Faculty of Theology

“These are the things I have noticed [in your draft for the Rules], my Most Honored Father.
However, in the name of God, pay no attention to either my notes or my remarks. Instead, tell us to do what you believe God is asking of us. --- [Y]our poor daughter and most grateful servant [, Louise de Marillac].”

The talented Louise de Marillac (1591-1660, canonised 1934) was one of the illustrious women of the French Catholic Reformation and the co-founder of the confraternity les Filles de la Charité, or the Daughters of Charity, combining religious life and charity work among the poor. In her letters to her confessor and the second founder of the confraternity, Vincent de Paul (1581-1660, canonised 1737), she would, however, always play down her ideas and emphasise her submissive role, as is evident in the letter from 1651 quoted above.

This paper will take a closer look at the interaction of de Marillac and de Paul in order to decipher the role of male authorities in the career of the former.  How were norms written out for de Marillac? Why was she willing to submit to the patriarchal system? Did she benefit from this submission? Or was it all just rhetoric?

By focusing on the dependency of Louise de Marillac on the elite men of her society, the paper aims to broaden to picture of female-male relations in seventeenth-century France, as thus far scholarship of the past decades has mainly aimed at highlighting the pioneer and independent role of de Marillac.

An article on the rustic ideals in charity work and the possibilities the Daughters of Charity could offer lower-class women in seventeenth-century France. In Finnish, for the publication called Suurmiehistä rahvaannaisiin. Yksilö ja yhteisö kristinuskon historiassa (“From great men to common women. Individual and community in the history of Christianity”) in the series Suomen kirkkohistoriallisen seuran toimituksia 229 by the Finnish Society of Church History. Pp. 163-197.

--- [They shall have] for monastery only the houses of the sick and the place where the Superioress resides; for cell, a hired room; for chapel, the parish church; for cloister, the streets of the city; for enclosure, obedience ---. (Vincent de Paul, 1659)

The Rule for the Filles de la Charité or the Daughters of Charity was a particular one for a Catholic female congregation of the seventeenth century. Contrary to the decrees of the Council of Trent stipulated in the previous century, the members of the congregation did not live in enclosure but worked for the poor in the streets of Paris.

This paper focuses on the strategies the Company used to overcome suspicions of ecclesiastical authorities of unorthodoxy.

The paper claims that by modelling everyday life on the vita contemplativa, the Daughters of Charity were able to negotiate an orthodox feminine identity amidst the Catholic Reform.

The paper is related to my on-going PhD study on the Daughters of Charity, founded by Vincent de Paul (1581-1660) Louise de Marillac (1591-1660) in 1633.

Key words: les Filles de la Charité or the Daughters of Charity, poor relief, Paris, the Catholic Reform, feminine religious culture, urban public space, moral management, seventeenth century

“If the task is considered political, it seems like the men should undertake it… If it is regarded an act of charity, the women could undertake it in the manner they have assumed the other great and unpleasant tasks of charity ---.”

The words were written by Louise de Marillac, an influential Catholic reformer, in connection to the project of the notorious Hôpital Général of Paris erected for the confinement of the poor in 1656. The lines reveal an interesting gendered division of labour in seventeenth-century French poor relief which will be the focus of this paper.

The paper uses as case study the Catholic community of poor relief founded by Louise de Marillac in 1633, the Filles de la Charité or the Daughters of Charity. It aims at describing and explaining the essential role of the most prominent Parisian women in the workings of the community. Most of the women associated with the community were noble: many of them represented the titled nobility, but even more came from the highest ranks of magistracy. Important patrons included for example the princess of Condé, Anne Charlotte Marguerite de Montmorency, and the duchesses d’Aiguillon, Bouillon, Ventadour and Montpensier.

The paper shows that the Daughters were fully dependent on the elite women for both intellectual and financial resources. Furthermore, the paper analyses the motivation of privileged women for charity work by exploring the temporal and spiritual rewards they were entitled to as patrons of charitable institutions.

Key words: charity work, elite women, the Daughters of Charity, Paris, the seventeenth century

“These are the things I have noticed [in your draft for the Rules], my Most Honored Father.
However, in the name of God, pay no attention to either my notes or my remarks. Instead, tell us to do what you believe God is asking of us. --- [Y]our poor daughter and most grateful servant [, Louise de Marillac].”

The talented Louise de Marillac (1591-1660, canonised 1934) was one of the illustrious women of the French Catholic Reformation and the co-founder of the confraternity les Filles de la Charité, or the Daughters of Charity, combining religious life with charity work among the poor. In her letters to her confessor and the second founder of the confraternity, Vincent de Paul (1581-1660, canonised 1737), she would, however, always play down her ideas and emphasise her submissive role, as is evident in the letter from 1651 quoted above.

This paper will take a closer look at the interaction of de Marillac and de Paul in order to decipher the nature of authority exercised by the former. Was submission to the patriarchal system a strategy to access power? Or was the system more flexible than we would assume?

In the history French seventeenth-century social history one name rises above others: that of saint Vincent de Paul (1580-1660, canonized 1737).

The century was one of intensive religious revival especially for elite women who founded many new congregations. De Paul headed or acted as protector of almost all of them and has, thus, for a long time been credited as the primus motor of the spiritual awakening. 

In this paper I will take a closer look at the institutions headed by de Paul concerning the policing of female sexuality. De Paul was involved for example in the creation of the notorious Hôpital Général of Paris accused of locking up loose women and other marginal populace. He also supervised the monastery of former prostitutes called the Madelonettes. In addition, de Paul directed several religious lay communities who likewise aimed at edifying loose women.

Special attention is paid to the relations between the elite women and the saint in order to re-evaluate the significance of the role of the saint in the social movements of the period.

