Founders, Origins, and Early Activities

When first established, the new service-oriented religious congregations were suspect in the eyes of both civil and ecclesiastical authorities. Unlike officially sanctioned female monasticism with enclosure, solemn vows, and daily chanting of the Divine Office, the new communities engaged in work outside their convents, took simple vows, and were in constant contact with lay people.³ The Council of Trent had forbidden nuns to mix with the world, and respectable society saw an uncloistered religious lifestyle as improper and undignified. Members of the new women’s communities were labeled “Jesuitesses” and “galloping girls” and criticized for trying to do men’s work.⁴ French parlements condemned women religious “seen in the streets of the town and faubourg though forbidden to be out” and ordered that they be returned to their convents immediately “under good and secure guard” at the convent’s expense.⁵

Actually, uncloistered women religious had been numerous in earlier European society. Even after official papal prohibition, many medieval women continued to live like religious, though not in traditional monasteries. Such groups as tertiaries, beguines, and Sisters of the Common Life lived in communal houses or with their families, devoting themselves to prayer and helping others. Some were mystics, like Catherine of Siena; others, like the Grey Sisters, nursed the sick in hospitals or in their homes.⁶ They continued this unorthodox lifestyle as long as rules on enclosure were not consistently enforced, but the Reformation’s focus on abuses in the church prompted religious authorities to take a harder line on violations of canon law. Like earlier Catholic reformers, church leaders emphasized stricter control of females, and papal decrees after Trent signaled a renewed and serious intent to suppress all organizations of activist women.⁷

In seeking to restrict female endeavors, the Catholic Church followed long-established doctrine and practice. From earliest times Christian theology had taught the inferiority of women. St. Paul said: “Wives be subject to your husbands as to the Lord” and “I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent.”⁸ Aquinas argued that “woman is by nature subject to man, because the power of rational discernment is by nature stronger in man.”⁹ Canon law, like many civil law codes, entitled men to beat their wives. In the post-Reformation church the drive to enforce clerical celibacy produced a more intense hostility toward the “guilty” sex. Attempting to eliminate priests’ wives and concubines, preachers and confessors frequently described women as threats to male virtue and instruments of the devil.¹⁰

Prevailing social trends also limited women’s roles in early modern Europe. The economy’s emphasis on large-scale production gave females fewer opportunities as independent artisans and entrepreneurs, and increasing political centralization encouraged greater legal subjugation of wives to husbands. New laws gave male heads of families more control of property, curtailing the ability of married women to control their wealth. They could be punished and imprisoned at their husband’s wish. Both civil and religious authorities became more hostile toward unmarried women.¹¹ Symptomatic of the mentality of the times was the persecution of witches, which reached its height between 1600 and 1650. Although estimates have varied, recent figures indicate that more than 100,000 people were prosecuted throughout Europe on charges of witchcraft—80 percent of them women. The Papacy legitimized the persecution in Catholic areas by defining witchcraft as a heresy to be eradicated.¹²

In view of prevailing opinion and custom, the mass movement of Catholic women into active religious communities at this particular time was profoundly countercultural. The impetus for what Elizabeth Rapley called a “fantastic conventual invasion” came from the wars, natural disasters, and grim socioeconomic conditions of the time and the intense spiritual fervor generated within Catholicism by the Catholic Reformation. Initiative, however, came from the women themselves. Far from being “called forth” by the church, they struggled to win acceptance, often against great odds, from ecclesiastical leaders. Eventually they met less opposition as the value of their services was recognized. Their existence was still contrary to papal decrees, but in France, religious and civil officials who supported them had precedents for ignoring unwelcome mandates from Rome. The patronage of influential elites also helped them survive.¹³

Unfortunately, early modern France had no shortage of adversity. In the late sixteenth century, Europe had entered into a “little ice age” when average temperatures fell, shortening the growing season, reducing harvests, and causing famines. Malnutrition and starvation brought heavy mortality and a deeper and more widespread poverty. France had four deadly famines between 1630 and 1694 and several others almost as severe. The people also endured almost continuous warfare—international wars, civil wars, and a number of peasant and lower-class uprisings. These brought widespread devastation and destitution and inflicted the dreaded passage and/or billeting of soldiers upon peasants and townspeople. Periodic outbreaks of the plague increased the general misery.¹⁴

Contemporary observers painted a grim picture of appalling conditions. A physician in Blois wrote in 1662:

These tragedies coincided with the vast outpouring of religious energy produced in France by the Catholic Reformation. In part a reaction against Protestantism, the spiritual renewal within Catholicism found official expression in the Council of Trent, which met in several sessions between 1545 and 1563. Insisting, in opposition to Luther, that salvation requires the performance of good works in addition to divine grace, the council set the tone for Catholic post-Reformation spirituality. It was to be active and apostolic, directed outward toward the world and the salvation of souls. The individual search for holiness, including prayer and meditation, was to be combined with service of God in society.¹⁷

In France, the Catholic Reformation began with the close of the Wars of Religion at the end of the sixteenth century. By that time, decades of military combat between Catholics and Protestants and the partial toleration granted to Protestants in the Edict of Nantes had created religious zeal of exceptional intensity, in some cases fanaticism, among many adherents of both faiths. By recognizing two hostile churches in a society where Catholicism had been entrenched for centuries, the French government set the stage for an impassioned contest for souls. Besides trying to transform ignorant and nonobservant Christians into informed and devout believers, Catholic reformers struggled to win back Protestants to the “true faith.” The large scale of the institutional church, its network of parishes and personnel throughout the country, and its intimate connections with the upper levels of French society made its influence powerful and pervasive.¹⁸ As religious zeal became fashionable among French elites, prominent aristocrats and royal officials joined religious leaders in a crusade to implement the reforms of Trent and address the social problems of the age.¹⁹ Seeing monasticism as essential for the vitality of the church, they placed the reform of existing monasteries and creation of new ones among their first priorities.²⁰

The interest of early French reformers in monasticism, especially for women, was partly inspired by the printing press. In the late sixteenth century many important religious works were published in the vernacular and disseminated in France, including those of Teresa of Avila. Her humility, humor, and forthright common sense captivated her readers, mostly upper-class French women, who adopted the “devout” life and became active reformers. One of them, Madame Acarie, made her home a center for frequent meetings of the French devots, including government officials, leaders of the clergy, and prominent aristocrats.²¹ Madame Acarie sponsored a foundation of Carmelites in Paris in 1605 and later entered the order herself. Carmelite foundations increased to fifty-six in the next forty years, and Teresian spirituality came to permeate the community of French devots, promoting the revitalization of existing groups of cloistered nuns and the creation of many new congregations of religious women.

