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HE great revolution, in sweeping over France, carried away every external vestige of monastic educational orders; but their roots had life beneath the soil. In 1779 Madeleine Sophia Barat was born in the quaint old town of Joigny. Her parents, obscure and God-fearing, living by the soil they cultivated, were of the true Burgundian type, shrewd in native wit, strong in family affections and immutable in religious faith.

Sophia Barat was just fifteen when Robespierre's fall gave a date for the reactionary period. Her elder brother, Father Louis Barat, a learned young priest who had narrowly escaped the guillotine, took his sister's education as his special and rigid care. He taught her French literature, Greek and Latin classics, but, pre-eminently, Christian philosophy and Catholic theology. The austere training of this sternly loving tutor made her a scholar; the spiritual formation of his friend, Father Joseph Varin, made her a directress of souls. Their combined influence prepared her to be the head of a great educational body, and the guide of a vast religious community.

On the twenty-first day of November, 1800, with three companions only, Sophia Barat, at the age of twenty-one, pronounced the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, which Father Varin received in the name of the Church. The ceremony took place in the little Paris chapel of the "Fathers of the Faith." Two years later Sophia was appointed superioress over a community which numbered less than a score of members.

The first school was essayed at Amiens, and the success of the attempt suggested foundations at Grenoble, Poitiers, Niort, Moulins, Lyons, etc. In a few years the new academies were dotting France and rapidly springing up in Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Austria and Great Britain. 5