--- [They shall have] for monastery only the houses of the sick and the place where the Superioress resides; for cell, a hired room; for chapel, the parish church; for cloister, the streets of the city; for enclosure, obedience ---. 

The Rule for the les Filles de la Charité or the Daughters of Charity was a particular one for a Catholic female congregation of the seventeenth century. Contrary to the decrees of the Council of Trent stipulated in the previous century, the members of the congregation did not live in enclosure but worked for the poor in the streets of Paris.

By using the Company of the Daughters of Charity as case study, I will in this paper take a closer look at the interplay of religion, gender and class in public space in seventeenth-century Paris. 

I will first deal with the spatial consequences of one important fruit of the Reformation, the monastic revival, which was especially a feminine one and which created whole new religious quarters in the Capital. I will then move onto discuss the position of the lower-class Daughters of Charity in the new spiritual geography and show that mobility was relative: interaction with public space was, in fact, closely regulated by the directors. Lastly, I will assess the significance of class in the freedom of movement, and offer the rather surprising opinion of the Daughters themselves regarding their unenclosed lifestyle. 

The paper is related to my on-going PhD study on the Daughters of Charity, founded by Vincent de Paul (1581-1660) Louise de Marillac (1591-1660) in 1633.

Key words: les Filles de la Charité or the Daughters of Charity, poor relief, Paris, the Catholic Reformation, feminine religious culture, urban public space

... [T]he situation in Paris is so bad that Mademoiselle Le Gras does not have enough Sisters to care for the sick and the poor refugees in all the places where people are requesting them. Soup is prepared for them in a large number of parishes; our Sisters at Saint-Paul distribute it daily to almost eight thousand poor persons, both the shame-faced poor  and the refugees, not counting the sixty to eighty patients they have on their hands. Your Company has never worked so hard or so effectively as it is doing at the present moment. I hope that in consideration of this, God will bless it abundantly.

As testified by the Catholic missionary Vincent de Paul in June 1652, Paris was struggling with considerable flocks of victims of the civil war the Fronde. De Paul and the religious company he co-directed together with the aforementioned Mademoiselle Le Gras (or Louise de Marillac), the Daughters of Charity, were at the core of their calling: by offering relief for the unnourished body they would mend the distorted soul and prepare it for eternal life.

The eagerness of the sisters to stir endless pots of warm potage for the ones in need was not, however, a simple display of the Christian ideal of loving thy neighbour. In reality, a closer look at the philosophy behind poor relief organised by Catholic communities offers a valuable insight into the societal structures and tensions of contemporary French society.

This paper aims at analysing elite mentalities and attitudes toward the poor by looking at the writings of the two founders of the Daughters of Charity (les Filles de la Charité, founded in 1633), Vincent de Paul (1581-1660) and Louise de Marillac (1591-1660). Source material includes rules of the community as well as private letters and notes on conferences which all discuss quite extensively the importance and meaning of charitable deeds. Thus the material opens an interesting window into the relationship between the elite  and the lower classes.

The paper is divided into three parts: after a brief introduction of the Daughters of Charity and the historical context in which the company was born the presentation moves onto discussing the concept of poverty. In this thought will especially be given to the term pauvres honteux or the shame-faced poor used not only by Vincent de Paul in the quotation above but by the society at large. Attention will also be  paid to the motherly role the sisters were supposed to take on in relation to the distressed who was also to be perceived as the suffering Christ. The final part of the presentation will offer some explanations for elite attitudes.

Key  words: poor relief, seventeenth-century France, the Daughters of Charity, the Catholic Reformation, elite religious culture

Samuel Pufendorf is known for his normative natural law philosophy, and particularly for his theory of sociability. This article concentrates on a topic that has received very little attention - his theory of the motivating character of passions in social life. It will demonstrate that individually and politically governed passions play a central role in Pufendorf's description of the structure of human societies. I argue that for Pufendorf the norms of sociability are effective in social life because social interaction, guided by political governance, enables people to moderate their antisocial passions and habituate themselves to sociable passions.

This book centres on Samuel Pufendorf’s (1632–1694) moral and political philosophy, a subject of recently renewed interest among intellectual historians, philosophers and legal scholars in the English-speaking world. Pufendorf’s significance in conceptualizing sociability in a way that ties moral philosophy, the theory of the state, political economy, and moral psychology together has already been acknowledged, but this book is the first systematic investigation of the moral psychological underpinnings of Pufendorf’s theory of sociability in their own right.

Readers will discover how Pufendorf’s psychological and social explanation of sociability plays a crucial role in his natural law theory. By drawing attention to Pufendorf’s scattered remarks and observations on human psychology, a new interpretation of the importance of moral psychology is presented. The author maintains that Pufendorf’s reflection on the psychological and physical capacities of human nature also matters for his description of how people adopt sociability as their moral standard in practice. We see how, since Pufendorf’s interest in human nature is mainly political, moral psychological formulations are important for Pufendorf’s theorizing of social and political order.

This work is particularly useful for scholars investigating the multifaceted role of passions and emotions in the history of moral and political philosophy. It also affords a better understanding of what later philosophers, such as Smith, Hume or Rousseau, might have find appealing in Pufendorf’s writings. As such, this book will also interest researchers of the Enlightenment, natural law and early modern philosophy.

"Arguing From Silence" briefly overviews the main theoretical constructs used in the historiography of the emergence of Israel. From this discussion, methodological considerations related to historical reconstruction using the biblical text are adduced.

"Iranian-Judaean Interaction" argues that during the Achaemenid Empire there were significant potential locations where Judaean and Iranian groups could have interacted. Rather than seeking a definitive location for "influence", the article argues it is a matter of varied interaction over time. Given the number of potential locations, the burden of proof should then fall on disproving influence.