The experience of the Ursuline and Visitation nuns illustrates the formidable obstacles faced by the first generation of active women religious. In spite of their intention to be active “in the world,” both eventually had to accept solemn vows and cloister. In the case of the Visitation, Francis de Sales acceded to the objections of a fellow bishop who argued that exceptions to the rule of cloister would cause “scandal” and permit nuns without solemn vows to leave their convents and legally claim succession rights to family properties if they so desired. Upper-class families, from whom most candidates for the convent came at this time, saw this possibility as highly objectionable. De Sales accepted defeat when he saw that both secular and ecclesiastical elites were prepared to oppose him. For the Ursulines the decision to adopt cloister occurred gradually as one convent after another yielded to pressure from the hierarchy, local notables, or from some of the nuns themselves. Both Ursulines and Visitandines, however, deviated from traditional monastic discipline by continuing to educate girls and young women within their convents. They expanded the options for women religious by becoming “active contemplatives.”²⁵

Many pious women unable or unwilling to follow their peers into convents found an alternative in personal prayer and charity, motivated by the suffering they saw around them: “What misery we saw before our eyes and what importunings assaulted our ears from the innumerable poor vagabonds who filled the streets and churches, never giving our spirits repose; our sacrifices brought no silence nor our prayers response.”²⁶ Besides visiting hospitals, prisons, and the homes of the sick, they gave religious instruction and alms to the poor in Paris and in rural areas. Their efforts in the countryside were inspired and guided by Vincent de Paul, one of the most effective friends of the poor in the history of the Catholic Church. Of peasant origin, de Paul rose rapidly to a position of influence in both religious and secular society. A friend of most of the devout reformers of Paris, he also had close connections to the powerful at court, and for a time he belonged to one of the royal councils. He began working in a small rural parish near Lyons in the 1620s and created a confraternity (lay organization) of well-to-do women to provide food, medicine, and spiritual counsel for those in need. Similar confraternities soon appeared in many other villages, most often under the patronage of the lord or lady of the locale, usually a Parisian dévot.²⁷ Local women volunteers, assisted by some from Paris, did the actual work. One of de Paul’s helpers, Louise de Marillac, was the cofounder with him of the Daughters of Charity, a major prototype of the CSJS.

The Daughters of Charity, the largest and best known of the early post-Reformation women’s communities to survive without cloister and solemn vows, evolved from a confraternity established to aid the poor in Paris. The organization soon had problems because upper-class Parisian ladies, often reluctant to perform personally the menial services required, sent servants, who sometimes neglected or abused the poor whom they were supposed to help. Some young peasant women whom de Paul had met on one of his rural missions offered to do the work that was repugnant to the Parisian devotes, and Louise de Marillac took them into her home to provide some preliminary training for their work in the city. At first simply secular women, free to go and come as they wished, they soon began to adopt the customs and lifestyle of religious. To prevent an outcry from ecclesiastical authorities, de Paul forbade them to take public vows and required them to continue to wear secular dress and to call themselves a confraternity rather than a congregation. He advised that if a bishop should inquire whether they were religious they were to “tell him no, by the grace of God.... Tell him that you are poor Daughters of Charity, and that you are given to God for the service of the poor.”²⁸ The strategy was successful. Although a few difficulties occurred and the sisters were occasionally harassed in public, the need for their services made them generally welcome. In less than thirty years the small group of village girls working in Paris confraternities had grown to over 800 women spread throughout the country.²⁹

Although the Daughters of Charity were among the first post-Reformation women’s communities working in the lay world, a number of similar groups preceded and followed them. According to scholar Judith Taylor, six active French congregations were founded in the 1620s, and nine more, in addition to the Daughters, between 1630 and 1640.³⁰ Usually small, sometimes consisting of only two or three women, they were most often created to staff and/or administer a charitable institution—orphanage, hospital, refuge, workshop, or school. Foundations were frequently established by a local person of means who gave the women a règlement (religious rule or constitution) to foster appropriate behavior and spirituality.³¹

The most disastrous period in seventeenth-century France came at midcentury, when poor harvests combined with civil war caused mass migrations of desperate peasants to the cities and threatened a breakdown of public order.³² These years also saw the most rapid growth of new active congregations of women religious. Judith Taylor lists seventy created in France between 1650 and 1720, which together maintained more than 1,100 separate foundations by 1789. One of them was the Sisters of St. Joseph, founded, according to long-standing tradition, at Le Puy around 1650.³³ Surviving documents give considerable information about the early Sisters of St. Joseph, but tantalizing gaps in the record remain.³⁴

Surviving records indicate a relationship between the Montferrand CSJS and Jean-Pierre Médaille, a Jesuit priest active in Le Puy and neighboring dioceses. Sources show that Médaille helped create six early communities of St. Joseph, at Dunières, Marlhes, Saint Romain-Lachalm, Arlanc, Sauxillanges, and an unidentified location. The documents establishing the existence of the unnamed community are two letters written by the Jesuit father general in March of 1647 criticizing Médaille for having “prescribed rules for a grouping of women without the approval of the Provincial.” By the time of Médaille’s death in 1669, thirty-four communities of St. Joseph had been founded, a good number probably with his assistance.³⁶

