of the century it was less important. Elizabeth Rapley demonstrates that widows were less likely to dedicate themselves to God,
2 Pierre Coste, Monsieur Vincent: le grand saint du grand siècle. Volumes I-III (Paris: Desclée de Brouer et eie Éditeurs, 1934), I: 389. 3Jean Calvet, Louise de Marillac: A Portrait (New York: P.J. Kennedy and Sons, 1959), 68. 4 For records of the foundations of communities of the Daughters of Charity see the Archives Nationales (AN), S. series, 6160-6180.
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and families were less likely to encourage children to enter monastic life.5 As wealthy families lessened their spiritual pursuits, poorer women became more involved in religious organizations. When Elisabeth le Goutteux, the Widow Turgis, entered the Company in 1636, she was the only noblewoman to join de Marillac in the ranks of the Daughters of Charity. She was an important member of the Company who helped to found the community at Angers and stayed there until 1644, four years before her death. The year 1660 saw the deaths of Louise de Marillac and Vincent de Paul. Despite the magnitude of these losses the Company did not falter; in fact, it grew more rapidly after 1660 than it had during the founders’ lifetimes. The continued growth of the Company was due to two major factors. First, the community contained a body of well-trained leaders who had been cultivated by de Marillac to assume positions in the hierarchy. Second, the Company developed a more sophisticated bureaucracy as it grew larger. Without the ability to adapt quickly after the founders’ deaths, the Company would have struggled and possibly come under greater control of local bishops, as Clement IX did not formally approve the community’s existence for another eight years. After the death of de Marillac, the Daughters of Charity’s first task was to select a new Superior General. According to the Company’s rule this election was to take place every three years. However, during de Marillac’s lifetime, de Paul insisted that she alone occupy the post. After de Marillac’s death, elections were held regularly, and in 1668 the leaders of the Company drafted an official version of the policy. It stated that the Daughters would elect a Superior General, an Assistant, a Treasurer, and a Bursar tri-annually and that officers could serve two consecutive terms. The procedure established that candidates for offices had to be at least 25 years of age and had to have served the congregation for at least ten years. All nominees for Superior General had to be at least 30 and had to have twelve years of experience within the Company.6 The election policy addressed the necessary qualities of the officers. Candidates had to possess maturity, and more specifically, nominees had to maintain “adequate strength of body, as well as good sense and judgment.”7 All officers needed a dual spirit of vocation, “loving equally the active life of charity and the contemplative life of prayer.”8 Experienced Daughters generally nominated the candidates for the offices and detailed the qualities of each candidate to the other Daughters before they voted. All Daughters at the
5 Elizabeth Rapley, The Dévotes: Women and Church in Seventeenth-Century France (Buffalo, NY: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990), 182. ®AN, LL. 1665, Élections, 7AN, LL. 1665, Élections, 8 AN, LL. 1665, Élections.
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Motherhouse voted for the officers.9 The Daughters’ confessor or another representative from the Congregation of the Mission oversaw the election. The Company promoted women who had long records of service and who stayed true to the vision of de Marillac and de Paul. In 1660 the Daughters elected Marguerite Chétif as their superior, knowing that de Marillac had publicly commented that “she would be very suitable” for the position.10 Chétif had joined the Daughters of Charity in May 1649 and had labored at Chars and Serqueux. On 8 August 1655 she signed the Company’s Act of Establishment along with de Marillac, de Paul, and the other Paris-based Daughters, symbolizing the formal creation of the community after the Archbishop of Paris granted his approbation.11 De Marillac named Chétif Sister Servant at the Hôtel-Dieu in Angers in 1656, with only seven years of experience in the Company.12 Chétif was serving in Arras at the time of de Marillac’s death and was there when she heard that the Daughters had elected her Superior General. Chétif held the position of Superior for two terms and left the office in 1667. According to the rule, Superiors could not hold the office for more than two sequential terms; however they could run again three years after their term had expired. It is due to Chétif, in large part, that the Company retained coherence and direction in the years after de Marillac’s death. She and other Daughters transcribed the letters of de Marillac into a book that was kept at the Motherhouse, and Chétif continuously referred to the writings of de
9 The Rule does not state if this vote was taken by a show of hands or was accomplished with a written ballot. This is due, at least in part, to the records held at the Archives Nationales. Whereas most of the materials in the collection of Statutes and General Rules are neatly written finished copies of the Rules, the notes on the election procedure are written in scrawled handwriting and incomplete; they appear to be a draft copy of the Rule or an individual’s notes about it. 10 Élisabeth Charpy, “Marguerite Chétif, 1621-1694,” Echoes of the Company,( 1985), 386. Barbe Angiboust, an obvious choice as Superior General had died before de Marillac, in 1658. 11 Archives of the Daughters of Charity (ADC). Albany, NY, L ’acte d'établissement des Filles de la Charité, 1-1, 3a. The Act of Establishment was signed on 8 August 1655 by all Daughters who were at the Motherhouse; most signed their names, but some marked a cross next to their printed name. Since many came to the Motherhouse for the signing this list does not provide an accurate reflection of who was residing in the Motherhouse. The Act was signed by Vincent de Paul, Louise de Marillac, Jeanne Gressier, Barbe Bailly, Barbe Fouins, Marie Rapportèble, Marie Vigneron, Marie Jolie, Geneviève Poisson, Geneviève Cailloux, Vincence Dauchy, Anne Rose, Andrée Mareschales, Etiennette du Puis, Françoise Cabry, Marie Robde, Marie Cugny, Madeleine Gamier, Françoise Géseaume, Geneviève Gautier, Marie la Ruelle, Madeleine Ménage, Françoise Roseau, Jeanne le Méret, Mathurine Guérin, Julienne Loret, Geneviève Doinel, Marie Creste, Louise Dalbel, Marguerite Chétif, Françoise Noret, Antoinette Labitte, Anne Hardemont, Jeanne Baptiste, Toussainte David, Jeanne Luce, Françoise Franchon, Philippe Bailly, Renée Pescheloche, Marguerite Ménage, Gabrielle Cabaret. 12Charpy, “Marguerite Chétif,” 439.
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Marillac and the conferences of de Paul when making decisions.13 After leaving the position of Superior, Chétif continued to hold administrative positions in Paris. In 1667 her successor, Mathurine Guérin, named Chétif director of seminary at the Motherhouse, and then Sister Servant at Angers. From 1674 to 1677 Chétif served as the Company’s Treasurer under Nicole Haran.1415 S u pe r io r G e n er a ls
1633-1660 1660-1664 1664-1667 1667-1670 1670-1673 1673-1676 1676-1679 1679-1682 1682-1685 1685-1688 1688-1691 1691-1694 1694-1697 1697-1700
o f th e
D a u g h ter s
of
C h a r it y , 1633-170015
Louise de Marillac Marguerite Chétif Marguerite Chétif Mathurine Guérin Mathurine Guérin Nicole Haran Mathurine Guérin Mathurine Guérin Françoise Michau Mathurine Guérin Mathurine Guérin Marie Moreau Mathurine Guérin Julienne Laboue
In 1667 the Daughters named Mathurine Guérin their Superior General, she was 36 years old and in her nineteenth year in the Company.14156 Unlike the election of Chétif, which seems to have been universally accepted, Guérin’s promotion brought to light a division within the Company. It is reported that some Daughters openly thumbed their noses at Guérin after her election.17 Guérin held the position of Superior for twenty-one years, but tensions seem to have continued. When she distributed copies of the Company’s rule to all the houses of Daughters of Charity, some accused her of having changed the rules; as late as 1674 Father Joly was writing to the Daughters explaining that there was nothing new in the rules.18 It is 13Charpy, “Marguerite Chétif,” 444. 14 Louise de Marillac, Écrits spirituels, ed. Élisabeth Charpy (Paris: Filles de la Charité 1983), Lettre 302. 15 Archives de la Maison Mere des Filles de la Charité (AMMFC), Supérieures Généraux des Filles de la Charité. 16 Mathurine Guérin was bom 16 April 1631 in Montcontour, Brittany. She entered the Daughters of Charity on 12 September 1648. She died at Motherhouse 18 October 1704 at the age of 73. 17 Élisabeth Charpy, “Mathurine Guérin,” Echoes of the Company (1986), 150. 18Charpy, “Mathurine Guérin,” 154-155.
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possible that criticisms of Guérin reflect the exasperation of some Daughters at working with a women who could be very critical of those who failed to live up to the Company’s high standards of behavior and obedience. De Marillac adopted different tones with different Daughters, being gentle with the meek and tougher with the stubborn, whereas Guérin spoken brusquely with all the Daughters. Élisabeth Charpy, a Daughter of Charity, and the Company’s historian, characterized the tone of Guérin’s letters as “severe” when she felt Daughters were failing to follow the rule.19 An anecdote related by Charpy highlights the frustration of a seminary director. When novices first entered the Company they remained in lay clothing; after about six months those accepted into the community were given a standard dress and their lay clothing was given to the poor. Charpy credits the Director with writing, “I think Sister Mathurine must want our Sisters to go naked. In fact, I took the dresses off of their backs to satisfy her zeal and second her unlimited humility.”20 Guérin had entered the Company in September of 1648 and therefore, like Chétif, had been directly trained by de Marillac.21 De Marillac recognized Guérin’s talents and quickly promoted her within the Company. In 1652 de Marillac recalled her to the Motherhouse to serve as her personal secretary and as director of the seminary. As secretary to de Marillac, Guérin had immediate access to the Superior General. She also possessed a complete knowledge of the activities of the Company, because she read the incoming mail and drafted letters of response. De Marillac was often ill and Guérin was thus responsible for both writing letters dictated by de Marillac and composing her own correspondence. As head of the seminary at the Motherhouse, Guérin directed the spiritual and practical formation of the new Daughters. In 1655 de Marillac named her Treasurer of the Company, and Guérin oversaw the finances of eighteen establishments outside Paris and about twenty within the city. Beside these administrative posts, Guérin had also worked in parish communities and at the hospital at Belle-isle. Thus, she was familiar with the diversity of work done by the Daughters of Charity.22 From early in her career as a Daughter of Charity, de Marillac groomed Guérin for a leadership role. In the years that she was not Superior General, Guérin remained an important guide for the Company. In the decades after 1660 Guérin and Chétif were the leaders of the Company.23 They were products of de Marillac’s careful 19Charpy, “Mathurine Guérin,” 157. 20 Charpy, “Mathurine Guérin,” 235. 21 Guérin and Chétif both held the office of Superior and they exchanged many letters illustrating their support of one another. There appears to have been no rivalry between the two; both strove to emulate de Marillac and maintain the founder’s vision for the Company. They worked as a team knowing that responsibility for the Company was in their hands whether or not they held the position of Superior. 22 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 280. 23 Coste, Les Filles de la Charité, 55. According to Pierre Coste, Guérin occupied the foremost position in the Company for twenty-one years because of her intelligence, virtue,
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cultivation, and proved flexible enough leaders to allow the Company to grow at a steady pace and to expand the types of services that the Daughters performed. There is considerable correspondence between the two in the seventeen years after de Marillac’s death, in which they share news and request one another’s opinions on matters concerning the Company.*24 Elizabeth Rapley explains that in many religious orders it was possible for “two women congenial to each other to retain control indefinitely.”25 Of course the pair required the support of their communities or they would be replaced. The other Superiors General of the seventeenth century served much shorter terms than did Guérin or Chétif. Nicole Haran directed the Company from 1673 to 1676. She had entered the Company in 1649 and served primarily in its hospitals. She began working at Nantes in 1653, and in 1655 the administrators of the hospital insisted that she be named Sister Servant.26 She successfully directed this institution until de Marillac’s death. Given the contentious nature of the community at Nantes, Haran demonstrated skills and tact in making the establishment function effectively. De Marillac recognized the abilities of Haran and cultivated her skills, which enabled her to rise to a role of leadership within the Company. Haran was barely able to write when she joined the Company, and her letters show her struggle to learn this skill; de Marillac’s letters to her often offer words of encouragement.27 Françoise Michau, about whom there is little information, entered the Company in 1655 and served as Superior General from 1682 to 1685. After 1690 the Superiors General were women who had entered the community after the death of de Marillac. Marie Moreau served as Superior General of the Daughters of Charity from 1691 to 1694. Like Guérin, she had extensive experience within the Company’s administration before assuming its directorship. Moreau joined the Company in 1667 and was the first Superior that de Marillac had not directly trained. She was, however, under the tutelage of Chétif
and commitment to the Daughters of Charity. Coste and other hagiographie authors attribute the reigns of Guérin and Chétif to their piety and skills. However, it is difficult to assess their opinions. There are few extant letters written by Guérin and Chétif as compared to the wealth of letters and writings of de Marillac. There are even fewer letters written about their leadership by other Daughters of Charity. As a result it is difficult to determine their styles, effectiveness, and popularity. 24 For instance, see AN, S. 6161 for letters written when Mathurine Guérin was in Belleîsle. 25 Elizabeth Rapley, A Social History of the Cloister: Daily Life in the Teaching Monasteries of the Old Regime (Ithaca, NY: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001), 122. 26De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 495. 27 AN, L. 1054 a letter written by Haran in 1674 exhibits an unsteady hand and very creative spelling, even compared to other Daughters of Charity. Clearly Haran could communicate in writing, but she never gained the fluency of de Guérin or Chétif.
