Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 3.djvu/674

 CHARITY

610

CHARLEMAGNE

189S they went to England, and opened a house at Minehead in Dorsetshire; they have since made a foundation at Glastonbury and another at Frome. The novitiate lasts two years.

Steele, Convents of Great Britain (London, 1902).

Francesca M. Steele. Sisters of Charity of St. Paul. — These sisters who now add (of Chartres) to their title to dis- tinguish them from another congregation of the same name, were founded at Chartres in 1704 by Monsignor Mareehaut, a theologian of the Cathedral of Chartres, assisted by Mile de Tilly and Mile de Tranche. Their first house formerly belonged to a sabot-maker, and this gave them the name of " Les Sceurs Sabo- tiers", by which they were originally known. They devote themselves to teaching, nursing, visiting the poor and taking care of orphans, the old and infirm, and the insane. There are no lay-sisters, but every sister must be prepared to undertake any kind of work. The interior spirit is a love of sacrifice and labour for the spiritual and temporal good of others. The postulancy lasts from six to nine months, the novitiate a year, after which the sisters take vows annually for three years, and then perpetual simple vows. The congregation was dispersed under the Commune at the French Revolution, but it was re- stored by Napoleon I, who gave the sisters a monas- tery at Chartres, which originally belonged to the Jacobins, from which they became known as "Les Sceurs de St. Jacques". They settled in England in 1847 at the invitation of Cardinal Wiseman. In 1907 they had fifty-six houses in various towns. Their work in England is mainly educational, schools being attached to all their houses; the English branch is under the government of a mother general. Until 1902 they had over two hundred and fifty houses in France where, besides various kinds of schools, they undertook asylums for the blind, the aged, and the insane, hospitals, dispensaries, and creches. Since that date more than one hundred and sixty of these schools have been closed, also thirty of the hospitals, military and civil, in the French colonies, three con- vents at Blois and a hospice at Brie. On the other hand they have in the meanwhile opened five or six hospitals in the French colonies, two hospitals and three elementary schools in the Philippines, and three educational houses in Siam.

Steele, Convents of Great Britain (London, 1902).

Francesca M. Steele. Sisters of Charity of Our Lady- Mother of Mercy, a congregation founded in Holland in 1SM2 by the Rev. John Zwijsen, pastor of Tilburg, aided by Mary M. Leijsen, for the instruction of children and the betterment of a people deprived of spiritual aid by the disastrous effects of the Reformation. The See of Utrecht had been vacant for about three hun- dred years when, on the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in Holland in 1853, Bishop John Zwijsen, of Gerra, was made Archbishop of Utrecht and Pri- mate of Holland. He found no Catholic institutions for the education of girls in this vast diocese, neither were there any teaching orders, with the exception of his humble congregation. The founder's accession to the See gave fresh impetus to his cherished work, and from this time the congregation spread rapidly throughout Holland and Belgium. There is now hardly a city of the Netherlands that has not one or more of its communities. Among these institutions are homes for the aged and infirm, the blind, the mutes and also hospitals. The Rules were approved by Gregory XVI in 1843, and I 'ins [X approved the con-

ion in IMS. About the middle of the eight- eenth century, when the cholera was raging in Hol- land, the heroic charity of the sisters won the recog- nition of King William 111 who conferred decorations of honour on the congregation. It has three houses in England devoted to school and hospital work. In

1S74 the first house in the United States was founded at Baltic, Connecticut, where there is a parochial school and an academy for young ladies. The con- gregation has other houses at Willimantic and Taft- ville where the same work is carried on. In 1907 St. Joseph's community of Willimantic donated one of the convent buildings for a city hospital, which from the outset proved a success. In 1S94 the congregation took charge of the leper settlement, city and military hospitals of Paramaribo, South America ; and in East India, the sisters are doing missionary work among the natives. In December, 1907, this congregation had 2621 professed members, 488 aspirants and novices and 102 houses. The number of school- children enrolled was estimated at 54,300; the sick, aged and infirm eared for 3446.

Mother Aloysio.

Charity, The Virtue of. See Love.

Charlemagne (French for Carolus, or Carlus, M MjNus, i. e., Charles the Great ; Ger. Karl der GROSse), the name given by later generations to Charles, King of the Franks, first sovereign of the Christian Empire of the West; b. 2 April, 742; d. at Aachen, 28 January, 814. Note, however, that the place of his birth (whether Aachen or Liege) has never been fully ascertained, while the traditional date has been set one or more years later by recent writers; if Alcuin is to be interpreted literally the year should be 745. At the time of Charles' birth, his father, Pepin the Short, Mayor of the Palace, of the line of Arnulf, was, theoretically, only the first subject of Childeric III, the last Merovingian King of the Franks (see Franks); but this modest title implied that real power, military, civil, and even ecclesiastical, of which Childeric's crown was only the symbol. It is not certain that Bertrada (or Bertha), the mother of Charlemagne, a daughter of Charibert, Count of Laon, was legally married to Pepin until some years later than either 742 or 745 ("Annal. Franc, ad an. 750", quoted by Kurze). His career led to his acknowledgment by the Holy See as its chief protector and coadjutor in temporals, by Constantinople as at least Basileus of the West. This reign, which involved to a greater degree than that of any other historical personage the organic development, and still more, the consolidation of Christian Europe, will be sketched in this article in the successive periods into which it naturally divides. The period of Charles the Great was also an epoch of reform for the Church in Gaul, and of foundation for the Church in Germany, marked, moreover, by an efflorescence of learning which fructified in the great Christian schools of the twelfth and later centuries.

To the Fall of Paiia (774). — In 752, when Charles was a child of not more than ten years, Pepin (see Pepin the Short) had appealed to Pope Zachary to recognize his actual rule with the kingly title and dignity. The practical effect of this appeal to the Holy See was the journey of Steph.n 111 across the Alps two years later, for the purpose of anointing with the oil of kingship not only Pepin, but also his son ( 'harles and a younger son, Carloman. The pope then hud upon the Christian Franks a precept, under

the gravest spiritual penalties, never "to cl e

their kings from any other family''. Primogeniture did not hold in the Prankish law of succession; the monarchy was elective, though eligibility was limited to the male members of the otic privileged family. Thus, then, at St. Denis on the Seine, in the Kingdom hi Neustria, on the 28th of July, 754, the house of Arnulf was, by a solemn act of the supreme pontiff, established upon the throne until then nominally Occupied by the house of Merowig Merovingians).

Charles, anointed to the kingly office while yet a mere child, learned the rudiments of war while still many years short of manhood, accompanying his