Like his contemporary Vincent de Paul, Jean-Pierre Médaille worked as a missionary in the rural areas of seventeenth-century France. Assigned to various Jesuit colleges in the Massif Central, he combined administrative responsibilities with apostolic activity.³⁷ Correspondence in the archives of the Society of Jesus in Rome indicates that Médaille’s involvement with the sisters was not welcomed by his superiors. The Jesuit father general, Francis Piccolomini, wrote in 1651: “They say at Le Puy that Father Pierre Médaille is launching an extraordinary undertaking, for the institution of I know not what sort of a group of women. I want to know the nature of his plan and from whom he obtained permission to busy himself with such matters which are hardly in accordance with our institute.” Médaille was aware of these suspicions because his superiors warned him about the irregularity of his work with the sisters. No doubt he also knew that the Jesuit rule did not allow its members to be spiritual directors or regular confessors of religious women.³⁸ However, he maintained contact with the Sisters of St. Joseph, helping in the establishment of at least two communities in the 1660s, the last in 1665, four years before his death. In these endeavors he was unusual among his fellow Jesuits, most of whom seem to have shared contemporary gender biases. In rejecting these biases and ignoring the disapproval of his superiors, Médaille not only challenged prevailing opinion but risked his own reputation and official standing in the Jesuit community. After his death, the Jesuit necrology described him as a man of zeal and holiness, respected by the people and especially by the bishops under whom he served. No mention was made of his work with the CSJS, perhaps because his colleagues saw it as insignificant, or possibly from a desire not to speak ill of the dead.³⁹

In official histories of female religious communities the role of males as “founders” has often attracted far more attention than the contributions of the women themselves. Recent research on the origins of women’s congregations has shown, however, that women were often the actual architects of the new socially active female congregations.⁴⁰ Archival records of two early CSJ foundations mention female initiative, identifying Anne Deschaux at Dunières and Catherine Frappa at Marlhes as Médaille’s collaborators. At Le Puy records show Françoise Eyraud functioning as administrator in 1647, suggesting that she had probably already been there for some time, possibly as leader of the group of “religious women” introduced by Bishop de Maupas in 1644.⁴¹ Clearly the religious energy of the women who offered to work for the service of God and neighbor was the creative force that made the community of the Sisters of St. Joseph possible.

Marguerite de Saint-Laurans, described by a contemporary as a saint and a cofounder with Father Médaille of the CSJ convent in Le Puy, also had a key role in its early history. A merchant of Le Puy and benefactor of the sisters recorded most of what is known about her in a memoir written after 1664. Marguerite came from the diocese of Saint-Flour, where Médaille was stationed between 1642 and 1650, and she may have known him there. He became her spiritual director, and she followed him in his missions. In 1648 she came to the hospital at Montferrand to assist Françoise Eyraud, who, being illiterate, had asked the administrators for someone to help educate the girls and keep financial records. Several sources suggest that Marguerite functioned as novice mistress for a time. However, she did not remain permanently with the CSJS, did not sign the contract of association with the other six sisters in 1651, and left Le Puy after 1654 to become a hermit. Her biographer wrote that she had problems with the bishop of Saint-Flour, who “persecuted her strangely,” and that she lived in a cave on bread and water, slept on straw, and “wrote incessantly ... on the duty of ecclesiastics.” Educated, charismatic, and devout, Marguerite probably helped to shape the spirituality of the early CSJ community through her interactions with Médaille and the sisters. The mystical emphasis on inner union with God found in early CSJ documents may reflect her influence as well as Médaille’s, since she was clearly attracted to contemplation and later pursued it in her hermitage.⁴²

Although the extent of Marguerite’s spiritual influence on the CSJS is speculative, Jean-Pierre Médaille left written evidence of his contributions in four documents that served to unify and stabilize the early community.⁴³ His writings reveal a gifted spiritual director, sensitive to the aspirations and capabilities of the women he counseled and aware of contemporary social realities. He also had multiple inspirations and models in seventeenth-century French spirituality from which to choose in devising constitutions for a religious community.⁴⁴ Influenced by devout women seeking to serve God in the world, and conscious of desperate social and religious needs, Médaille formulated a rule for the early sisters that combined intense spirituality with practical responsiveness to contemporary demands.

Fundamentally the directives proposed for the CSJS were based on the Gospels, specifically the two great commandments, love of God and love of neighbor.⁴⁵ Early CSJ documents stress these repeatedly: “They should so live that their Congregation may bear the name of the Congregation of the great love of God.... They will also show great charity towards all classes of neighbors, particularly toward the poor.... Let all dread the slightest disunion as they would a monster. They should be formed with extraordinary care in this spirit of love and charity.”⁴⁶ Also fundamental was an emphasis on active effort to assist in Christ’s redemptive work for the salvation of souls. “Their very little institute has been founded to bring many souls to a great and true love of God.... [T]o achieve this purpose more fully, they will undertake all the spiritual and corporal works of mercy of which women are capable.”⁴⁷ The documents encouraged the sisters to imitate Christ’s virtues, especially humility, mentioning it more than twenty-five times in the collection of one hundred recommended rules of behavior, titled Maxims of the Little Institute. They also advocated selfless striving “toward the greater glory of God,” the motto of the Jesuits.⁴⁸

Understandably, Médaille’s suggestions for the sisters reflect his Jesuit training, but elements from other sources are present also. Like Francis de Sales, he frequently recommended gentleness, moderation, peace, and trust.⁴⁹ At times his advice used gendered language that recalled the writings of medieval mystics like Julian of Norwich and anticipated insights of some post—Vatican II theologians, as in a passage from The Eucharistic Letter: “In imitation of this dear Savior, let us obey as a child, without questioning, without worrying about anything except allowing Divine Providence to guide us as a gentle mother who truly knows our needs and who by her very nature rears children lovingly nestled at her breast.”⁵⁰ Foundational texts of the CSJS indicate that the desire to achieve holiness for both members and “the dear neighbor” was the primary impetus for the congregation, and that charitable works were the preferred means to achieve this goal. While usually compatible with the teachings of Trent, the documents also depart from them in significant ways, especially in proposing an active role for women religious and attributing feminine qualities to God.