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and Guérin, so her ascension did not jeopardize the coherence of the Company. Guérin remained a powerful force in the Company and it is very likely that she directly assisted Moreau during her tenure. Moreau had worked at the hospital of Angers when she first joined the Company. Superiors had twice named her director of the seminary at the Motherhouse. Therefore the older Daughters entrusted to her the duty of educating the Daughters of the seminary in the principles of the Company and the virtues of the founders. She had also twice served as the Company’s Treasurer. Julienne Laboue, Superior General from 1697 until 1703, entered the Company in 1664 and died at the Motherhouse in 1723. De Marillac had not trained Moreau or Laboue. Rather Guérin, Chétif, and their peers oversaw their formation and instilled in them a sense of the founders’ vision for the Company. De Marillac had built her religious community with a strong infrastructure; subsequently women who she trained were able to train younger Daughters who embodied the same expectations for the Company as their founder had and were capable enough to oversee a growing community. For all but three years between 1660 and 1697 de Marillac had mentored the Superior of the Company of the Daughters of Charity. De Marillac’s most revered associates progressed through the Company, serving in its various establishments and rising through its administrative ranks. The Superior General and the Sister Servants assigned talented Daughters to more challenging positions early in their careers and if they proved successful, they were assigned new and different tasks with regularity, as is illustrated by Guérin’s career. This strategy for personal and corporate development assured the Company a strong infrastructure. Since the directors trained the Daughters in the congregation’s diverse works, they could move the Daughters between parishes and institutions to meet the Company’s changing needs. Talented administrators were placed in parishes, hospitals, and other institutions in order to expose them to the totality of the Daughters’ service. By the time of de Marillac’s death, the Company had an administrative structure so sophisticated that the turnover of the Company to a new generation occurred quite smoothly28
28 AMMFC, Supérieures Généraux. The directors of the Congregation of the Mission assisted the new leaders of the Daughters of Charity. M. Jolly was particularly important for his role in codifying the Rules of the Company. These men carried on de Paul’s missionary and educational work in the same way that the new Daughters of Charity followed de Marillac’s. The directors of the Congregation of the Mission were: Vincent de Paul 1625-1660 Monsieur Alméras 1661-1672 Monsieur Jolly 1673-1697 Monsieur Pierron 1697-1703
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Map 5.1 Establishments of Daughters of Charity in 1699
1 Establishment
5 Establishments
2 Establishments
6 Establishments
3 Establishments
7 Establishments
4 Establishments
10+ Establishments
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Modeling Future Daughters of Charity
After the death of Louise de Marillac, several Daughters wrote open letters to their colleagues extolling the virtues of their founder. Although written as panegyrics, these letters also had the more practical purpose of highlighting the characteristics of de Marillac that made her a successful Daughter and Superior General of the Company. In these expositions, the authors provide an ideal type of behavior for all Daughters to emulate. In short, they informed readers of the skills needed to be a successful Daughter of Charity, and perhaps a leader in the Company. As is noted above, Marguerite Chétif and Mathurine Guérin, who led the Company in the decades after the death of de Marillac and de Paul, were trained directly by de Marillac and hence were in a unique position to evaluate the founder and the legacy she left behind. Of particular interest is an open letter dated 1660 and written by Guérin to Chétif, in which Guérin detailed the virtues of de Marillac. Ordinarily, letters of this sort were written with intent that the author would read the letter aloud at meetings at the Motherhouse in Paris.29 In the case of this particular letter, Guérin was working at the hospital of Belle-îsle in 1660 and did not travel to Paris to address the annual meeting, and as a result another woman read her letter about de Marillac in her absence. This letter was a public document and must be regarded as constructed with public goals in mind. Guérin’s letter provides its audience with a general description of de Marillac’s service, as well as precise accounts of her responses to crises; both facets of the letter give information about being a successful Daughter of Charity. Guérin began her letter by stating that she hoped another Daughter who better followed the example of the founder would furnish a better account of her virtues.30 Bowing to the conventions of eulogy, this statement was an act of humility on her part as well as a strategy to encourage other Daughters to share their memories of de Marillac and thus to stimulate discussion about the more general topic of appropriate behavior for Daughters of Charity. Guérin wrote, “in general, those [virtues] that I had most often seen her trying to inculcate, were the spirit of poverty, obedience, and humility. Everyone knew with what care she corrected faults against these virtues.”31 The founder also spoke to Daughters individually: “To one she implanted the observance of the Rules, to another the fear [of God], to this one here the pure love of God, and like that to the rest.”32 Guérin also praised de Marillac’s faith and hope as the most important features of
29 The conferences began as meetings between de Paul and the Daughters. The conferences continued after the founders’ deaths and groups of Daughters from Paris or groups of nearby villages gathered to listen to their leaders and talk about life in the Company. 30 AMMFC, Autograph 1068 bis, Remarques sur les vertues de Mademoiselle Le Gras, 1. 31 AMMFC, 1068 bis, Remarques sur les vertues de Mademoiselle Le Gras, 7. 32 AMMFC, 1068 bis, Remarques sur les vertues de Mademoiselle Le Gras, 5.
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her service to the Daughters.33 Guérin grounds these attributes in concrete examples of de Marillac’s actions and correspondence, letters that she knew well because she had served as de Marillac’s secretary for years: “When I had the happiness of writing these letters, I had not yet considered them thus as beautiful lessons, but at present I admire them with the variety that she gave to them.”34 Arguably, she hoped that her letter would accomplish the same. Guérin attributes de Marillac’s achievements to her ability to act as the perfect mother and perfect teacher. De Marillac had dedicated the Company to the Virgin, who served as its protector.35 The Virgin was an appropriate choice for a spiritual mentor because her virginity was exemplary for the Daughters of Charity, and her perfection as a mother was exemplary for the Ladies of Charity.36 The choice of the Virgin was also acceptable to early modem French society, and served to help the Daughters construct an image of purity and saintliness that kept them outside of the cloister. The letter had an additional purpose: the early construction of a hagiography of de Marillac. The Daughters of Charity used their collective memories of de Marillac to shape the future of their Company. Despite its consecration to the Virgin, the Company needed a more tangible model of saintly behavior, one that reflected its mission of providing charitable services to the sick and poor: this was de Marillac, who Benedict XV beatified in 1920 and Pius XI canonized in 1934. The Company’s Superiors from the later seventeenth century referred to de Marillac’s character and leadership, as a way to maintain the constitution of the Company despite its growth and expansion. The collective memory of Louise de Marillac provided the Daughters of Charity with a model of holiness and piety appropriate for non-cloistered women doing God’s work in the world.
Growth of the Company between 1661 and 1700
After 1660 the size of the Company of the Daughters of Charity grew immensely. In 1660 there were approximately a hundred houses of Daughters; by 1711 there were 250.37
33 AMMFC, 1068 bis, Remarques sur les vertues de Mademoiselle Le Gras, 1 and 2. 34 AMMFC, 1068 bis, Remarques sur les vertues de Mademoiselle Le Gras, 5. 35 According to Elizabeth Rapley, the Virgin was a common patron for active communities. Rapley, The Dévoies, 172. 36De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, “Oblation à la Vierge,” 693. 37 Celier, Les Filles de la Charité, 152.
Bureaucratization and the Growth o f the Company ew
st a b l ish m e n t s o f
Decade 1633-1640 1640-1649 1650-1659 1660-1669 1670-1679 1680-1689 1690-1699
D a u g h ter s
of
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a r is 38
Number of new establishments 3 17 18 24 36 59 60
The Daughters of Charity increased their geographic scope beyond northern France by establishing communities across southern France and in Belgium.3839 38 Adapted from a chart in Colin Jones, The Charitable Imperative: Hospitals and Nursing in Anden Regime and Revolutionary France (New York: Routledge, 1989), 108. Professor Jones visited the Archives Nationales years before I did and he records materials that were missing from the boxes of establishment contracts when I reviewed them. I presume that his numbers of establishments are more accurate than mine because of the documents that had been mislaid in the years before my visit. 39 Timothy Tackett. Religion, Revolution and Regional Culture in Eighteenth-Century France: the Ecclesiastical Oath of 1791 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 263-265. Timothy Tackett created a series of maps in which he sought to situate and quantify sentiment about Catholicism on the eve of the French Revolution in geographical terms. These maps are based upon the cahiers of the Third Estate and represent elite opinion in 1789. The maps indicates religious “progressivism” and religious “conservatism” and these values are based upon the critiques of the Church and its practices that were registered in the cahiers. “Progressivism” is defined as having high percentages of cahiers expressing these six grievances: demands to end many forms of clerical privilege, demands to end legal and fiscal prerogatives of the papacy within the French Church, full or partial secularization of key social institutions, full or partial state control of church property, greater religious toleration and the democratization of the Church by expanding the power and status of the clergy. Regrettably, Tackett does not precisely define “democratization” thus his argument that the Church would be democratized if the power of the local clergy increased in not persuasive. Tackett does state that “there were...requests for the expansion of curé political rights, and notably for the right to hold independent curé assemblies.” It is possible that he believes that local meetings of clergy could allow for greater clerical control of their parishes and a decrease in the power that the Roman Church had over French parishes. “Conservatism” is defined as having high percentages of cahiers expressing these four grievances: demands to preserve the status quo in Church-State relations and church privileges, demands to maintain or increase censorship, demands to preserve church property and opposition to religious tolerance. Tackett notes that the west of France and the area around Paris were particularly progressive and areas of the north, northeast and extreme southwest were the most conservative. Although some regions (like Paris) earn high scores for progressive and conservative cahiers, Tackett concludes that in general the west was progressive and the north and east conservative. Unfortunately, Tackett’s work does not convince the reader that his criteria for determining progressive and conservative Catholicism is adequate for the grander conclusions that he draws. However, his conclusions
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The Company grew at an increasingly rapid rate over course of the seventeenth century. In no decade were there fewer new establishments than had been founded in the decade before. Colin Jones demonstrates that the Daughters expanded their hospital work into southern France and become prominent nurses in Montpellier in the century after the founders’ deaths.40 This was considerable growth for a community that was just twenty-seven years old in 1660. The geographical expansion of the Daughters of Charity was somewhat unusual, because new religious congregations of women often remained in their region of origin.41 For example, the Congrégation de Notre Dame, a teaching community, grew only in northern France.42 The Ladies of Charity were important in helping to support communities of women religious along with the Daughters of Charity. Their support of Marie Lumague’s Filles de la Providence has been mentioned, and it should be reiterated that when Lumague died it was the Ladies who took over the direction and patronage of this community. Similarly, the Ladies assisted Marie Luiller’s Filles de la Croix, the first community of unenclosed women religious to receive the permission of Paris’s archbishop to live as a community without formal vows, and he granted his permission in 1640 43 The Filles opened schools for girls largely in and around Paris, and they offered adult women spiritual retreats and instruction.44 Ladies of Charity helped them expand into Paris’s countryside. When their founder
are fascinating and by using his maps it is possible to pose some interesting questions about the geographic expansion of the Daughters of Charity. Did the Daughters of Charity have high concentration of establishments in the more religiously conservative parts of France? Assuming that the conservative areas were more influenced by the ideas of the Catholic Reformation, is it possible that the presence of the Daughters might have had some impact on the enduring Catholicism of the region? Or, is it more likely that the Daughters were better able to survive in more conservative areas of France? The Daughters of Charity had many early establishments around Paris which was a progressive area and perhaps this helps to explain why their noncloistered lifestyle was tolerated in the 1630s. The majority of the Company’s seventeenth-century communities were founded in northern and northeastern France; it is possible that the more conservative communities embraced them after they had received papal approval. Obviously, any correlation between the geographical location of the Daughters of Charity in 1699 and the religious opinion on the eve of the French Revolution is highly suspect. However considering all three maps together is useful for positing questions about the successful expansion of the Daughters of Charity. 40 See Colin Jones, “The Daughters of Charity in Montpellier,” in The Charitable Imperative: Hospitals and Nursing in Ancien Regime and Revolutionary France (New York: Routledge, 1989). 41 Jones, The Charitable Imperative, 126. 42 Rapley, The Dévotes, 61. 43 Barbara Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 216. 44 Diefendorf, 217.
