Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France: The Early History of the Daughters of Charity (review)

The Daughters of Charity—or Filles de la Charité—were founded by Saints Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac in 1633. By the turn of the seventeenth century, they had been established and were managing more than two hundred charitable institutions throughout France (especially hospitals and home-relief agencies), as well as outposts in the Polish kingdom. Even by then they were probably the most significant nursing order to emerge from the Counter-Reformation, and they have remained so to the present day. Historians have focused largely on male Tridentine and post-Tridentine orders, whereas the recent surge of interest in female spirituality has tended to benefit the higher profile female teaching orders. Strangely, then, the history of the Daughters of Charity is rather poorly known. This is all the more reason to welcome Susan E. Dinan’s Ph.D. book conversion on the early years of the community.

Dinan covers the community’s history to 1700 and provides a clear, well-structured account. She writes lucidly and persuasively and does an excellent job of relating the history of the Daughters of Charity to the current historiographical contexts of women’s work, female piety, and the social role of the Counter-Reformation. Her work will be eagerly consulted by all historians working in those fields.

It is one of those quirks of history with which all practicing archival historians are only too familiar that since Dinan has published her book, the Daughters of Charity have decided to open their archives fully to historical researchers and encourage lay interest in their history. As it was, Dinan was able to consult very little in the community’s maison mère on the Rue du Bac in Paris. Presumably problems of access also prevented her from consulting the archives of the Lazarist order, another of Vincent de Paul’s creations, which had a mentoring role over the community. A considerable part of the more bureaucratic documents of the community was expropriated by the state during the French Revolution, and these materials are still consultable in the Archives Nationales. They form the archival core of Dinan’s book. With one exception (the Maine-et-Loire department), she did not choose to make forays into the departmental archives, which certainly contain untold treasures concerning the early history of the community. If Dinan continues with her research in this area, they would be a rich source.

The Daughters of Charity not only managed many poor-relief institutions, they also played a significant medical role within them. Indeed in many localities, the sisters represented the only practitioners with any formal and theoretical knowledge. Medical historians will be disappointed, then, that Professor Dinan shows no interest in the medical activities of the sisters beyond what has already been published on the question (mainly by myself, in fact). The medical ideas of the founders could have done with a new look. The culture of the community relating to bodily as well as spiritual health is largely unexplored. Dinan is excellent on showing how the community negotiated Tridentine rules on cloistering so as to legitimate their work “in the world.” But just how the sisters negotiated their service in the context of lay poor-relief administrators and the growing interest of physicians and surgeons in the bodies of the poor is a still-neglected question that it would be fruitful to explore. Professor Dinan’s book offers a sound foundation for such further studies on this neglected and admirable group of women. (One small, uncharacteristic howler regarding two Cardinals de Retz (p. 49): the second, better-known, Jean-François-Paul de Gondi (1613–79) was coadjutor to the archbishop of Paris beginning in 1644 and archbishop himself beginning in 1654—it was his uncle, François de Gondi, who was bishop of Paris...