Although their constitutions plainly said that they intended to live “in the manner of religious” and without cloister, the Sisters of St. Joseph did not encounter the same degree of opposition met by earlier active female congregations. By the time of their foundation at midcentury, similar communities already existed and were multiplying rapidly, mainly because of the immense social needs they were addressing. Acceptance came more readily because their members, unlike upper-class women, could work for a living without censure and were unlikely to be potential claimants to a family inheritance—the issue that had caused trouble for early Visitation and Ursuline nuns. Also, although of humble background themselves, the sisters often had influential sponsors who helped them obtain official recognition and sometimes financial support. According to Judith Taylor, “The secular congregation might have withered in France as quickly and quietly as it already had in late Renaissance Italy. That it did not is attributable to the dévots, their influence and rank, their cohesion and persistence.... [C]onfirmation [was] secured as often as not by an old family friend of a founder or by an influential Lady of Charity in a position to exchange favors.... By 1650 the female secular congregation had been irrevocably established in France.”⁵¹

The early Sisters of St. Joseph fit the social profile that enabled many similar congregations to survive in France at midcentury. Four of the seven original sisters at Le Puy were from middle-class families, two of more humble origins, while Marguerite de Saint-Laurans probably had connections with the nobility. All were from small towns, and of the six who made the contract of association in 1651, only one could sign her name. Only two brought dowries.⁵² Like many of the other new active communities, the CSJS needed the influential supporters, male and female, who helped them survive, most importantly Henry de Maupas du Tour, the bishop of Le Puy and count of Velay. An aristocrat whose father had been a counselor of King Henry IV, de Maupas had wealth and patronage as well as religious authority to enhance his power. He was a disciple and friend of Vincent de Paul, an admirer and biographer of Francis de Sales, and a close associate of many leaders of the devot group in Paris. His support and formal approbation of the CSJ foundation were vital for its continuance and success.⁵³ Another early benefactor of the sisters was Lucrèce de la Planche, an aristocratic and “very virtuous woman” who made them welcome in her home for several months after their arrival in Le Puy. “She not only did everything in her power for the establishment of these sisters, but continued until her death to work with extraordinary zeal and charity for the advancement of their congregation.”⁵⁴

The first CSJS did experience hostility from local secular authorities, a type of opposition commonly encountered by religious of the period and one that could have put an end to their efforts in Le Puy. The rapid proliferation of convents at this time was making French municipal authorities increasingly nervous about the loss of precious urban space to women religious. The fear was that, as women, they might incur financial losses and become a public charge. In 1631 irate citizens of Troyes had “dragged a coachload of Visitandine nuns backwards away from the city gates.”⁵⁵ The CSJS’ experience was less dramatic, but in 1654 when, after a worried discussion of the numerous convents in the city, Le Puy officials learned that a new foundation had been made without municipal approval, they sent six members of the city assembly to expel the sisters from the town. According to one eyewitness, when the angry male delegation reached the Montferrand hospital they encountered Françoise Eyraud and Marguerite de Saint-Laurans, who brought them into a room where the sisters made ribbon. Soon their hostility vanished and the meeting became a “courteous and very civil visit.” Understanding the gender politics of the situation, Françoise and Marguerite had seen the need to justify their existence as women independent of male supervision. They knew the ribbon room would reassure their visitors that the sisters could not only earn money to support themselves but also teach the orphan girls a trade that might be of future benefit to the city.⁵⁶

The community of the Sisters of St. Joseph grew rapidly. In just ten years there were twenty houses in three dioceses and by 1790 approximately 153 foundations in fourteen dioceses.⁵⁷ Such expansion indicates that the congregation meshed well with the social and religious needs of its environment. Open to women of all classes, it did not limit its mission to any particular type of activity and did not require a large dowry, lengthy preparation for entrance, or education.⁵⁸ Each community was autonomous and needed only the approval of the local bishop or his representative to exist and begin its work. Acting within accepted gender parameters, the sisters were willing to work for minimal salaries, sometimes for nothing, and adapt to a variety of institutional settings, types of housing, and educational and relief activities. Besides caring for orphans as they did in Le Puy, they administered and staffed hospitals, boarding schools, homes for fallen women, schools for “converted” Protestants, workshops for making lace and ribbon, and dispensaries of medications for the sick. They also taught poor children and assumed total responsibility for charitable relief in many rural parishes.⁵⁹

In Le Puy, the CSJS became responsible for the care of about forty orphans and soon assumed additional duties.⁶⁰ Empowered by their constitution to undertake all the works of charity “of which women are capable,” they opened a free school for poor children and a boarding school for girls of higher social status, which provided a regular income to help subsidize their nonpaying activities. Françoise Eyraud’s competent management during her thirty years as superior secured additional income with the acquisition of eight houses and two gardens in the Montferrand area. Approximately 100 years later, when required to disclose their financial status to the revolutionary government, the Le Puy community declared investments valued at 73,000 livres, which yielded an annual income of 4,000 to 5,000 livres. This was enough to maintain sixteen sisters, two lay sisters, and twelve destitute orphans funded by benefactors, to educate virtually free of charge sixty poor girls, and to help local families who were unable to support their children. In comparison with other religious communities in Le Puy at the time, the CSJS were among the less affluent, with annual expenses far greater than their income from operations.⁶¹ Testimony from the head of the city council of Le Puy indicates that their efforts were appreciated:

Hospitals staffed by the CSJS included both general and traditional hospitals and hôtels-Dieu. At Mende they directed a general hospital, one of those originally intended to discipline vagrants and able-bodied beggars by forcing them to work. Over time the policy of confinement was gradually abandoned because of its obvious failure, and general hospitals came to be homes for the “deserving poor”—the aged, disabled, and children. The size and staffing of sisters’ institutions varied widely. By 1790 the Mende hospital had 152 residents, including 95 old and infirm, 29 children, 4 sisters of St. Joseph, and a number of employees involved in running the house. The CSJS in Mende were more fortunate than four sister-nurses at a hospital in Rodez who cared for 472 poor, of whom almost half were totally incapacitated, many bedridden. The sisters had to enlist a number of the able-bodied but frail and elderly residents to help in tending the sick and the orphaned children.⁶³

An important csJ hospital foundation was made in 1668 when Sister Jeanne Burdier, one of the six foundresses of the Le Puy community, and two companions took charge of the hôtel-Dieu in Vienne. The support of the archbishop and Burdier’s leadership as superior led to a remarkable expansion of the CSJ presence in Vienne and neighboring areas. The first new mission was at Gap in the French Alps, where Burdier witnessed the misery of the poor in the small local hospital and offered to send three sisters to help. The bishop and town consuls responded positively, even after Burdier told them that renovations were needed before the sisters would come, “to give it [the hospital] a form other than it has at present in order to avoid the mixture of those who are healthy with the sick, and to separate the men from the women, in order to prevent many evil consequences.” ⁶⁴ Some years later the sisters at Gap faced a severe test of their dedication to health care. In 1691, when the armies of Louis XIV passed through the town en route from Italy, an epidemic among the troops left their tiny hospital swamped with patients, and all the hospital nuns died as a result of caring for them. Mother Burdier later sent other sisters to replace them.