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died in 1650 and the community nearly dissolved, the Ladies of Charity intervened and financed the Filles so their work could continue.45 As the Company grew, its leaders increased the administrative bureaucracy to assure that all communities of Daughters were following the Company’s rules and properly serving the sick and poor. After 1660 the leaders increasingly centralized the organization. The Daughters of Charity were the largest active community of women religious in France; they had to construct their own plan for centralization, as no model existed for them to follow. Léonce Celier, who published his history of the Daughters of Charity in 1933, explained that the structure of the Company of the Daughters of Charity changed little between 1660 and 1789.46 He asserted that after the founders died in 1660, there was much stability within the order until the revolutionary government dismantled the Daughters and all other religious organizations. Celier asserts that the traditional hierarchy of the Company remained, with a Superior General, Assistant, Treasurer, and Bursar overseen by a director who was a member of the Congregation of the Mission. The leadership of Chétif and Guérin, and the consistent presence of a Director from the Congregation of the Mission also lent sturdiness to the Company. Although Celier was correct to stress the resilience of the Company and its stability after 1660, he overlooked the increasing centralization of the Company after the founders’ deaths.47 The Company grew dramatically after 1660 and with its increased size came expanded bureaucratization and administrative coordination at the Motherhouse. The leaders of the Company codified the rule, opened a second seminary to train the new recruits in Eu, increased the use of impersonal circular letters, and eventually divided the Company into individual provinces to organize better their administration. Without this bureaucratic intensification, the Company of the Daughters of Charity might have lacked the central coordination that allowed it to thrive. The bureaucratization of the Company was not only due to its expansion, but was also a result of the loss of its prophetic leaders. After 1660 their charisma and vision were gone along with them, and many of the Ladies of Charity were also gone or had become less involved.48 After 1660 there was no saintly source of 45 Diefendorf, 221. 46 Léonce Celier, Les Filles de la Charité (Paris: Bernard), 152. 47 I would like to acknowledge that Colin Jones suggested the concept of bureaucratization to me before I first traveled to Paris. I have found it a very useful way to conceptualize the transformation of the Company after 1660. 48 McNamara shows how religious convictions among elites declined in the eighteenth century, but this movement began earlier as the devotes became less enthusiastic in the later seventeenth century, Jo Ann Kay McNamara, Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 544-553. See also, Louis
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leadership in the community as there had been when de Marillac and de Paul were alive. In response, the Daughters of Charity who formed the second generation of leadership created a bureaucracy to replace the charismatic administration of de Marillac and de Paul. Although the mission of the Daughters to serve the sick and poor was not changed after 1660, the Company became somewhat less flexible. Daughters were more frequently living in large establishments and serving in hospitals, which caused their work to be more compartmentalized and their daily activities to be more regulated.
Increasing Bureaucratization: Creating Provinces In 1712 the leaders of the Daughters of Charity partitioned the Company into provincial units. According to Coste, in this year the Company included over two hundred establishments and a thousand Daughters of Charity. The increased size of the Company necessitated a more sophisticated organizational structure. The Superior General divided the Company into fourteen provinces, thirteen in France and one in Poland.49 The provinces in France align with traditional provincial boundaries and show the Daughters’ strength in northern France. DISTRIBUTION OF PROVINCIAL HOUSES50 Province Number of Houses 34 Paris, center Paris, surrounding neighborhoods 37 Ile-de-France 29 Picardy 23 17 Normandy Brittany 10 Anjou 18 Poitou 13 Gascony 13 Languedoc 12 16 Lyonnais Chatellier, The Europe of the Devout: The Catholic Reformation and the Formation of a New Society (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 49 Coste, Filles de la Charité, 56. The original fourteen provinces were: Paris, the suburbs of Paris, the Ile-de-France, Picardy, Normandy, Brittany, Anjou, Poitou, Gascony, Languedoc, Lyon, Bourgogne, Champagne, and Poland. The six added in 1718 were: Artois, Perche, Auvergne, Lorraine, Bordeaux, and Agen. However, Leone Celier lists only nineteen provinces in 1718; he does not list Gascony. Neither author provides a citation for his list of provinces. 50AN, LL. 1663, Avis et conseils donne aux Filles de la Charité.
Bureaucratization and the Growth of the Company Burgundy Champagne Poland
133
14 24 Not known
In 1718 the community expanded, adding six more provinces, for a total of twenty. The purpose of creating provincial divisions was to increase the control of the central administration by making remote establishments more accountable to Paris through a system of rationalized visits. Along with the division of France into provinces, the Daughters of Charity devised the administrative position of Visitatrix. A Visitatrix oversaw each province and visited each establishment within her province to assure that all communities were obeying the rules and properly serving the sick and poor.51 Before examining a community, the Visitatrix wrote to the Sister Servant for permission to visit; the point was not a surprise inspection, but a visit that would allow all members of the community to reflect upon their service.52 When traveling, the Visitatrix was given a choice of residences. In Paris she could choose to live in any of the houses; in Anjou, she could stay with the community at Angers or Richelieu, and in Languedoc she could live with the Daughters at Narbonne or Besiers.53 The Visitatrix typically relied upon a mule for transportation.54 De Marillac’s visitations to outlying establishments had been informal, with visits being made irregularly, and most often at times of crisis. In 1713 Monsieur Bonnet and the Superior General of the Daughters of Charity created an official document detailing visitation practices. Bonnet began this manual with a justification in which he argued that a formal visitation process was necessary because of the increased size of the Company.55 He and the Superior General drafted a systematic model for visitations.56 According to Bonnet, Visitatrixes were to visit each establishment annually, or at least once every two years.57 This provision allowed the Visitatrix to visit half of the communities under her jurisdiction each year, so she would never have more than twenty houses to review in a single year.58 During visits the Visitatrix made group and individual examinations of the Daughters at a given establishment.59 The goal of the visits was to determine the spiritual and practical success of the establishment and to 51 Celier, Les Filles de la Charité, 191. 52AN, LL. 1663, Ordre des Visites des Maisons des Filles de la Charité. 53 AN, LL. 1663, Avis et conseils donne aux Filles de la Charité. 54AN, LL. 1663, Ordre des Visites des Maisons des Filles de la Charité. 55 AN, LL. 1663, Lettre de M. Bonnet a la Supérieur et autres ojficieres de la communauté dans laquelle est marqué les endroits des visitatrices et le lieux et provinces qu ’elles ont à visiter. 56AN, LL. 1663, Ordre des Visites des Maisons des Filles de la Charité. 57AN, LL. 1663, Des Visites des Maison des Filles de la Charité. 58 AN, LL. 1663, Avis et conseils donne aux Filles de la Charité. 59AN, LL. 1663, Des Visites des Maisons des Filles de la Charité.
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resolve any conflicts within the community. The Visitatrix was also directed to draft an inventory of all the materials in the possession of the house and review the account records.60 Bonnet also provided the Visitatrix with a description of a model visit. In a model community the Daughters of Charity were good people who carefully observed the rules and followed the prescribed daily regimen; the Sister Servant is virtuous and the Daughters obedient and loving.61 Bonnet acknowledged that not all visits would find such an ideal community; he directed the Visitatrix to use the occasion of her visit to reinvigorate the spiritual convictions of the Daughters through examinations of conscience and other spiritual exercises.62 The Company was careful to give the Visitatrix clear guidelines about making a profitable visit to every establishment. This provincial system of organization increased oversight of all establishments, especially those far from Paris.
Increasing Bureaucratization: Building a Seminary
The Company’s first seminary was at the Motherhouse in Paris; the second was founded by the Queen of Poland in Warsaw in 1659, and the third was established in Eu in 1685.63 In Paris the seminary began in de Marillac’s home where novices were informally trained in the ways of the Company where they learned by accompanying a Daughter during her visits to the sick and at the Motherhouse. In 1647 a formal seminary was created in Paris with a Seminary Director in charge of the formation of the novices. Life in the seminary remained integrated into the life of the Motherhouse, with novices attending Mass, conferences, and prayer sessions with Daughters, and working beside them in the house cleaning and preparing food, on the farm caring for animals, and in town going to the butcher or miller for provisions.64 While at the seminary the novices were given a “guardian angel” who would initiate them into life at the Motherhouse. According to the rule of the Seminary Directress: “It is advisable for the Sister of the Seminary to be careful in giving a Sister as Guardian Angel to the newcomers, that this Sister be always one of the older ones, who should be very modest and have a great love for her vocation and for the Rules, and she should know how to read and write.”65 The creation of the seminary at Eu was a move towards greater bureaucratization and a response to the increasing size of the Company. With the influx of new Daughters there was no longer space for all recruits at the multi 60 AN, LL. 1663, Ordre des Visites des Maisons des Filles de la Charité. 61 AN, LL. 1663, Modèle de la Relation de la visite de chaque maison. 62 AN, LL. 1663, Du billet des avis de la Communication. 63 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, lettre 363. 64 Charpy, “Mathurine Guérin,” 223. 65 Charpy, “Mathurine Guérin,” 223.
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purpose Motherhouse, but it remained important that they all be proficiently trained. The establishment in Eu was solely a seminary, and as a result it provided the new Daughters with a more structured environment. At Eu, potential Daughters spent about one year receiving training in teaching, nursing, and religious education before taking the habit of the Company and going to serve at one of its other establishments. It would be about another five years before they took the simple vows of the Company. According to Pierre Coste, a Lazarist priest and historian of the Daughters of Charity, the Superior located the seminary in Normandy for health reasons. The leaders believed that the air in Paris was bad for the lungs of young women; the air quality in Eu was better, and thus the recruits would remain healthier.66 There were additional reasons for its placement, though, namely that the Company had established many communities of Daughters north of Paris and many recruits came from the north; the location in Eu was simply logical. The entrance records from the seminary at Eu show that a substantial percentage of new Daughters came from dioceses near Eu, which is located in the diocese of Rouen.67 At the Eu seminary the Daughters kept records of all entrants.68 If the Daughters of the seminary progressed in the Company, the seminary director recorded the date of their receipt of their first habit and their first time taking the simple vows. In other cases the seminary director noted their date of withdrawal or death. Early in the Company’s history the entrance of recruits had been informal. The Company expected that those who aspired to join the Company (called aspirantes) would be between nineteen and thirty-five years of age (although in a letter from 1644 de Marillac suggests not admitting women over thirty), of legitimate birth (an interesting requirement in light of de Marillac’s illegitimate status), and of “good parents.”69 If entrants met these basic requirements they then had to prove that they possessed the physical strength to do the Company’s demanding work and also the proper spiritual disposition for the vocation. Upon assuring the Daughters that they had these skills the recruits commenced their services in a nearby establishment of the Daughters of Charity. While working at a local community the recruits were called postulants. During this period, which lasted about two months, the Daughters observed the postulants’ behavior to determine if it was appropriate for the Company. If successful, the postulants remained at the local establishment for an additional few months. Daughters regularly wrote to de Marillac to describe the progress of the recruits, and de Marillac wrote definitive responses encouraging some and telling the Daughters to dismiss others.70 If after this period of local training the postulants proved 66 Coste, Les Filles de la Charité, 55. 67 AN, LL. 1664, Filles de la Charité Registre de la ville d ’Eu. 681found no similar records for entrants to the seminary at the Motherhouse. 69 Celier, Les Filles de la Charité, 188. See also, de Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 105. 70 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettres 29,45, and 104.
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Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France
themselves able to do the work of the Company, then they entered the seminary in Paris for more formal instruction.71 After what was typically seven months of training in Paris, the Daughters’ performance was reviewed by the director of the seminary. If the director was pleased with their achievements they were granted the habit of the Company and recognized as Daughters of Charity.72 The training of novices became more structured at the Motherhouse, and with the construction of the new seminary at Eu the training of the Daughters became even more organized. Instead of staying at provincial establishments and learning what the few Daughters there could teach them about the Company, postulants at Eu experienced a more rigorous formation regimen. They underwent a more distinct period of spiritual formation and practical training, and were not simply auxiliaries to existing establishments.73 The increased organization of the formation period into a more systematic training program likely produced Daughters more suited for the larger institutions in which many of the Company’s communities later developed.
Increasing Bureaucratization: Codifying the Rules
De Paul and de Marillac had drafted informal rules for the Daughters as early as 1633. However, these were preliminary regulations that described a general standard of behavior and communal organization that the Daughters were to follow to the best of their abilities. This preliminary rule was not a codified document that the Superior distributed to all, and enforced in all, communities of Daughters; it was more a flexible guideline. Upon the deaths of de Paul and de Marillac, the Congregation of the Mission and the Daughters of Charity elected to codify the writings and ideas of their founders as binding rules of their communities. Under the direction of Monsieur Alméras and Mathurine Guérin, the priests of the Mission and the Daughters of Charity compiled rules based upon the writings and conferences of their founders.74 In 1672 Alméras signed the formal rule for the Daughters of Charity.75 After assuming the position of Superior General of the Congregation of the Mission in 1673, Monsieur Jolly, who also served as Superior 71 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 214. 72 Celier, Les Filles de la Charité, 189-190. 73 It is possible that the central seminary at Eu provided the Company with the opportunity to train all postulants using the same program and reduced the variety of their experience. It might also have given new generations of Daughters a chance to become acquainted with one another, as they would have suffered the hardships of being away from home and adapting to a new lifestyle together, thus forming bonds between themselves. The community of recruits at Eu also meant that all entrants could compare their progress during the formation process with their peers. 74The original copies of these Rules are at the AN, LL. 1662-LL. 1666. 75 Celier, Les Filles de la Charité, 192.
