RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Charity
Ciiarlemagrne
treat only of the two best known and most influential of these communities.
1. The Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul :
The title of Confrerie de la charite pour I'assistance spirituelle et corporelle des pauvres malades was given by Vincent de Paul (q.v.) originally to the association of women which he organized in 1617 in his small parish of Chatillon-Ies-Dombes, in the diocese of Lyons, and which, after approval of its statutes by the archbishop, spread also to other places. After the final transfer of its headquarters to Paris (1618), he founded similar associations in the capital and its neighborhood. He entrusted the direction of these Dames de la Charite, after the death of his patroness the Countess of Gondy (1625), to the devoted Louise Marillac, under whose guidance the development of the rapidly growing association into a community of unmarried women began in 1633, in which year the first of such members were admitted to the confraternity. On the Feast of the Annunciation in the following year a number of these Filles servantes des pauvres de la charite (later commonly known as Saeurs Grises from their gray habit) took their vows at the village of La Chapelle near Paris. Eight years later they were transferred to the city itself, where, by the time of the death of Vincent and Louise Marillac (both in 1660), they had already twenty-eight houses. The rule drawn up by the founder was confirmed by Clement IX. in 1668. It includes the obligation of rising daily at four o'clock, making a meditation twice daily, willingly tending all the sick, even the most repulsive, and rendering unconditional obedience to superiors. Life-vows were not taken by the sisters, but after a probation of five years a vow of obedience was pronounced which was to be renewed from year to year. The order was placed in a sort of dependence on the " Priests of the Mission," or Lazarists, whose superior was to be their director. The order spread during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries principally in France and Poland, and reached the number of 500 houses. With the other religious orders it was suppressed at the Revolution, but continued its self-sacrificing labors none the less, until it was formally reestablished by Napoleon in 1807, and began a new and wider growth. In France alone it had about 400 houses in 1890; but the laicizing of the hospitals carried out by the government in the last few years has considerably weakened it since. Its total membership in all countries is supposed at present to be about 30,000. [The sisters of charity of St. Vincent de Paul were estabhshed in the United States in 1809 by Elizabeth Seton (q.v.). In 1907 this branch of the order numbered 4,698 professed sisters and had charge of 27 asylums, 33 orphanages, 27 academies, and 103 parochial schools.]
2. The Sisters of Charity of St. Charles: A community of similar nature and purpose grew up under this name in 1626 in the great hospital of St. Charles Borromeo at Nancy. The general of the Premonstratensians, Epiphanius Ludovicus, abbot of Estival, drew up in 1652 a rule for it, according to which the members were to take the three usual monastic vows, together with a fourth
binding them to devote themselves for life to the care of the sick poor and friendless children. From the mother house at Nancy they spread first through France, and in the nineteenth century through a large part of Germany and Austria. At the end of this century they numbered about 450 houses with nearly 3,000 members, divided into four congregations at) Nancy, Prague, Trebnitz, and Treves.
(0. ZoCKLERf.)
Bibliography: F. Bournaud, Les Sceurs, 1633-1900, Paris, 1900; F. P. Buss, Der Orden der harmherzigen Schwestern, Schaffhausen, 1847; D. Wulf, Das segensreiche Wirken der Schwestern, Miinster, 1851; Sisters of Charity, Catholic and Protestant, London, 1855; G. Uhlhorn, Die christliche Liebesthatigkeit seit der Reformation, pp. 210-227, Stuttgart, 1882; F. Hervd-Bazin, Les Grands Ordres des femmes, Paris, 1889; C. de Richemont, Hisloire de Mme. le Gras, ib. 1894; L. Baunard, La Venerable Louise de Marillac, Paris, 1898; B. R. Parkes, Historic Nuns, London, 1898; Currier, Religious Orders, pp. 446-452; Heimbuchsr! Orden und Kongregationen, ii. 430-438.