Superior at Vienne until her death in 1700, Burdier began some ten new CSJ foundations in hospitals or houses of refuge in neighboring areas. Their sisters remained in touch with the Vienne community and depended on it in various ways. Novices came to Vienne for training and then were sent to serve in other missions, sometimes to be transferred later as the need arose. Mutual assistance between communities included everything from financial aid and religious habits to spiritual books. Vienne began to function like a motherhouse, and under Burdier as superior it exerted a powerful influence over its “daughter” houses, always with the approval of the respective bishops. The rapid expansion of the community presented some logistical problems, however, because transmission of the csJ constitutions in handwritten copies to new houses led to numerous textual variations and discrepancies. Mother Burdier took the lead in convoking a group of sisters to compare different versions of the constitutions, formulate an acceptable text, and obtain permission from the archbishop to have an official copy printed in Vienne. The bishop gave his approval in November of 1693, and the first printed version of the csJ constitutions appeared in 1694.

Burdier was a practical, compassionate, and determined superior. She monitored the well-being of the sisters and the sick, making sure that sister-nurses were not overwhelmed with work and patients were well cared for, and used the sisters’ religious identity to create space for them in the secular world. In dealings with lay administrators, she maintained a clear distinction between the sisters’ accountability to them for hospital management and their religious obedience to the archbishop, not hesitating to remind officials on occasion that the csJs, as women religious, obeyed the bishop, rather than laymen, in spiritual matters. When important requests were not honored by the hospital board she found other options. For example, after several fruitless attempts to obtain a separate area in the hospital where the sisters could pray and meditate without distraction, she finally purchased a house to serve as their convent as well as a refuge for penitent women. She modeled effective leadership and dedication for many young sisters who made their novitiate at Vienne before leaving to work elsewhere in the region.

Unfortunately, Burdier’s legacy was considerably weakened after class pressures made themselves felt within the Vienne community. The influence of a wealthy aristocratic benefactor had caused a number of young upper-class women to be admitted as novices to the convent, and in time the tenor of the community began to change. Administrators began to complain that the sisters relegated hospital tasks to domestic help instead of caring for patients themselves, gave patients food inferior to their own, turned revenues of the hôtel-Dieu to their own profit, and lived like ladies of “a certain social condition.” Whether the assertions were all true cannot be determined, but it is clear that the sisters at this time began to take on more of the upper-class characteristics of cloistered religious. After a long conflict and several failed attempts at reconciliation, the administrators dismissed the sisters from the hôtel-Dieu in 1755. In 1777, with the permission of the archbishop’s vicar general, the CSJS at Vienne became officially cloistered.⁶⁵

A different but in some ways similar story unfolded at the hôtel-Dieu in Sauxillanges, where the CSJS were also eventually dismissed. Although the sisters had accepted a contract to care for the sick poor of the town, they admitted only orphans to the hospital and visited the sick in their homes. Eventually, and not without difficulty, the well-to-do merchant who had established the hospital succeeded in having patients admitted to it. However, when he demanded that a man suffering from a “repugnant disease” be admitted, the sisters “with violence extraordinary to their sex and scandalous for their profession” punched the elderly gentleman in the nose and pushed him into the street, “practically knocking him to the ground.” They said “they would rather die than have this illness in their house.” Both sides sued in court, and the sisters refused to accept a court-ordered compromise. Finally, after the superior had died, the citizens of Sauxillanges forced the two remaining sisters to leave the town. They did so, leaving behind their home and most of their meager possessions.⁶⁶

As both incidents demonstrate, religious ideals did not always prevail over more self-serving considerations among the early CSJS. Although of modest social status, the sisters at Sauxillanges showed no greater zeal for the humble tasks involved in serving the poor than some of the “ladies of condition” in Vienne. A major difference in the two cases is that the community in Vienne survived, thanks to the patronage of powerful protectors. When the Vienne nuns left the hôtel-Dieu, they joined another CSJ community in the city that managed the Providence, a refuge for penitent women located in a building donated by the archbishop of Vienne. The sisters at the Providence had earlier received letters patent from King Louis XV that freed them from oversight by the hospital administrators and placed them under the archbishop’s jurisdiction.⁶⁷ Their land, house, oratory, and garden were declared inalienable as things of God used in the service of the poor. Such guarantees, obtained through the intervention of Archbishop Henry Oswald de la Tour d’Auvergne, a cousin of the king, had not been granted to the less well connected community at Sauxillanges. Social class played a part in events in Vienne and Sauxillanges as did the powerful influence of what has been called the “monastic temptation.” ⁶⁸ In contrast to the women with solemn vows and cloister who enjoyed status as “true” religious with special privileges and exemptions, those with simple vows were seen as lesser beings with no claim to society’s special consideration or respect. Throughout this period the cloister continued to elicit a strong fascination, representing the more perfect life choice, the “true” religious vocation, for all women and especially for the upper classes.