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General of the Daughters of Charity, promulgated the official General Rule of the Daughters of Charity.76 He sent this document to every community of Daughters, and all members were to obey the rule.77 In 1710 Jolly drafted and signed a series of General Statutes that he also distributed to the Daughters.78 The codification of the rule formalized the Company’s commitment to following the writings of the founders. No longer was variation between establishments acceptable; the rule stated that a pharmacist at any of the hospitals that the Daughters staffed should prioritize her tasks in the same way and organize her day according to the same schedule. Since the Company had been following a less official version of this rule since its inception, the codification in the rules would not have altered the Daughters’ behavior dramatically, but it would have restricted their flexibility. Although there is a great deal of proscriptive material telling the Daughters how to behave, it is difficult to determine if they followed the codified rules to the letter or if they continued in a more adaptable fashion. The letters of de Marillac and de Paul have been saved and many have been published; however, records of the Company in the era after the founders’ deaths are scarcer. De Marillac and de Paul used correspondence to guide the Daughters’ behavior and even though their successors used more circular letters, they no doubt still corresponded with the Daughters to encourage them to obey the rules. Letters from the superiors of the later seventeenth century echoed the call for conformity, however, the small sample size makes it impossible to determine how well the Daughters were following the rules.79 In a circular letter from July 1674, Monsieur Jolly highlighted fourteen rules for the Daughters to observe and concluded by stating that everyone committed small faults and that they needed to strive for perfection, but not be perfect.80 It is unknown if he was responding to a particular problem or a general sense of sinfulness, or giving something of a pep talk about doing one’s best.
Increasing Bureaucratization: Using Circular Letters
76 Jolly lived until 1698 and under his direction 128 new establishments of Daughters of Charity opened. This is documented in the Company’s internal publication, Echos de la Compagnie, “Génèse de la Compagnie,” 30. 77 Coste, Les Filles de la Charité, 54. 78 Celier, Les Filles de la Charité, 192. 79 The principal archives for the Daughters of Charity is located at the Motherhouse in Paris on rue de Bac. It is likely that the correspondence of all the Company’s superiors are filed in the archives. It is rare for secular historians to gain access to these archives, and once there their access to sources is restricted. I know of no historian who has seen records from the successors of de Marillac and de Paul. 80 AMMFC 1109, Lettre de M. Jolly á Soeur Claude Jacaille, 18 juillet 1674.
Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France
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Creating a network of communication between Daughters scattered across France was a formidable challenge in an era of expensive and erratic mail service. After the Daughters completed their period of training at the Motherhouse, de Marillac wrote further instructions in her letters. De Marillac was a prolific correspondent during her years as Superior General, as was de Paul. She wrote to all the establishments of Daughters providing them with encouragement, criticizing improper behavior, advising them during problematic times and sharing general news of the Company. De Marillac addressed her letters to both individual Daughters and to communities at large. Later in her life she began to draft an increasing number of generic letters to all Daughters. Generally de Marillac wrote a New Year’s greeting in which she sent her best wishes and thanked the Daughters for their efforts in the past year. She shared general news of the Company and also often included pictures of saints, or other inspirational gifts. Each of these generic letters was also addressed to the individual women in the communities, and in one paragraph de Marillac answered questions that they had put to her in earlier letters, and provided more personal news. Therefore, although de Marillac wrote more standardized letters, she did not compose “circular letters” in the sense that the same letter was not distributed to, or exchanged between, all communities of Daughters. On 10 January 1657, de Marillac wrote to the Daughters at Brienne, mixing general news of the Company with some information of particular interest to them: I am writing this very hasty note to assure you that I am not ill and that our Most Honored Father is well, thank God. I am sure that you will continue to pray for his well-being...We are enclosing the pictures and maxims that were drawn for you after they had been blessed by Monsieur Vincent. I beg Our Lord to grant you the grace to make good use of them...All our sisters send their greetings. The [native] sisters from Brienne are in good health and are progressing well, if a bit slowly. Please explain clearly to their relatives that they are not sufficiently well-instructed to write to them often, and that all our sisters have so much to do that they cannot take the time necessary to write... 81
This letter provided general information about the Company, but also addressed the specific issues relevant to the Daughters at Brienne, especially the concerns of the postulants’ parents. De Marillac’s tone in this letter was similar to that in her private letters; the only difference is the broadness of the message. By the early 1650s, de Paul was using circular letters. In 1650 he published four thousand copies of a letter describing the horrendous conditions in Picardy and Champagne as a result of the war with Spain. His goal was81 81 De Marillac, fcrits spirituels, Lettre 506.
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fundraising, and in a period of six months he brought in 80,000 livres to feed, clothe, and house the refugees.82 Colin Jones explains that the Ladies’ work on the war front was well publicized: “the organizer of the Magasin charitable...published regular descriptions, or Relations, which served as fund raising, tub-thumping publicity material, encouraging what we may call a culture of conspicuous donations in which the well-off were primed to give to the pathetic species of impoverished humanity, bereft or material and spiritual succor, luridly portrayed in the pages of the Relations.”83 After 1660 the use of circular letters by the Superior General of the Daughters of Charity and the director of the Congregation of the Mission became common.84 The circular letters differed from the letters of de Marillac and eventually they served as a rudimentary newsletter for the Company. The letters served to inform all Daughters of Charity of official news from the Motherhouse. Alméras wrote a circular letter to the Daughters telling them of de Marillac’s and de Paul’s deaths, entitled “Circular letter about the death of the venerable founders,” in which he urged the Daughters to continue in their edifying work.85 In 1672 Mathurine Guérin wrote a circular letter to the Daughters making a statement about the past year and wishing the Daughters luck in the coming year.86 On 31 December 1673 Superior General Haran wrote a letter that was to circulate among all the Daughters. She thanked them for their work and goodness over the past year and told them to keep up the good work.87 These letters were much like the New Year’s letter drafted by de Marillac in their basic content. However, the letter written by Haran is different, because she wrote to all of the Daughters in one draft. She makes no attempt to personalize the copies destined to different communities. The use of circular letters increased in popularity over the course of the seventeenth century. After 1700 the priests of the Congregation of the Mission published a more official circular newsletter for all their members. The use of the circular letter was a response to the increased size and geographical scope of the Company. It was important to share basic information with all Daughters in a timely fashion and there was not time for secretaries to draft individual letters to all communities to disperse general news. The Superior 82 Bernard Pujo, Vincent de Paul, the Trailblazer (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2003), 196. 83 Colin Jones, “Perspectives on Poor Relief, Health Care and the Counter-Reformation in France,” in Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter-Reformation Europe, eds. Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham and Jon Arrizabalaga (New York: Routledge, 1999), 227-228. 84 All of the examples of circular letters were written by the Superior General or the Director of the Daughters of Charity. These letters were distributed from the Motherhouse in Paris to the Daughters across France. Only those in leadership positions wrote circular letters. 85 AMMFC, 134, 1071, Monsieur Alméras aux Filles de la Charité à Nantes, lettre circulaire sur la mort des vénérés fondateurs. 86AMMFC, 172, Mathurine Guérin aux Filles de la Charité. 87 AMMFC, 1108, 194, Nicole Haran aux Filles de la Charité.
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General’s employment of circular letters maintained contact between the central administration and the Daughters scattered across France because it kept them informed about the Company. With the increased use of circular letters, each establishment of Daughters would probably have received fewer personal letters than it would have a generation before. Previously, if an establishment had had a specific problem it would have been reported to de Marillac and she would have issued a response suited to the community. By the late seventeenth century, though, rules and contracts would have been relied upon frequently to determine a solution. If the Motherhouse was asked to intervene, the Superior might have intervened on a personal level or she might have made a more general announcement about the issue at hand to all of the Company’s establishments. This change in the method of correspondence was coupled with increased supervision over all establishments of Daughters. After 1660 most changes in the Company created greater administrative centralization. However, one innovation did occur outside these boundaries. In 1685 Guérin and Jolly altered the habit of the Daughters of Charity; no longer was the headpiece a simple tight-fitting toque, it became a larger cornette.88 Fabric from the cornette draped onto the Daughters’ shoulders, noticeably altering their appearance. According to the Daughters, the original toque did not offer their faces enough protection from the elements.89 Leaders of the Company changed the headpiece to improve the Daughters’ health. The Company changed the headpiece only after they received approval from Jolly and the doctors at the hospitals in which the Daughters worked, because there was apprehension that the new comette could hinder the Daughters’ indoor work. With this alteration the Daughters of Charity gained a more distinct appearance; all Daughters looked less like those around them, and more like one another. Although it is unlikely that the change to the comette was a conscious part of the Company’s effort to bureaucratize, it is not surprising that this move towards a more distinctive uniform occurred at the same time that the Daughters were being treated less as individuals and more as members of a centralized and highly organized institution. The Company retained this comette (although with the use of starch it grew grander, taller and more winged) until the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.
88 Celier, Les Filles de la Charité, 206. 89 De Marillac, Écrits spirituels, Lettre 148. In this letter de Marillac wrote to Monsieur Portail at Richelieu in 1646 about a Daughter who had altered her toque. Despite her anger at the Daughter, de Marillac does concede that this portion of the habit might be changed: “although I suggested to [de Paul] several times not a veil, which would be totally unacceptable, but something which could protect the face a bit from extreme cold and heat.”
Epilogue
In telling the story of the Company of the Daughters of Charity I have made two arguments. First, I have asserted that the Catholic Reformation was a movement permitting more flexible and varied responses to religious reform than historians have recognized. In his text The World o f Catholic Renewal, R. Po-Chia Hsia wrote, “for religious women of Catholic Europe, the twin impulses of the Catholic renewal—control and innovation—came into direct conflict. In the end submission to the Church mattered more than religious zeal... .”1 While Hsia rightly points to the enclosure of some new religious communities at the hands of Church officials, he overlooks the dynamic communities, founded by women, that succeeded despite their non-cloistered status. There was clearly room for innovation within the Catholic Reformation Church. In my opinion it is useful to consider the Catholic Reformation not just as a hierarchical movement in which men tried to confine and control women, but also as a movement in which women were significant actors within the Church. As the history of the Daughters of Charity demonstrates, Catholics could challenge the strictures of the Tridentine Church, and avoid its mandates. I have also argued that the feminization that characterizes the French Church of the modem era did not begin in the nineteenth century, but rather in the seventeenth century. Historians recognize that by the nineteenth century women continued to attend church regularly, while men’s religion practice declined considerably, and Claude Langlois details quantifiably the increased presence of women in the Church in the nineteenth century.2 I have made the argument that women came to the forefront of French Catholicism in the seventeenth century, seizing on the impulse to renew the Church and to express the depth of their religious convictions. Pious women, whether they were members of religious communities or lay women, shaped the Church in the seventeenth century to meet their needs, and the needs that they perceived of the broader society by creating new contemplative orders, active communities, and lay confraternities. I am not the first to argue that that the French Church underwent feminization in the seventeenth century, and other historians have published similar conclusions.
1 R. Po-Chia Hsia. The World of Catholic Renewal 1540-1770 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 38. 2 Claude Langlois, Le catholicisme au feminine: les congrégations françaises à supérieure generale au XIXe siècle (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1984).
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Elizabeth Rapley argues that the seventeenth century marks the beginning of the feminization of the French Church. She does not mean that men dropped out of the religious scene in the seventeenth century, but rather that women forged increasingly meaningful lives within the Church. In Rapley’s opinion the Church did not welcome increased female activism. She argues, “it would be a mistake to see this as an integral part of the Tridentine reform. The burst of feminine energy was neither foreseen nor welcomed. The congregations of the seventeenth century grew out of a sort of anarchy of religious activism.”3 Rapley believes that women seized the moment to create forms of Catholicism that responded to their needs, and to the needs of the population at large, during the Catholic Reformation. Although Barbara Diefendorf does not make an explicit argument about the feminization of religion, her analysis of the metamorphosis of women’s activism within the Church concurs with Rapley’s conclusions that women were the actors who forged religious lives, both penitential and ascetic, in the wake of the Wars of Religion. Diefendorf argues that “post-Tridentine clergy were charged with enforcing strict rules for monastic enclosure, but portraying women as hapless victims of repressive clerics, church dogmas, and family strategies deflects attention from investigation of their own religious values and choices.” She continues: “Some women enthusiastically supported the call for spiritual and institutional renewal that issued from the Council of Trent; others felt sufficiently well served by traditional institutions and resisted dramatic change.”4 My examination of the Daughters of Charity echoes the conclusions of Rapley and Diefendorf, and argues that in some ways women made Catholicism what it was during the Catholic Reformation, and thus began to feminize its workings well before women became the majority of church attendees. This book has examined the development of the Company of the Daughters of Charity in the seventeenth century, and it imposes an artificial end date on a community that continued to expand and evolve. The Company of the Daughters of Charity remains a dynamic and relevant organization in the twenty-first century; I have only recorded a small portion of its story here. I will tell a little bit more of their story now. The Company continued growing, in numbers of members and establishments, in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Its growth was not typical of religious organizations; many contemplative orders saw their numbers shrink during and after the later seventeenth century. Contemplative communities remained on the religious landscape, but they became less significant by the eighteenth century, when fewer women from prominent families joined 3 Elizabeth Rapley, The Dévotes: Women and Church in Seventeenth-Century France (Buffalo, NY: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990), 21. 4 Barbara B. Diefendorf. From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 8.
