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 CHARITY

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CHARITY

Dieu at Paris. A community of Augustinian nuns was in charge, but the miseries of the times had over- crowded the wards, and the revenue was inadequate. It was as helpers of the ladies who in turn aided the nuns of the institution that the Sisters of Charity took up hospital work which has since become so prom- inent a feature in their beneficent activity. A large room near by was hired for their use, where they made delicacies for the sick and also for sale, to swell the income of the hospital. During the first year the labours of the ladies and sisters were blessed by seven hundred and sixty conversions, of Lutherans, Cal- vinists, and even of Turks wounded in sea-fights.

In May, 1636, Mile Le Gras moved to more com- modious quarters with her community. A house at La Chapelle was chosen because of its nearness to Saint-Lazare, the priory recently given to St. Vincent for the Congregation of the Priests of the Mission he had founded. Here the instruction of the poor children in religion and in elementary branches was taken up, the beginning of the wide-spread labour of the Sisters of Charity in teaching the children of the poor. The charge of foundlings so characteristic of St. Vincent and his sisters came to them through his finding out how miserably these tiny waifs were cared for by the State. The modern foundling asylums owe, if not their origin, at least their excellent system to the work of the Sisters of Charity. On 1 Feb., 1640, at Angers the sisters assumed complete charge of a hospital in which hitherto they had acted as aids to the charitable ladies. In 1641 the head-quarters of the community was transferred to a house opposite Saint-Lazare. Here they remained until driven away by the French Revolution. In answer to their desire to be bound by vows, authorization was finally granted to four of the sisters, and these on 25 March, 1642, took simple vows for one year. A copy of these first vows is preserved in t He archives of the mission in Paris and says: " I, the undersigned, renew my baptismal promises and make a vow of poverty, chastity and obedience to the Superior of the Priests of the Mission in the Company of the Daughters of Charity, to apply myself all this year to the corporal and spiritual service of the sick poor, our true mas- ters, with the help of God, which I ask through His Son, Jesus crucified, and by the prayers of the Blessed Virgin. Signed, Jeanne de la Croix."

During the war of the Fronde, whole provinces were reduced to the utmost destitution, and St. Vincent took upon himself the burden of relieving all this misery. In this the sisters had a large share. What they did in Paris is seen from St. Vincent's letters: "they shelter from 800 to 900 women ; they distribute soup every day to 1300 bashful poor. In St. Paul's parish they aid 5000 poor, and altogether 1400 per- sons have for the last six months depended on them for their means of subsistence". At the request of the Queen of Poland, a former Lady of Charity, three sisters were sent to her dominions. Here for the first time the sisters appear on the field of battle. This is a ministry often given by them since and which has secured for them the title nf "Angela of the Battle- field", some dying "sword in hand", as St. Vincent used to style it. Their usefulness opened the eyes of many a dying soldier to the light of the Faith, and inspired tin- wish to die in the religion which produced such heroism.

While tin' sisters were on the battle-field in Poland, St. Vincent's daughters took up a new work in the care of the aged and infirm at tin 1 House of the Name of Jesus, the pioneer of those homes for the aged so multiplied in our day through a kindred community, the Little Sisters of the Poor. At (hi' same time a

hospital for the insane was committed to their care, practically completing the list of human miseries to which they brought alleviation.

On the death of Mile Le Gras and St. Vincent de

Paul there were, in 1660, more than forty houses of the Sisters of Charity in France, and the sick poor were cared for in their own dwellings in twenty-six parishes in Paris. As years went on their numbers grew. Switzerland received the sisters in 1750. In 1778 they were established in Piedmont, whence they spread over Italy. The Spanish community was started by six sisters from Paris in 1790. In 1789 France had 426 houses ; the sisters numbered about 6000 in Europe. At the very beginning of the Reign of Terror, the mother-house of the sisters was invaded by the revolutionists, who had attacked Saint-Lazare across the street the night before, but the sight of this band of angels of mercy on their knees in the chapel, moved their assailants to leave them un- molested. In August, 1792, the sisters were ordered to quit the mother-house; and the end of 1793 saw their community disbanded officially, though the superior, Sister Antoinette Duleau, strove to keep them together as far as practicable. As soon as the Consular government was established, in 1801 the society was recalled by an edict setting forth the ex- cellence of their work and authorizing Citoyenne Du- leau, the former superior, to reorganize. Their greatest growth has been in France during the nineteenth cen- tury. Persecution has driven them from all their schools for the poor and from most of their works of mercy, but this has given hundreds of new labourers to the foreign missions. During the last hundred years their growth has been extraordinary. They have gone to Austria, Portugal, Hungary, England, Scotland, Ireland, North and South America. The Orientals call them "The Swallows of Allah" from their cornettes, and they have houses in Constanti- nople, Smyrna, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Damascus, Persia, Abyssinia, and China. Their number is about 25,000.

The first house in the province of the British Isles was opened at Drogheda, Ireland, in 1855. The first house in England in Sheffield in 1857; and in Scot- land at Lanark in 1860. The number of foundations in 1907 was: England, 46 houses and 407 sisters; Ire- land, 13 houses and 134 sisters; Scotland, 8 houses and 62 sisters, making a total of 67 houses and 603 sisters, besides 20 aspirants at the Central House. Mill Hill, London. The principal works under the care of the sisters are as follows, several of these works being carried on in the one house: orphanages, 23; indus- trial schools, 7; public elementary schools, 24; nor- ma! school, 1 ; asylum for the blind, 1 ; asylum for deaf mutes, 1 ; home for crippled boys, 1 ; reforma- tory, 1; training homes, 7; homes for working girls, 2; home for women ex-convicts, 1; asylum for insane women, 1; hospitals, 8; houses from which the sisters visit the poor, in which they have soup- kitchens, take charge of guilds and do various other works for the poor, 35.

In the United States the first community was started by Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton (q. v.) in 1809. She arranged to have sisters come over from the mother-house in Paris in 1810 to affiliate her young community at Emmitsburg, Maryland, to the daughters of St. Vincent, but Napoleon forbade the departure of the sisters for America. She had re- ceived, however, from Bishop Flaget. the rules of the Sisters of Charity, and put them in practice with some modifications which were suggested. Houses were founded in Philadelphia and New V>rk. when through the request of Archbishop Hughes of New Vork. in 1846, the majority of the sisters labouring there were released from the Emmitsburg jurisdiction and formed an independent community following the same ride.

Four years after the withdrawal of the \ew Vork

sisters, Mother Seton's community at Emmitsburg

was received under the jurisdiction of the Siq>erior General of the Sisters of Charity in France, and as-