The first constitution of the Sisters of St. Joseph indicated that the sisters would engage in “hospital work, the direction of orphanages [and] the visitation of the sick poor” and mentioned somewhat tentatively that they might undertake “even the instruction of girls in places where the religious communities already established are not doing this.”⁶⁹ The kind of teaching originally intended was religious instruction and training in practical skills, but the CSJS soon responded to growing demands for a broader feminine education. Early in the seventeenth century the Catholic Church had been adamantly opposed to women teaching, later reluctantly allowing it only within the cloister. A highly placed Vatican official spoke for many when he said, “It matters little what the times demand ... all [female] congregations that refuse the enclosure must be suppressed.”⁷⁰ However, by midcentury the realization had dawned that while the Council of Trent had mandated cloister for nuns, it had also stressed the duty to instruct the faithful, and since knowledge of the faith was believed essential for salvation, religious instruction should have priority over other considerations. The key that finally opened school doors to the female congregations was the growing awareness of the importance of education for girls. Little girls were potential future mothers and future teachers of their children, capable of sharing the faith in which they had been instructed. However, if they were to be instructed, women must teach them, because both religious and secular authorities objected to coeducation and to male instructors for female students.⁷¹

From the start, the first Sisters of St. Joseph to come to Le Puy taught a variety of subjects and students: religious education for young girls and women, ribbon making and probably other practical skills for the orphans, and a broader curriculum of study in the boarding school for girls from middle- and upper-class families. As the CSJS expanded into small rural villages and began work in hospitals or refuges in larger towns and cities, almost all communities were involved in some kind of teaching.⁷² At Vienne, in addition to the hospital, the sisters ran a house of refuge and a day school; at Clermont and Avignon they offered free classes for poor girls; at Aubenas they taught young girls of the town reading, writing, and religion; and at Tence, Satillieu, Cheylard, and Gap they taught young “converts” from Protestantism and educated other girls and women in religion, reading, writing, and other subjects.⁷³ Many of the hospitals they served were small parish institutions of twenty to thirty beds that in addition to caring for the sick offered basic instruction for poor girls.

Although surviving documents do not describe curricula offered in their schools, it is reasonable to assume that the Sisters of St. Joseph provided instruction comparable to that given by other religious communities in French schools of the period. The largest number of CSJ students were at the elementary level in both urban and rural areas, and the typical curriculum of such French petites écoles consisted mainly of religion, with a strong emphasis on morality, the three R’s, and needlework. Religious instruction focused on learning prayers, studying the catechism, preparation for confirmation and first communion, and behavior training in “Christian duties, hatred of sin, love of virtue, and civilité and good manners.” ⁷⁴ Of the other subjects taught, reading was the most important since it gave children access to the word of God, and all elementary schools claimed to teach it. Although writing was usually considered part of the curriculum, it was less likely to be taught to all students. One reason was lack of preparation on the part of some teachers; another was that writing was not taught until after reading had been mastered, and some pupils did not progress that far. Writing also required additional tools and facilities—knife, paper, inkwell, powder, and tables in addition to the standard school benches. Sometimes writing students had to pay an extra fee. Arithmetic did not receive much emphasis, its minor importance indicated by the hour per week usually allotted to it.

Reflecting the gendered nature of the curriculum, handwork came next in importance after religion and reading. It was considered essential for all girls, rich and poor, “to avoid the evils of idleness.” In elite schools girls learned tapestry, embroidery, French and English sewing, and other “accomplishments” valued by the upper class, while in the many free schools and workshops they learned ribbon and lace making, stocking knitting, and other practical skills that would help them earn a respectable living. The number of free charity day schools expanded rapidly with the post-Reformation Catholic missionary effort, and classes were typically large, ranging from 40 to 100 pupils. Some schools financed themselves in part with proceeds from the sale of students’ handwork. In rural areas girls had more difficulty attending school, since villages often hired schoolmasters to teach boys but seldom provided schoolmistresses for the girls. Nearly all rural girls’ schools were conducted by religious communities, and the disparities among peasant girls’ educational opportunities in different regions reflected the presence or absence of the sisters: “The Vatelotes, for example ... staffed 124 schools in Lorraine in 1789. ... The Filles de la Sagesse ... operated 66 schools in lower Normandy and Saintonge.... The Auvergne and Velay regions were served by the Béates, the Demoiselles de l’Instruction, and the Soeurs de Saint-Joseph.”⁷⁵ Social class affected both curriculum and tuition in educational institutions. Boarding schools for upper-class girls not only gave instruction in the basics—catechism, reading, writing, arithmetic, spelling, and handwork—but usually added other options such as history, geography, music, drawing, and dancing. The most elite and expensive Parisian boarding schools charged tuition of 400 to 500 livres per year and employed private tutors to give special lessons. Tuition at Ursuline schools was somewhat less, ranging from 240 livres in Paris to 100 in small towns. At their boarding school in Clermont the CSJS charged tuition of about 200 livres, suggesting that they must have offered an education comparable to that provided by the other religious congregations in the city—Ursulines, Bernardines, and Benedictines.⁷⁶

In post-Reformation Europe, the preoccupation of religious and secular authorities with control of women was demonstrated not only through emphasis on male authority in the family and cloister for religious women but also in the creation of “refuges” for sexually vulnerable and wayward women. Prostitution, legal in medieval times, was gradually criminalized in most European cities at this time, and even before municipal bordellos were closed, officials tried to control women who worked outside the authorized houses. In France in 1644 the city council of Nimes decided to imprison all native prostitutes in a tower, where they would be fed bread and water, and drive the “foreign” offenders out after shaving their heads. Beginning in 1684 national laws established severe penalties for prostitution, including incarceration in a special hospital. In addition to punishing immoral women, authorities also attempted to confine unwed mothers, females who had been raped or seduced, and those thought to be in danger of becoming prostitutes. Sometimes such women were confined in the same institution with prostitutes, but the two groups were usually separated, the incorrigible receiving harsher treatment.⁷⁷

The early constitution of the Sisters of St. Joseph showed an awareness of the difficulties of sexually vulnerable women and addressed the ways of protecting them, while also expressing some of the more punitive gendered sentiments of the time toward “fallen women.” It advised the sisters to “be watchful in providing for young girls who are in danger of losing their virtue because they have no one to help or direct them, or because they are in need of money ... and [to] try to find a home and work for such girls.... [But] if they should come in contact with prostitutes, let them consider whether they should, after having punished them, have them driven out or place them in a house of confinement.”⁷⁸ As caregivers in a network of institutions in early modern France where the line between charity and control was not too clear, the CSJS themselves staffed several houses for the confinement of women. The Providence in Vienne was one of the first; others included a prison for prostitutes in Lyons and establishments known as Bon Pasteur (Good Shepherd) in Clermont and Avignon. The Lyons prison was part of a larger complex that also included a refuge for penitent women run by the Sisters of the Visitation. In time the number of women in the prison increased to eighty, and shortly before the Revolution the administrators were planning to enlarge the building. Meanwhile, the CSJ community there had expanded from the original three sisters to twelve. In a document dating from 1790 a revolutionary official made derogatory and obscene comments about the House of Penitents and the Visitation nuns but also praised the organization of the prison and the way the women were treated and taught to work. The CSJS were not mentioned, but they were the ones responsible for the humane atmosphere in the prison and for helping the women learn a useful trade.⁷⁹