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them. Cloistered communities of nuns were outside the sphere of contact for most individuals because convents were less critical to family strategies. Girls continued to be educated by nuns, but fewer girls intended to profess a religious vocation. Active religious communities proved more viable than contemplative ones, and those with solid infrastructures like the Daughters of Charity continued to teach most French girls and nurse many hospital patients well into the twentieth century. While the Company of the Daughters of Charity existed only in France and Poland in the seventeenth century, it spread across Europe in the eighteenth century into Italy, Spain, Russia, and Lithuania. The Company’s growth continued during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and took on a global dimension. By the twentieth century, the Daughters of Charity had established themselves on all five continents. Yet, theirs is not a story of continuous growth; there were two moments during which the Company faced crises and the number of vocations shrank: during the French Revolution when the government launched a campaign of dechristianization, and again during the mid-twentieth century when all Catholic vocations declined precipitously. The responses of the Company to these challenges illustrate its capacity to change while remaining committed to the mission of serving the poor and sick articulated by de Marillac and de Paul. The Company of the Daughters of Charity suffered considerably during France’s most momentous event, the French Revolution. Initially the Revolutionary government’s National Assembly of 1789 sought to restrict the Church’s political power and economic independence, but not to shut down the Church. By 1793 a more radical program of dechristianization had become the order of the day.5 When the Revolutionary government initially abolished monastic vows in February 1790, it excluded those for teaching and charitable communities. The government understood the value of the services provided by religious communities, and recognized that it lacked a mechanism to replace them. When the Legislative Assembly met in 1792, it suppressed religious congregations involved in charitable and teaching enterprises and banned all confraternities. Daughters of Charity stayed at the Motherhouse in Paris and in their houses in parishes across France. The Daughters adopted lay dress, and according to community records, they continued to serve the poor.6 The government ordered the Daughters out of the Motherhouse in August of 1792, and officially disbanded the community at the end of 1793. Antoinette Duleau, the Company’s Superior, sent novices home to the safety of their families. Duleau did her best to keep the professed Daughters together and active whenever possible, and of the 430 establishments in France in 1789, Daughters remained at approximately 210 during
5 Suzanne Desan, Reclaiming the Sacred: Lay Religion and Popular Politics in Revolutionary France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 3. 6 Sister Renee Lelandiais, “Suppression of religious congregations in France: April 6, 1792,” Echoes of the Company {1992), 137.
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the Reign of Terror.7 Ultimately, the Revolutionary government executed seven Daughters of Charity: four teachers and social workers in Arras (the home town of Robespierre), two hospital nurses in Angers and one hospital nurse in Dax. There is no recent scholarly account of the Daughters of Charity during the French Revolution.8 For the most part, hagiographers have written the history of the Daughters and recorded the events of the Revolution as a martyrology. The dominant image portrayed by this scholarship is that of four dedicated sisters being led to the guillotine in Arras in 1794. Although the executions are a seminal event in the Company’s history, and central to its institutional memory, it is just as important to explain how the Daughters who remained in parishes, hospitals, and other institutions during the Revolution managed to do so. How did so many Daughters retain their vocations and continue their work with the poor during the Revolution? It would be very helpful for historians of the early modem period to better understand the dynamics of life within religious communities during the French Revolution, and to better examine the realities of life for members of religious institutions. The example of the Daughters points to a complex relationship between government officials and women religious, who seemed to navigate intelligently the waters of dechristianization. The Reign of Terror ended in the summer of 1794, and with it, some of the vehement dechristianization efforts. For the next five years, efforts to repress the Catholic faith waxed and waned with moments of tolerance and moments of repression. Catholicism was not again legal in France until the reign of Napoleon. Napoleon’s government officially recognized the Company of the Daughters of Charity in 1800.9 In 1801, when the Consular government came to power it formally recalled the Company with an edict citing the excellence of their work and authorizing “Citoyenne Duleau,” the former superior, to reorganize her community. Duleau called her far-flung Daughters back to Paris and began to rebuild the Company. Napoleon was not a religious man, but he understood that active religious communities fulfilled important social functions within France, and he wanted to put women with active religious vocations back to work. It was clear to Napoleon that girls would have fewer teachers and the sick would have fewer nurses without the restitution of religious communities. Napoleon did not want to spend the state’s money on social services, so he left them to religious communities. Many Daughters of Charity responded to the repression of the Revolution 7Lelandais, 143. 8 Amy K. Smith began a dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania entitled “Sisters Through Crisis: the meanings of female religious vocation in France, 1785 through 1810,” but she has not completed this work, nor has she published elements of it 9 André Dodin, “Filles de la Charité,” in Dictionnare d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, ed. R. Aubert (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1971).
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by continuing their lives of service. The Company grew dramatically in the early nineteenth century, indicating that some women were likely waiting in the wings for the community to become legal again so they could formally reenter or join it. In the nineteenth century, the work of the Daughters remained the same, but the locations in which the Daughters worked expanded considerably. The Company of the Daughters of Charity witnessed its most dramatic growth in the nineteenth century, when it became a global institution. The Company continued to spread across Europe, while also establishing communities in Africa, South and North America and the Middle East, and Asia.10 Members of the community continued their work as nurses, teachers and social workers while adapting their vocations to suit the needs of myriad cultures. The second major crisis that faced the Company of the Daughters of Charity came in the mid-twentieth century when vocations declined. Like all religious orders and communities, the Company saw a reduction in entrants during and after the 1950s and 1960s. In the early 1950s there were more than 40,000 Daughters of Charity, and today there are about 21,500. The Company responded to this drop in membership by changing the nature of the work performed by the Daughters, and by recruiting members from new locations. After the 1960s, many Daughters returned to universities to obtain graduate degrees. Daughters of Charity now commonly sit on boards of directors of hospitals and schools affiliated with their community, even if most of the staff is composed of laymen and laywomen. The Daughters therefore have control over the mission and workings of the institutions even if they no longer form the majority of the workforce. More recruits to the Company now come from Africa and Asia, reflecting the community’s global orientation. Entrance into the community can still promise an education, a vocation, and “career” opportunities to African and Asian women, as it did for French women from the seventeenth into the twentieth centuries. Numbers of entrants to the Company are rising in Asia (where the average age of a Daughters is 53) and Africa (average age, 48), and are stable in Latin America, (average age, 59); they continue to fall in Europe (average age, 69) and North America (average age, 69).11 Unlike the response to the end of the French Revolution, the response to the crisis of the twentieth century has not been a dramatic recovery of community membership. Numbers did not rebound, and the more recent crisis has ultimately more profoundly reshaped the community that did the French Revolution. Implications for women’s religious communities and orders, and the larger Church, are profound. 10 Elisabeth Charpy, Petite vie de Louise de Marillac (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1991), 122.
11 The ages are from a 2002 census of the community. Mother Juana Elizondo, “The missionary company,” Echoes of the Company (2002), 521.
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In her opus Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millenia, Jo Ann Kay McNamara writes, “in the last decade of the twentieth century, with the median age of sisters now set at seventy and rising and no new generation of recruits in sight, the death of the feminine apostolate, at least in the United States and Europe, seems to be inevitable.”12 McNamara’s observation is accurate, but the international dimension of the Daughters of Charity assures its survival. Daughters of Charity from Asia and Africa work in Europe and North America alongside their older, native-born sisters. The Company remains dynamic, and there are about 21,500 Daughters of Charity living in over 90 countries.13 They continue their work with children, including those with AIDS in Romania; refugees, including those fleeing the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda; prisoners, including women in Turin’s jails; and the destitute, including street children in Rio de Janeiro. They serve as nurses to disabled children in Indonesia, teachers to young women in Bolivia, and missionaries in Madagascar.14 Members of the Company must balance increased administrative work with their vocation to serve the poor and the sick. Daughters fulfill this multi faceted vocation is by sending missionary sisters around the world to establish new communities. Since 1997, the Company has established four new missions in Africa, in Angola, Libya, Chad, and Kenya. The missionaries work to help the poor living around them, while also working to bring people into the Catholic faith, and women into the Company. Missionary Daughters strive to “inculturate” themselves into the regions in which they live. According to the Company’s Superior General, Juana Elizondo: “Wherever we may be sent we should have a positive outlook and adopt, or at least respect, the country’s cultural values and customs. Today it is no longer a question of destroying what already exists and imposing our models, but of integrating in the country and preaching the gospel with humility.”15 Most recently five Daughters of Charity, three from the United States, one from Ireland, and one from Australia, opened a mission on the Cook Islands, creating a center to assist disabled persons.
12 Jo Ann Kay McNamara, Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millenia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 631. 13http://www.filles-de-la-charite.org/en/worldwide.html 14 This is a partial list of work accomplished in 1994, listed in the Echoes of the Company (1994). 15Elizondo, 531.
A p p en d ix 1
Establishments of the Daughters of Charity in France, excluding Parisian Establishments, 1633-1660 1 Date of Foundation
Location
Department
Institution
1638
Saint-Germain-enLaye
Yvelines
Parish
1638
Richelieu
Indre-et-Loire
Parish, school
1639
Sedan
Ardennes
Hospital
1640
Angers
Maine-et-Loire
Parish, hospital
1641
Nanteuil
Oise
Parish, school
1642
Coulombe
Yvelines
Parish
1642
Tougin
Ain
Parish, hospital, school
1643
Richelieu
Indre-et-Loire
Parish, school
1This list of establishments was created from three principal sources. A.N 1054, 52. Soeurs de la Charité: Liste Alphabétique de leurs établissements this list was drafted in or around 1703 and lists the communities of Daughters existing at this point. Establishments that opened and did not succeed are often not mentioned. However, some royal establishments are listed on this chart. The second source consulted was AN S. 6160-S 6180, the list of the establishments’ contracts for most of the Daughters’ communities. Not included among these contracts are any establishments founded by members of the royal family, since contracts were not written when the royal family was a community’s sponsor. I compared these two sources and created a list of establishments and dates. This was then compared to the correspondence of de Marillac and the Daughters of Charity. In some cases Daughters were working in parishes before establishment contracts were written and in other instances a contract was written but Daughters did not go to the establishment until years later. When the letters of the Daughters of Charity indicate that the establishment existed before the contact was written then I used the year of the first correspondence from that establishment as the date of establishment. The correspondence is a very useful source because it is quite extensive and de Marillac often tells the Daughters about the goings-on in other communities providing a sense of where the Daughters were working and what type of work they were performing. I believe that I have created a reasonably accurate list of communities of Daughters; however in several cases conflicting establishment dates were given by the sources and in some of these cases I was unable to determine the date of establishment. In such cases I used the date on the establishment contract.
148
Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France
1643
Villeneuve-le-Roi
Yvelines
Parish
1645
Houilles
Yvelines
Parish
1645
Fontenay-auxRoses
Yvelines
Parish
1645
Liancourt
Oise
Parish
1645
Saint-Denis
Yvelines
Hospital, school
1645
Serqueux
Seine-Maritime
Parish
1646
Nantes
LoireAtlantique
Hospital
1647
Montreuil-surMer
Pas-de-Calais
Parish, Hospital
1647
Amiens
Somme
Hospital
1647
Chars
Oise
Hosptial
1648
Dourdan
Yvelines
Parish, hospital
1648
Saint-Germain-enLaye
Yvelines
Parish, school
1650
Sainte-Marie-duMont
Manche
Parish, hospital, school
1650
Rumilly
Haute-Savoie
Parish
1652
Brienne
Aube
Parish, school
1652
Hennebont
Morbihan
Parish, hospital, school
1653
Metz
Moselle
Parish
1653
Montmirial
Marne
Parish
1653
Varize
Eure-et-Loire
Parish
1653
Warsaw, Poland
1654 1654
Bemay Chateaudun
Eure Eure-et-Loire
Parish, hospital, school Parish, hospital
1654
Saint-Fargeau
Yonne
Hospital
1655 1655
Fontainebleau Chantilly
Seine-et-Mame Oise
1656
Arras
Pas-de-Calais
Hospital Parish, hospital Parish
1656
Attichy
Aisne
Parish
1656
La Fère
Aisne
Parish, hospital
1657
Cahors
Lot
Hospital, orphanage
Parish, school, orphanage
Appendix 1
149
1659
Narbonne
Aude
Parish, hospital, school
1660
Belle-Isle
Morbihan
Hospital
1660
Gex
Ain
Parish, hospital, school
1660
Alençon
Orne
Parish
1660
Moutiers-SaintJean
Côte d’Or
Parish, hospital
Appendix 2
Establishments of the Daughters of Charity in France, excluding Parisian Establishments, 1661-1699 Date of Foundation
Location
Department
Institution
1661
Coudray
Yvelines
Not known
1663
Maison
Eure-et-Loire
Parish
1664
Chartres
Eure-et-Loire
Not known
1664
Maintenon
Eure-et-Loir
Hospital, parish
1665
Bourbon
Allier
Hospital
1665
Villeneuve le Roy
Yvelines
Parish
1666
Melun
Seine-et-Mame
Hospital, parish
1666
Sainte Reyne
Côte-d’Or
Hospital
1666
Villecerfs-Auge
Seine-et-Mame
Parish
1667
Cahors
Lot
Hospital, orphanage
1668
Bruyères
Yvelines
Parish
1668
Chauny
Aisne
Hospital, HotelDieu
1668
Huisseaux
1668
Monthery
Yvelines
Hospital
1668
Montpellier
Hérault
Hospital
1668
Pantin
Yvelines
Hospital, parish
1668
Seignelay
1668
Villaine
Mayenne
Parish
1668
Villers Cotterets
Aisne
Hospital
1669
Montpellier
Hérault
Hospital
Parish
Hospital
Appendix 2
151
1670
Chaville
Yvelines
Not known
1670
Pithiviers
Loiret
Hospital, HôtelDieu
1670
Saint Meén
Ille-et-Vilaine
Hospital, parish
1670
Versailles
Yvelines
Not known
1671
Montluçon
Allier
Hospitals, parish
1672
Cahors
Lot
Not known
1672
Chaumont
Haute-Marne
Hospital
1672
Corbeil
Yvelines
Hospital
1672
Nogent-le-Rotrou
Eure-et-Loire
Parish, hospital
1672
Rennes
Ille-et-Vilaine
Not known
1672
Verviers
Belgique
Hôtel-Dieu
1673
Autun
Saône-et-Loire
Not known
1673
Luçon
Vendée
Not known
1674
Aumalle
Seine-Maritime
Not known
1674
Château-la-Vallière
Seine-Maritime
Parish
1674
Clichy
Yvelines
Parish
1674
Lublé
Indre-et-Loire
Hospital, parish
1675
Chassille
Sarthe
Parish
1675
Jouy
Yvelines
Parish
1675
Lezou
Puy-de-Dome
Not known
1675
Mauré
Haute-Savoie
Parish
1675
Moree
Loiret
Parish
1676
Alençon
Orne
Hôtel-Dieu, hospital
1676
Louvois
Marne
Parish, school
1677
Bleré
Indre-et-Loire
Parish, school
1677
Réveillon
Marne
Parish
1678
Baye
Marne
Parish, school
152
Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France
1678
Beauvoir
1678
Bénnévent
1678
Bezons
Yvelines
Parish, school
1678
Clermort-Ferrand
Puy-le-Dôme
Not known
1678
Gretz
Seine-et-Mame
Not known
1678
Touman-en-Brie
Seine-et-Mame
Not known
1679
Bessé
Sarthe
Parish
1679
Lyon
Rhône
Parish
1679
Nimes
Gard
Not known
1680
Commercy
Muerthe-et-
Not known
Seine-et-Mame
Parish Hospital
Moselle 1680
Evreux
Eure
Not known
1680
Vitry sur Seine
Yvelines
Parish
1681
Leuville
1681
Saint Flour
Parish Cantal
Hospital, school, parish
1681
Saint Malo
Ille-et-Vilaine
Not known
1681
Sainte Marie du
Manche
Hospital
Marne
Hospital, Hôtel-
mont 1681
Sezanne
Dieu 1681
Thizy
Rhône
Parish, school
1681
Villevaude
Seine-et-Mame
Parish
1682
Charenton
Yvelines
Hospital
1682
Loudon
Vienne
Not known
1682
Saint Quenin Petit
Aisne
Not known
1682
Senlis
Oise
Parish, Hôtel-Dieu
1682
Vannes
Morbihan
Not known
Appendix 2
153
1683
Bourg-Ac hard
Eure
Hospital
1683
Cahors
Lot
Hospital, orphanage
1683
Dourdan
Yvelines
Hospital, Hôtel-Dieu
1683
Fronsac
Gironde
Parish
1684
Chalons et
Marne
Parish
Aisne
Not known
Campagne 1684
Guise
1684
Liesse
1684
Moulins
Allier
Parish
1684
Piré
Ille-et-Villaine
Parish, school
1685
Blangis
1685
Blangy-s-Bresse
Seine-Maritime
Hospital
1685
Choisy-le-Roi
Yvelines
Not known
1685
Domfront
Orne
Not known
1685
Estoge
Marne
Parish, seminary
1685
Eu
Seine-Maritime
Not known
1685
Montauban
Tarn
Not known
1685
Saint Quentin
Aisne
Parish
1685
Tremblade
Gironde
Hospital, parish
1685
Vallette
Charente
Parish, school
1686
Criel
Seine-Maritime
Hospital
1686
Guermande
Seine-et-Mame
Hospital, parish
1686
Agen
Lot-et-Garonne
Hôpital Général
1686
Isle de Ré
Charente-
Not known
Not known
Not known
Maritime 1686
Marans
Charente-
Not known
Maritime 1686
Marennes
CharenteMaritime
Parish
154
Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France Aube
Parish, school
1686
Savieres
1686
Soubise
1686
Trévoux
Ain
Hospital
1686
Vitry le Français
Marne
Parish
1687
Boulogne-s-Mer
Pas-de-Calais
Not known
1687
Metz
Moselle
Hospital, women’s
Not known
hospital 1687
Montpaon
Mayenne
Hospital, parish, school
1688
Aub
Somme
Hôtel-Dieu, parish
1688
Bourg d’Ault
Somme
Hospital, parish, school Not known
1688
Triel
1688
Ville-Bois
Charente
Parish
1689
Hebecourt
Eure
Parish, school
1689
Lezines
Yonne
Parish, hospital
1689
Saint Cloud
Yvelines
Hospital
1689
Saint Thiery
Marne
Parish, Hôtel-Dieu
1689
Sceaux
Yvelines
Hospital
1689
Toulouse
Haute-Garonne
Not known
1689
Vineuil
Loire-et-Cher
Parish
1690
Aumalle
Seine-Maritime
Parish, school, hospital
1690
Beaune
Côte-d’Or
Parish, school
1690
Bordeaux
Gironde
Hospital
1690
Cholet
Maine-et-Loire
Hospital, parish
1690
Hoüille
Yvelines
Not known
1690
Langres
Haute-Marne
Not known
155
Appendix 2 1690
Oiron
Deux-Sèvres
Not known
1690
Pont-à-Mousson
Meurthe-et-
Parish, school
Moselle 1690
Rochefort
Charente-
Hospital
Martime 1690
Sarcelles
Seine-et-Marne
Parish, school
1690
Silly-en-Mulhien
Oise
Parish, school
1690
Villacerf
Aube
Not known
1691
Bannoste
Seine-et-Marne
Hôtel-Dieu, parish
1691
Corbigny
Nièvre
Not known
1691
Creve-Coeur
Oise
Parish
1691
Fontainebleau
Seine-et-Marne
Hospital
1692
Fresnay-sur-Sarthe
Sarthe
Hospital, school
1692
Jerres
1692
Marly-la-Ville
Yvelines
Hospital
1692
Mouzon
Ardennes
Parish, school
1692
Varredes
Seine-et-Marne
Parish, hospital,
Not known
orphanage 1692
Yerres
Yvelines
Not known
1692
Yvry l’Eveque
Sarthe
Not known
1693
Beziers
Hérault
Parish
1693
Isle-Marie
Loiret
Hospital
1693
Verdun
Meuse
Not known
1694
Culme
1694
Guillemecourt
Seine-Maritime
Hospital
1694
Pont Saint Esprit
Gard
Hospital
1694
Saint Pons
Hérault
Not known
1694
Thibouville
Eure
Parish, school
Not known
156
Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France
1695
Bellesme
Orne
Hospital
1695
Javron
Mayenne
Parish
1695
Meaux
Seine-et-Marne
Not known
1695
Oissery
Seine-et-Marne
Parish, school
1695
Pau
Pyrénées-
Not known
Atlantiques 1695
Rosay
Eure
Parish, school
1695
Royan
Charente-
Not known
Maritime 1695
Saint Omer
Pas-de-Calais
Hospital
1696
Air
Pas-de-Calais
Not known
1696
Amiens
Somme
Hospital, parish
1696
Bar-le-Duc
Marne
Parish
1696
Bourg-Egalite
1696
Dijon
Côte-d'Or
Parish
1696
Ferte Gaucher
Seine-et-Marne
Not known
1696
Goussainville
Yvelines
Parish, school
1696
Ussel
Corrèze
Hospital, Hôtel-
Hospital, school
Dieu 1696
Vic
Meurthe-et-
Hospital
Moselle 1696
Vichy
Allier
Hospital
1697
Albert
Somme
Hospital
1697
Cahors
Lot
Hospital
1697
Castel-Sarrazin
Tarn
Hospital
1697
Vincennes
Yvelines
Not known
1698
Bazas
Gironde
Hospital
1698
Bussiere
Loiret
Parish
Appendix 2
157
1698
Chatenay
Yvelines
Not known
1698
Dijon
Côte-d’Or
Not known
1698
Jouars-
Yvelines
Not known
Pontchartrain 1698
Longué
Mame-et-Loire
Parish, school
1698
Lunel
Hérault
Parish
1698
Lyon
Rhône
Not known
1698
Mitry
Seine-et-Marne
Parish, school
1698
Neuxbourg
1698
Pontchartrain
Yvelines
Hospital
1698
Saint Servant
Ille-et-Vilaine
Parish
1698
Sedan
Ardennes
Not known
1698
Tonnay Charent
Charente-
Hospital, Hotel-
Maritime
Dieu
Not known
1699
Hesdin
Pas-de-Calais
Hospital, parish
1699
Metz
Moselle
Parish
1699
Nancy
Meurthe-et-
Hospital
Moselle 1699
Noisy-le-grand
Yvelines
Not known
1699
Riom
Puy-de-Dôme
Parish
1699
Saint Chéron
Yvelines
Not known
1699
Saujon
Charente-
Parish
Maritime 1699
Tarascon
Bouches-du-
Hospital
Rhône 1699
Varennes
Allier
Women’s hospital
Bibliography
PRIMARY SOURCES: Archives of the Daughters of Charity, Albany, NY (A.D.C.)
ADC
Lettres de Saint Vincent à Louise de Marillac
ADC
Copies of letters and documents from the Archives Maison Mère des Filles de la Charité, Paris
Archive Départmentale Maine-et-Loire (A.D.M.L.)
ADML 1HS/F6
Soeurs de la Charité, correspondance
ADML 1HS/A/3
1194-1759 Documents sur l’hôpital
ADML 1HS/E8
1640-1712 Registre
ADML 1HS/E11
Correspondance
ADML 1HS/E12
Correspondance
ADML 1HS/E271
1680-1686 Pieces a l’appui des comptes
ADML BB 92 fol. 145
Correspondance
Archives Maison Mère des Filles de la Charité, Paris (A.M.M.F.C.)
AMMFC
Recueil No. 6, Lettres et pièces diverses autographes, concernant Louise de Marillac.
AMMFC
Recueil No. 7, Lettres autographes MS 1010-1134
Archives Nationales (A.N.)