The Bon Pasteur in Clermont included both penitent women and prostitutes interned by the police, but the prostitutes were kept in cells apart from the rest of the house and were supervised by the administrators rather than the sisters. As in Lyons, the growing number of residents caused an increase in the size of the sisters’ community, and a novitiate was established. Eventually the administrators authorized construction of a larger facility, but loss of funding threatened its completion until the CSJ superior, Mother Saint-Agnes Labas, decided that the sisters could help financially by opening a boarding school for young ladies, a strategy often used by European nuns at this time and later in the United States. Within three years the new school had twenty-seven students, providing sufficient revenue to complete the construction and help maintain the penitents. Besides their work with penitents and students in the boarding school, the sisters housed and educated about twelve children from poor families and cared for two elderly and eight insane women. With twelve sisters, two novices, and five servants, the house had close to 100 residents in 1772, not counting the prostitutes.

As in other contemporary institutions of this type, the daily routine of the penitents at the Bon Pasteur consisted of work and prayer. The women followed the convent schedule, which included morning and evening prayer, Mass, Office of the Holy Spirit, Office of the Blessed Virgin, examination of conscience, spiritual reading, and other prayers at specified times during the day. The sisters also provided spiritual formation for the residents by giving instructions based on passages from the Gospel or chapters of the catechism. When not engaged in religious exercises the women worked, mainly at sewing and embroidery. The women ate their meals in silence while they listened to spiritual reading, and one of the sisters was present to monitor the hour of recreation permitted in the evening. Not all of the penitents were amenable to this routine, and occasional escapes occurred, sometimes facilitated by the sisters if the escapee had been particularly disruptive and unmanageable.

In addition to the semimonastic schedule of religious duties and work, most institutions for the poor and “deviant” used corporal punishment as an incentive to good behavior. The General Hospital in Paris had whipping posts and dungeons, and the Refuge of Riom run by the apparently draconian Ladies of Mercy used leg and hand irons and other more esoteric equipment. At the Bon Pasteur in Clermont penitents were usually kept in cells when first admitted and urged to make their confession in order to be transferred into more comfortable quarters. However, the sisters’ financial accounts do not mention chains, handcuffs, and other items listed in the invoices of the administrators. These were probably reserved for the women held in the cells, but it is difficult to be sure. The CSJS may have used corporal punishment, since it was taken for granted at the time, but they also tried more positive means of behavior modification. Mother Saint-Agnes developed a rating system by which the penitents’ progress in good conduct was noted by the sisters and rewarded.⁸⁰

Besides their work in hospitals, refuges, schools, and other institutions in larger towns and cities, the CSJS were also present in large numbers in the rural countryside. Their first known community was in the small village of Dunières, and until the Revolution the majority of CSJ houses were rural. Village communities were typically small, consisting of three to six sisters, and accommodations were very simple, sometimes a rented room, although in most cases sisters eventually managed to obtain a small house. In a village the nuns were likely to be daughters of local families and typically expected to spend their entire lives in the area. The family ties, patterns of speech and custom, and modest social and economic status that they shared with the villagers made the sisters an integral part of the local community and facilitated their mission, which usually involved provision of most of the educational and charitable services in the locality.

The CSJS always staffed the local elementary school, teaching catechism, reading, writing, and practical skills, including lace making, which was centered in the Le Puy area. In some cases they were entirely responsible for the religious education of parish women and held weekly catechism classes for them. They also served as sacristans for the church. Since separation of church and state did not exist in France prior to the Revolution, the parish was responsible for public assistance, which usually meant that the sisters did whatever needed to be done. They maintained small dispensaries where the sick and poor could obtain medicines, bedding, and other necessities, visited and cared for the sick in their homes, and distributed alms to the poor, often from the small local hospital or schoolhouse. Their importance to village communities is indicated in a testimonial from the parish of Job:

In the Massif Central, where most of the Sisters of St. Joseph were located, popular resistance to the Civil Constitution was widespread and many priests refused the oath. Most sisters actively resisted secular authority by supporting these “refractory” priests, since they shared their opinions, and invited them to say Mass in their convents when they were excluded from the churches. CSJS also expressed subversive views to parishioners and students by encouraging them to hear Mass at the convent rather than attend services of the “constitutional” clergy. In Craponne one of the Sisters of St. Joseph was denounced to the authorities for “having accused the new constitutional cure of being an intruder, a fanatic, and a schismatic, saying that it was better to sit by her fire than go to [his] Mass.”⁸³ Revolutionary leaders, soon forced to cope with foreign and civil war and severe economic distress while trying to transform the government, became increasingly radicalized and intolerant of opposition, including that of religious congregations. In a 1792 Assembly debate on whether to exempt hospitallers from suppression, the Sisters of St. Joseph were singled out for criticism: “Those of these filles [CSJS] who know how to read and write have managed to turn themselves into charlatans: some are lawyers, the others doctors, pharmacists, and even surgeons. You would therefore, under these exceptions, allow to exist in the countryside this vermin which lays them waste, and you would preserve establishments which have become the haunt and foul refuge of all the refractory priests.”⁸⁴ In August 1792 the Assembly suppressed all religious congregations, declared their belongings national property, and ordered them to evacuate “the national houses which they occupy.” However, since many local officials tended to be lenient with the sisters, especially in the Haute Loire, the CSJS’ treatment varied according to local circumstances.