AN AN
H. 3730 Établissements religieux: comptabilités, rentes L. 1054 Monuments ecclésiastiques: Soeurs de la Charité de la rue faubourg Saint Denis, correspondances de diverse maisons, liste alphabétique de leurs établissements tant où France qu’à Paris
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AN
L.. 1662 Monuments ecclésiastiques: Statuts et reglements particulières de la Compagnie des Filles de la Charité servantes des pauvres malades
AN
LL. 1663 Monuments ecclésiastiques: Avis pour vistites des maisons des Filles de la Charité
AN
LL. 1664 Monuments ecclésiastiques: Registre de la ville d’Eu
AN
LL. 1665 Monuments ecclésiastiques: Statuts et reglements generaux de la Compagnie des Filles de la Charité servantes des pauvres malades
AN
LL. 1666 Monuments ecclésiastiques: Réglés communes des filles de la charité servantes des pauvres malades
AN
S. 6155 Mémoires et quittances de fournisseurs (suppliers) (1773-1789); quittances de cens par l’abbasse de Saint-Antoine-des-Champs pour un terrain six rue de Montreuil (1777-1790); - Registres de recettes et de dépenses (1719-1740)
AN
S. 6156 Liste de recette pour le pauvres de la paroisse de St. André-desArts en juin 1752 jusqu’en 1769. Registre pour les recettes de la Charité des pauvres de la paroisse de Andre-des-Arts. Recette de Madame la Trésorier depuis 1747 jusqu’en 1767. Registre du pain et des habillement St André, commencé 1776
AN
S. 6157 Les pièces sont relatives à ladite acquisition et anciens titres de propriété
AN
S. 6158 Titres et bails des maisons des Filles de la Charité
AN
S. 6159 Titres, mémoires, lettres et clés relatifs au le universal de moitié de ses biens, en faveur des Soeurs de la Charité porté au testament de Madame Marquerite de Mechatin Comtesse de Remiremont reçu le 31 Janvier 1792
AN
S. 6160 Biens des établissements religieux supprimés, Establishments in Paris and Anneville - Ax
AN
S. 6161a Biens des établissements religieux supprimés, Bagnères - Bernay
AN
S. 6161b Biens des établissements religieux supprimés, Bessé-sur-Braye Bléré
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AN
S. 6162 Biens des établissements religieux supprimés, Boissy-sous-Yon Buzançois
AN
S. 6163 Biens des établissements religieux supprimés Caen - Charmont
AN
S. 6164 Biens des établissements religieux supprimés, Chartres - Choisyle-Roi
AN
S. 6165 Biens des établissements religieux supprimés, Cholet - Cusset
AN
S.6166 Biens des établissements religieux supprimés, Dammartin - Saint Flour
AN
S. 6167 Biens des établissements religieux supprimés, Fontainebleau Guinpamp
AN
S. 6168 Biens des établissements religieux supprimés, Ham - Saint-Julien
AN
S. 6169 Biens des établissements religieux supprimés, Langres - Lyon
AN
S. 6170 Biens des établissements religieux supprimés, Langres Montpaon
AN
S. 6171 Biens des établissements religieux supprimés, Montpellier Mouzon
AN
S. 6172 Biens des établissements religieux supprimés, Nancy - Orthez
AN
S. 6173 Biens des établissements religieux supprimés, Pamiers - Puisieux
AN
S. 6174 Biens des établissements religieux supprimés, Saint Quentin Rumilly
AN
S. 6175 Biens des établissements religieux supprimés, Sablé - Senlis
AN
S. 6176 Biens des établissements religieux supprimés, Serqueux Surgères
AN
S. 6177 Biens des établissements religieux supprimés, Taden - Troyes
AN
S. 6178 Biens des établissements religieux supprimés, Ussel - Verviers
AN
S. 6179 Biens des établissements religieux supprimés, Vie - Waast
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S.
161
6180 Biens des établissements religieux supprimés, Yerres - Ivrél’Evêque
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (B.N.)
BN BN BN BN
Collection Joly de Fleury 1236, Enfans-trouvés 1216, Personnel religieux 1410, Statistique religieux
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Index
Abbot of Vaux 112, 113 Abelly, Louis 5, 6, 10 Acarie, Barbe 29 active 2, 3, 4, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 21, 22, 2 3 ,26,31,39, 45, 48,49, 52, 53, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61 Aiguillon, Duchesse d \ Marie de Vignerot de Pontcourlay, 62, 68, 74, 97, 100 Alberigo, Guiseppe 17 Alméras, René 112, 125, 136, 139 alms 34, 35, 36, 60, 64, 95, 96, 99, 101,
102 alphabet cards 86, 88 Angers 79, 80, 105, 106, 107, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 120, 121, 125, 133, 144 Angiboust, Barbe 31, 41, 64, 65, 73, 74, 77, 87, 88 Angiboust, Cécile 106, 111, 112 Angoulême, Marguerite d’ 95 Anjou 132, 133 Anjou, Seneschal of 105 Anne of Austria 62, 68, 69 Annecy 21, 25, 27, 36 apothecary 66, 106 apprentice 101 Archbishop of Lyons 26 Archbishop of Paris 7, 64 Arras 121, 144 artisan 40, 80,81,82, 119 aspirantes 135 Assembly of Melun 24 Assembly of the Clergy 24, 25 Assistant 71, 77, 120, 131 Augustinian 19, 27, 58, 102, 105 Aumône générale 34 Bailly, Barbe 82 Béarn 5 begging 95 Beguines 4, 19, 44, 57, 102 Belgium 129
Bellarmine, Robert 1, 27, 90, 91 Belle-Isle 123, 124, 127 Benedictine 19, 20, 72, 73 benefactors 21 Besiers 133 Bicêtre 60, 82, 87, 88, 94, 95, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102
bishop 15, 17, 18, 19, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 34, 42, 45,49, 5 0 ,51,52,
120 Bishop of Lyon 27 Bishop of Milan 28 Bishop of Paris 45, 51 Black Death 102 Black, Christopher 33, 36, 43 boarder 30, 61,67, 83,84 Boileve, Louis 106 Bonaparte, Napoleon 144 Bonnet, Jean 133 Bordeaux 83 Borromeo, Carlo 28, 29, 30 Bouillon, Duke de, Frédéric Maurice de La Tour d ’Auvergne, 78 Boulogne 80 boys 83, 85, 87 Brescia 29 Brienne 64, 66, 77, 138 Bursar 120, 131 cahiers 24 Calvet, Jean 9, 10, 11 Capuchin 9 Capucine 26 Cardinal de Retz 49, 50 Carmelite 8, 26, 57, 58 catechism 29, 48, 53, 83, 84, 85, 88, 89, 9 0 ,9 1 ,9 2 Catholic Reformation 1, 3, 5, 15, 20, 21, 25, 27, 28, 37, 38 ,4 1 ,4 4 , 48, 54, 60, 140, 141 Champagne 62, 78, 131, 137 Chantal, Jeanne de 26, 27, 30, 36, 44 Chapelle, le 118
Index
184 charitable relief 94, 115 charity 27, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 3 9 ,4 0 ,4 5 ,4 1 ,4 3 , 44, 50, 52, 54, 57 Charles V, Emperor 17 Charpy, Élisabeth 8, 9, 12, 13, 121, 122, 123 Chars 51, 66, 86, 99 chastity 21, 22, 42,45 Châteaudun 8, 64, 77 Chatillon-les-Dombes 35, 36, 37, 44 Chétif, Marguerite 67, 72, 116, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 127, 131 children 2, 9, 13, 25, 30, 32, 57, 63, 67, 82, 83, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90,91, 92, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101,
102 abandoned 95, 98, 101 boys 83, 85, 87 girls 4, 7, 13, 14, 16, 69, 70, 73, 74, 78, 79, 80,81,83, 84, 85,86, 87, 88, 89,91,92, 93, 143 choir sister 21 Circa pastoralis 19 circular letter 131, 137, 138, 139, 140 civil wars, see Wars of Religion clausura 2, 4, 19, 20, 21, 26, 27, 29, 56, 61 Clement IX, Pope 44, 50, 120 cloister 3,4, 7, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 42, 44, 45,46, 53, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60,61,69, 72, 75, 83, 84, 86, 88, 93 Cloistered communities 143 clothes 64 collection 99, 100 Company of St. Ursula 29 Company of the Holy Sacrament 34, 35 Condé, Princess de, Montmonency, Charlotte de 59, 68 Conferences 35, 40, 41, 97, 122, 127, 134, 136 confession 6, 7 confessionalization 1 confraternities 21, 28, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 3 9 ,40,41,42, 43,44,51, 52, 57, 68, 73, 80, 95, 118, 119 Confraternities of Charity 21, 35, 37, 38, 39, 82, 118
Confraternity of Charity 36, 38, 41, 42, 44 Confraternity of the Court 68 Congrégation at Saint-Lazare 49 Congrégation de Notre Dame 130 Congregation of the Mission 6, 7, 11, 12, 31,35, 37,40, 42,48, 49, 50, 52, 68, 78, 83,91, 112, 121, 125, 131, 136, 139 see also Lazarists contemplative 22, 26, 43, 45, 57, 58, 59, 61 contemplative orders 141, 142 convents 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20,21,26, 28, 30,42, 56, 58, 59, 60,61,62, 63, 66, 68, 72,81,83, 84, 88, 93, 102 enclosed 26, 44, 50, 56, 59, 60, 61 conversion 78 cooking 21,40, 41,42, 66, 70 comette 48, 140 Coste, Pierre 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 35, 36, 40, 45,49, 118, 119, 123, 124, 132, 135, 137 Council of Trent 1, 2, 3,4, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 30, 35, 42,48, 50, 55, 56, 142 Couche la, see Bicêtre 95, 96, 97, 101 Counter Reformation 1 country girls 41 “Creed” 90 Crimando, Thomas 22, 23, 24 Dames de Saint-Maur 53 Daughters of Charity 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 As a Confraternity 43, 44, As Catholic reformers 55, 56 Foundations 17, 25, 35, 37, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 55 Religion renewal, 26 Role of Ladies of Charity 40, 41 Avoiding enclosure 22, 30, 31, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 58, 61, 118, 119 Financing 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68 Community organization 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125,
Index 126, 127, 128 Composition 80, 81, 82 Teaching 83, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91,92, 93, 94 Foundling home work 95, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101 Nursing 102, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 110, 111, 112, 114, 115, 116 Expansion of the community 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146 Seminary 134, 135, 136, Davis, Natalie Zemon 20, 32, 34, 43, 59 Dax 144 Day of Dupes 8 day students 30, 53, 83 De subventione pauperum 33 Deaconess 45 deaths 118, 120, 127, 130, 131, 136, 137, 139 dechristianization 143, 144 Dévots 8, 23, 25, 38, 39 dévotes 14, 21, 38, 39, 50, 63, 69 Diefendorf, Barbara 4, 14, 15, 21, 26, 28, 48, 59, 60, 142 Director of Novices 80 Dirvin, Louise 11, 12 doctor 14, 103, 106, 109, 113, 114 Dodin, André 6, 11,37 domestic servant 101 Dominican 8 dowry 18, 21, 26, 30, 59, 60, 63, 66, 68 Duleau, Antoinette 143, 144 economy 17, 30, 31, 33, 56, 59, 60 Edict of Nantes 83 education 4, 13, 14, 16, 25, 30, 36, 37, 38,43, 47, 53, 78, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 89, 93 Elizondo, Juana 145, 146 Encamation convent 60 enclosure 2, 4, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 42, 46, 48, 50, 51,55, 58, 59, 61,72, 82, 83, 88, 93,118, 119, 141, 142 enfants bleues 96 enfants rouges 96
185 Enlightenment 14 epidemic 31, 95, 97, 116 Estates-General 24 Eu 42,46, 70, 80, 81, 131, 134, 135, 136 fabric 64, 66 fallen women 33,46, 52, 69 famine 31, 95, 97, 116 Fathers of the Poor 106, 107, 112, 114 feminization of religion 141 fever 104, 105 Filles de la Croix 53, 130 Filles de la Providence 130 Filles de Notre-Dame 83 Filles de Sainte-Geneviève 53 First Communions 86 fish market 113 Flinton, Margaret 12, 13 Fontainbleau 23, 87, 88 Fontenay-les-Roses67, 69 food 7, 32, 34, 35, 36, 40, 47, 52, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 70, 80, 134 butter 66 fish 67 fruit 66 honey 66 preserves 66, 67, 77 soup 65, 69, 79 sugar, 66 tea 107 wheat 100 foundlings 63, 82, 87, 94, 95, 96, 97, 99,
100, 101, 102 Francis I, King 23, 95 Franciscan 5 French Revolution 88, 143, 144, 145 Legislative Assembly 143 National Assembly 143 Robespierre 144 Reign of Terror 144 Fronde 95, 99, 100 Gallicanism 3, 8, 23 Ganset, Louise 74, 75 General of the Galleys, see Gondi, Philip de girls 4, 7, 13, 14, 69, 70, 73, 74, 78, 79, 80,81,83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91,92, 93, 143