Most Sisters of St. Joseph did leave their houses after August 1792, but timing varied and a few hospital communities apparently remained undisturbed throughout the entire Revolution. The greatest danger came during the Terror in 1793-94. The Law of Suspects of September 1793, so vague that almost anyone could be arrested under suspicion of disloyalty, and the Oath of Liberty-Equality imposed on former religious in October 1793, which most refused as equivalent to renouncing the faith, accounted for the imprisonment of many. Some of the sisters were incarcerated in their former convents, which as properties of the state had been turned into prisons for women. Four, possibly five, CSJS were guillotined during the Terror, all for the crime of helping to conceal refractory priests.⁸⁵

In the aftermath of the Terror many sisters were asked to return to hospitals they had been forced to leave. At Gap all the former hospitallers returned to help when Austrian soldiers taken prisoner by Napoleon and suffering from typhus were brought to the hospital. Religious education also revived, and private girls’ schools reappeared in former CSJ locations such as Le Puy, Craponne, Saint-Georges-l’Agricol, Beaune, Chomélix, and Saint-Paulien. With the end of the Revolution, many St. Joseph communities began to reorganize, some picking up where they left off, others combining members from several earlier CSJ houses. Initially all were self-contained convents under their local superior, as had been true before the Revolution, but the reconstituted communities were operating in a new environment. Many suffered from the permanent loss of their former property, and all had to live under the conditions imposed in Napoleon’s Concordat of 1801, which made peace with the church but permitted considerable government regulation of its affairs.

Napoleon’s religious policy, including toleration of active religious, was based on purely pragmatic considerations—the need to stabilize his regime and remedy the chaotic postrevolutionary state of French charitable and educational institutions. He also understood the need for women’s labor and that it could easily be exploited. Local officials took the lead in recruiting the sisters, recognizing their value, as hospital administrators at Béziers indicated: “With them [the sisters] no need whatever for seamstresses, for a cook, for an apothecary, for serving-boys, or for almost any domestics at all; there are virtually no wages to outside help. What appears as an expense for them is recovered on the other hand with interest by means of their industrious charity.” Describing his plan for running local primary schools efficiently, a rector at Lyons wrote to Napoleon: “These filles ... are satisfied with a very modest salary. Moreover, they live more cheaply than a schoolmaster; they have no family to support and they thus devise a way to survive where a male teacher would die of hunger. They are furthermore, pious, respectful, and submissive toward their pastors, who for this reason prefer them to a male teacher, from whom it cannot be hoped to have good work, because there is nothing to offer him in order to attract or keep him.”⁸⁶ Under Napoleon only “useful” and “compliant” religious communities were allowed to exist and all had to submit their statutes and rules for governmental approval and formal authorization. Napoleon had dreamed of uniting all women’s congregations in one single group, but when advisers convinced him this would never succeed, he subjected them to secular authorities in civil and police matters and to the local bishop in ecclesiastical affairs.

Encouraged by the government, most French bishops promoted centralization of communities within their jurisdiction, and in the following years many diocesan congregations appeared. Some sisters, such as the Ursulines, remained in autonomous houses, but the Sisters of St. Joseph gradually became diocesan communities with local houses grouped under a motherhouse and a superior general subject to the local bishop. The largest of the new diocesan communities, centered in Lyons under its superior general Mother St. John Fontbonne, generated the first CSJ missionary foundation in North America.⁸⁷ In 1836 Mother St. John sent six sisters from the Lyons motherhouse to the United States to establish the Sisters of St. Joseph in the recently created diocese of St. Louis.

The main initiative for this project came from a laywoman who exemplified the intense religious fervor of many Catholics in postrevolutionary France. Félicité de Duras, countess de la Rochejaquelin, had read the appeals for missionaries and financial aid from Joseph Rosati, bishop of St. Louis, in the Anna/es of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, an organization centered in Lyons. She knew the Sisters of St. Joseph, having already assisted them in establishing houses in France, and decided to offer financial support to send a group of sisters to America. After obtaining a promise from Mother St. John Fontbonne that she would provide sisters for St. Louis if the bishop requested them, she wrote to Rosati in June 1835 to explain her plan and her reasons for choosing the CSJS:

By the time she agreed to the foreign mission in America, Mother St. John Fontbonne, age seventy-six, was a seasoned leader and decision maker. Appointed superior at Monistrol in 1785, she had led her community through the turbulent revolutionary period, enduring nine months of imprisonment and reportedly the threat of execution. After the Revolution she reestablished the CSJ community in St. Etienne and later became superior general of all CSJ houses in the Lyons diocese. Under her direction the congregation attracted large numbers of novices and expanded rapidly to number some 200 foundations when she finally retired in 1839.⁸⁹ The mission to America followed an established pattern of generous response to human need. Mother St. John readily agreed to send two sisters for the necessary training in deaf education and began the process of selecting the first six sisters for St. Louis. From the large group who volunteered, the chosen missionaries included Febronie and Delphine Fontbonne, nieces of Mother St. John, Marguerite-Félicité Bouté, Febronie Chapellon, Saint Protais Deboille, and Philomene Vilaine. The two who would follow later were Celestine Pommerel and Julie Fournier, a postulant. The six sisters left Lyons by stagecoach on January 4, 1836, and after brief stays in Paris and Havre, boarded the Natchez for the journey to America and their new life.

Although the young French-speaking Catholic nuns who set out for St. Louis in 1836 faced many daunting challenges in a foreign and largely Protestant setting, their heritage gave them certain advantages. Probably most important was the flexibility of their constitution, which allowed them to respond to virtually every need they encountered within the gendered parameters of nineteenth-century American society, whether in educational, health-related, or social service areas. Almost equally significant were the resourcefulness and adaptability learned “on the job” in the varied and sometimes difficult circumstances of CSJ houses in France. The foundation “begun in a stable and with only six cents” would have its parallels in the United States, where the sisters would many times subsist on their own earnings and offer services gratis. Also useful was their experience in dealing with patriarchal authority and the sometimes not so benevolent despotism of French ecclesiastics, for they would encounter similar obstacles in America, where bishops reigned supreme in their dioceses and sisters were perceived as a readily exploitable labor source. Even the hostility of American Protestants was not totally foreign to the French sisters after the experiences of the Revolution and the climate of anticlericalism that reappeared in France with the July Revolution of 1830. In America CSJS would also enjoy the friendship and assistance of laywomen, benefactors like those who had appeared at key points in their previous history. Finally, the vast expansion of the role of women in church and society that began in response to the exigencies of Counter Reformation Europe would continue in the United States in the context of a rapidly expanding Catholic population seeking to meet its educational and charitable needs. As so often in the past, social and religious crisis gave women opportunities to realize their potential and expand gender parameters in both secular and religious settings.