186 Gobilion, Nicolas 10, 11 Gondi, Philip de 6 Gondi, Jean-Francois-Paul de 49 Gonzague, Louise Marie de 68 Gras, Antoine le 9 Chief Secretary ot the Queen 9 Gras, Mademoiselle le, see Marillac, Louise de Guérin, Mathurine 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 127, 128, 131, 134, 136, 139, 140 habit 64, 65,66,71,81 cornette 48, 142 “Hail Mary” 90 Haran, Nicole 122, 124, 139 Harline, Craig 57, 58 healing 41, 102, 104, 107 Henry II King 24, 105 heresy 25, 108 L’hôpital des Enfants Trouvés 101 L’hôpital de la miséricorde 78 L’hôpital St. Jean l’Evangéliste 106, 114 hôpitaux-généraux 32, 33, 105 hospice 7 hospitals 2,4, 7, 14, 16, 33, 34, 124, 125, 130, 137, 140, 144, 145 administrators 94, 105, 106, 107, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116 Fathers of the Poor 106, 107, 112 Hôtel-Dieu 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117 Hôtels-Dieu 35, 53, 68, 95, 103, 105, 108, 109, 110, 111, 121 nursing communities 102, 103, 104 Hsia, R. Po-Chia 141 Huguenots 16, 23, 24, 25, 36, 38, 39, 78 illegitimate 5, 7, 9, 12, 95, 96, 97 Index 55 Inquisition 55 Italy 20, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 33,41, 143 Jansenism 51 Jedin, Hubert 17, 23, 24 Jesuits 83,89 Jolly, Edme 112, 125, 136, 137, 140
Index Joly, Marie 78, 79, 122 Jones, Colin 14, 24, 32, 33, 34, 44, 63, 65,70, 94, 103, 110, 111, 114, 128, 129, 130, 131, 139 Keeper of the Seals, see Marillac, Michel de Laboue, Julienne 122, 125 lace making 86 Ladies of Charity 10, 16, dévotes 68, 69 Directors 70, 71, 73, 74, 82, 84, 94, 110, 112 Expansion 118, 119, 128, 130, 131, 139 Financial support 63, 64, 67, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102 Foundation 38, 39, 40, 41, 44, 51, 52, 53, 59, 61 Lambert aux Couteaux 31, 42, 90, 91, 115 Langlois, Claude 141 Languedoc 132, 133 lay sisters 21, 72 Lazarists, see Congregation of the Mission, 7, 35,37, 39,41,50, 93 Legislative Assembly 143 legitimate 135 Lepintre, Jeanne 115, 116 lettres patent 51 Liebowitz, Ruth 13, 57 Lierheimer, Linda 30, 57, 61 Lithuania 143 Louis XIII, King 7, 8, 9, 98, 100 Louis XIV, King 50,51,53 Low Countries 102 Luiller, Marie 130 Lumague, Marie 53, 69, 130 Luther, Martin 17, 37 Lyons 27,35 Mademoiselle le Gras, see de Marillac, Louise Magasin charitable 139 de Marillac, Louis, Maréchal de France, 7 ,8 beheaded 8 de Marillac, Louise
Index avoiding enclosure 30, 35, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44,45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50,51,52, 53, 55,61 death 118 directing a foundling home 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102 directing hospitals 103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116 directing schools 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90,91,92, 93 early life 3, 5,6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16 Economizing 64, 65, 66, 67 Lady of Charity 62, 63, 68 organizing the Company 22, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 127, 128, 131, 132, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 143 son 38 Superior General 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 84 Marillac, Michel de 8, 11 Marquemont, Denis-Simon de 27, 28, 44 marriage 2, 9, 12, 18, 21, 28, 42, 59, 70, 81,90 Martin, Élisabeth 107, 115, 116 Marsal, Etienne de 105 martyr 144 Masle, Michel le 85, 92 Mass 134 Maur 53 Mazarin, Jules, Cardinal 50 McNamara, Jo Ann Kay 146 medical records 109 medical treatment 104 bleeding 104 cleaning 103, 110, 134 healing 41, 102, 104, 107 medicine 2, 14, 16, 41, 47, 66, 70, 71, 76 Medici, Catherine de 23, 24 Medici, Marie de 8, 9, 25 Medioli, Francesca 19, 20 Merici, Angela 28, 29 Mezzadri, Luigi 5,11 Michau, Françoise 122, 124 Midi 43, 53 Milan 29 missionary 3, 6, 16, 31, 36, 39,41, 59,
187 70, 76, 77, 78, 79, 84, 89, 93 Mollat, Michel 33 monarchy 23, 24, 26, 50 monasteries 18, 19, 20, 26, 27, 46 Monsieur Vincent, see Paul, Vincent de Montauban 53 Montmonency, Charlotte de 59 Montpellier 14, 53, 77, 110, 130 Moreau, Marie 122, 124, 125 Motherhouse 44, 46, 50, 52, 63, 64, 65, 6 6 ,71,73, 74, 75,76, 79, 80, 90, 94, 107, 109, 112, 114, 116, 119, 120, 122, 123, 125, 127, 131, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 143 Nantes 103, 114, 115, 116, 124, 139 Narbonne 133 Naseau, Marguerite 41,42, 53, 81, 88, 93 National Assembly 143 Nemours, Duchesse 68 Netherlands 57, 58 newsletter 139 Nightingale, Florence 116 Normandy 132, 135 novices 70, 80, 81, 123, 134, 136 novitiate 70, 81 nun 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 14, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 26, 28, 30, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 53,55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60 ,6 1 ,8 3 , 143 nursing 4, 5, 14, 16, 25, 47, 62, 94, 101, 102, 104, 105, 107, 110, 114, 116, 134 O’Malley, John 17, 25, 55 obedience 21, 22, 29, 42,45, 46, 52, 123, 127 open letter 127 Orleans, Duke 63 orphans 7, 16, 47, 94, 95, 96, 97, 100, 100, 105 “Our Father” 90 overwork 112 Paris 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 1 6 ,2 1,23,26, 29, 30, 32, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42,43, 44,46, 47,
Index
188 48,49,51,52, 53,57, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70,71,72, 73, 74, 75, 77,78, 79, 80,81,85, 88, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 199, 100, 101, 102, 106, 110, 112, 113, 114, 116, 118, 119, 121, 122, 123, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 137, 139, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145 Parlement of Paris 23, 51, 96, 100, 106 patronage 130 Paul, Vincent de avoiding enclosure 30, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 49, 50,51,52, 53 Church reformer 25 early life 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16,21,22, directing a foudling home 96, 98, 99,
Poland 132, 134, 143 poor 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 16, 19, 20, 21, 25, 27, 30,31,36, 37,38, 39,40,41, 44, 45, 47,48,51,53,56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 79, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 88, 92, 93 able-bodied 104 deserving 32, 35 foundlings 94, 100, 101 in hospitals 102, 103, 105, 106, 111, 113,114, 115, 116, 119, 123, 128, 131, 132, 133, 143, 144, 146 shame-faced 33, 104 undeserving 32, 33, 34 poor relief 31, 32, 35, 48, 61, 63, 70, 94, 102
Pope 17, 18, 23, 27,42, 45,49, 50, 51 Alexander III 105 Benedict XV 128 Boniface VIII18 Clement DC 118 Paul V 27 Paul III 28 Paul IV 18 Paul V 27 Pius V 19 Pius X I128 Urban VIII 7 Portail, Antoine 64, 80 postulant 47, 59, 135, 136, 138 Pouy 5 poverty 21, 22, 31, 33, 34, 42,45, 127 Powis, Jonathan 23 preaching 6, 36,41, 78 priest 6, 7, 11, 16, 20 Priests of the Mission 37, 38, 101, 115 primary school 101 Procurator General 51 Procuratrix 72 Protestant 2, 8, 17, 19, 23, 24, 25, 32, 34, 35, 39, 53, 56, 61, 78, 82, 83, 102, 108 Protestant Reformation 102 Providence 11,12, 69, 70 Provision 18,19, 20, 22 public assistance 33 Pujo, Bernard 6,11, 36,41,42,44
100
directing a hospital 103, 109, 114, 115, 116 educating boys 87 educating girls 88, 89, 90, 91,93 organizing the Company 118, 120, 121, 122, 125, 127, 131, 132, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140 “Peasant Girls” 80, 81, 82 relations with Ladies of Charity 62, 65, 67, 68, 69,71,72, 73 sending Daughters to Sedan 78, 79 vocation 76, 77 Paul III, Pope 28 Paul IV, Pope 18 Peace of Amboise 24 peasant 31, 40, 42, 48, 119 pension 8 Periculoso 18 petit réglement 42, 70, 73 petites écoles 84, 87, 88 pharmacist 108, 115 Picardy 63, 79, 132, 138 Pitié, la 69 Pius V 19 Pius X I128 Place de Grève 95, 96 plague 18, 41, 111 Poissy 8 Poitiers 74 *
Index Queen 18, 19, 23, 49, 50, 59, 95, 97, 100 Queen Mother 8 Queen of Poland 68 Rapley, Elizabeth 4, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21,22, 26, 30, 38, 50, 53,57, 66, 80,81,83, 84, 85,86, 87, 88,91, 119, 120, 124, 128, 130, 142 Rector of the Cathedral of Notre Dame 85 Reformation 17, 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 29, 32, 33, 34, 35, 43, 44, 48, 55, 56, 58, 60 refugees 79, 139 Reign of Terror 144 religious communities 102, 141,143, 144, 145 religious instruction 2 religious orders 18, 19, 21, 22, 26, 27, 28, 29, 37,42, 43,45, 46, 48,51, 57, 59, 72, 80,81,88 Religious wars, see Wars of Religion religious women 19, 20, 26, 52 Richelieu, Cardinal, Armand Jean du Plessis 8, 16, 31, 42, 62, 74, 75, 76, 77, 93, 116, 133, 140 Robespierre 144 Rome 23, 25,42 Rouen 25, 53, 80 royal family 95, 98, 99, 102 rule 20, 21, 27, 29, 38, 42,44, 120, 121, 122, 131, 134, 136, 137 Rules for the Schoolmistress 85 Russia 143 Sainte-Beuve, Mme de 29 Saint Esprit 95 Saint Germain 67 Saint Lazare 119 Saint-Denis 26, 78, 85, 87, 98, 108 Saint-Germaine-en-Laye 73 Saint-Lazare 7, 85 Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet 53 Sales, François de 11, 21, 26, 27,28, 30, 36,44 Salpétrière 101 Savoy 26 scandals 20, 27,45, 47, 57,103, 111, 118
189 schools 4, 29, 30 ,4 7 ,4 8 , 63, 74, 79, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 94, 130, 145 secretary 123, 128 secular 22 Sedan 67, 78, 79 seminary 70, 80, 81, 122, 123, 125, 131, Seminary Directress 134, 135 sewing 67, 7 7 ,8 1 ,8 6 , 101 sexual 20,49, 56 sick 2, 9, 16, 27, 30, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 45, 46, 47, 48, 52, 61, 62, 65, 67, 69, 71, 74, 77, 82, 87, 94, 102, 104, 105, 107, 109, 110, 112, 113, 114, 116, 117, 128, 131, 132, 133, 134, 143, 144, 146 Silly, Françoise-Marguerite de 6 Sister Servant 67,71, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 89, 108, 109, 112, 113, 115, 116, 121, 124, 133, 134 social discipline 55, 56 Soeurs du Saint-Enfant Jésus 53 soldiers 97, 99, 116 soup 65, 69, 79 Spain 8, 26, 41, 58, 60, 63, 79, 143 spinning 67 stipend 63, 64 surgeons 14, 104, 107 surplus” daughters 18 Taylor, Judith Combes 13 teaching 13, 14, 16, 25, 29, 30, 53, 61, 62, 69, 70, 79, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 9 0 ,9 1 ,9 2 , 93, 130, 134 Temple 95 Ten Commandments 90 Teresa of Avila 26, 58, 60 tertiaries 19, 20 textile 42 Thirty Year’s War 98 toque 140 Toulouse, University of 5 Tours 74 Treasurer 65, 71, 77, 120, 122, 123, 125, 131 Trent, Council of 1, 2, 3,4 , 7, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 35, 36, 42,43, 44,48, 55,
190 56, 57, 75, 82, 84, 85 Tridentine 2, 18, 23, 24, 35, 40, 42, 45, 48, 50,51,55, 102, 141, 142 Trinité 96 Turgis, Élisabeth 75, 97 University of Toulouse 5 Ursulines 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 44, 50, 57, 59,6 1 ,8 3 ,8 4 , 88,91,93 Varize 64 Vignerot, Marie-Madeleine de 62 violation 21, 56 Virgin Mary 27, 128 Visitandines 21, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 36, 44, 50, 59, 61 Visitatrix 133, 134 Vives, Juan 33, 34 Vows 22, 28, 43,45 annual 22, 81 formal 18, 28, 130 monastic 143
Index perpetual 22 simple vow 22, 29,42, 44, 69 solemn 21, 30 stability 42 war 31, 32, 95, 97, 98, 116 Wars of Religion 22, 24, 25, 31, 34, 63, 142 Warsaw 68, 134 wet-nurses 98, 100 wheat 100 widow 9, 59, 119 Wiesner, Merry 43, 47 wine fields 113 women fallen 33, 46, 52, 69 ill repute 47 religious 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 50, 53, 56, 57, 60, 72, 82, 84 Zarri, Gabrielle 20