In this six-part series, we will explore the formative years of the movement that began with the first Confraternity of Charity and eventually became the International Association of Charities (AIC). From the streets of Châtillon-les-Dombes in 1617 to the establishment of the Ladies of Charity of the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris in 1634, we will follow the women and men who transformed compassion into an organized, enduring mission.

The series will examine the first rule, the rapid expansion of the Charities, the decisive contribution of Saint Louise de Marillac, the arrival of Marguerite Naseau and the country girls, the foundation of the Daughters of Charity, and the emergence of a new citywide model of lay service. At the center of the story are women who accepted responsibility for serving people living in poverty and, in doing so, opened a new space for lay leadership in the Church.

All the articles published in this series are available by clicking here.

Charity Organized: The First Years of the Confraternities of Charity, 1617–1633

From the Women of Châtillon to the Founding of the Daughters of Charity

Power Point Presentation accompanying this article:

1. August 23, 1617: When Compassion Became Organized Charity

A New Pastor in a Troubled Town

When Vincent de Paul arrived in Châtillon-les-Dombes in the summer of 1617, he could not have imagined that he would remain there for only a few months—or that those few months would alter the history of Christian charity.

Châtillon, known today as Châtillon-sur-Chalaronne, was a modest town southeast of Mâcon and north of Lyon. Its population numbered approximately two thousand people. The town and its surrounding region had suffered the consequences of political and religious conflict. Catholic and Protestant communities had competed for influence, parish life had weakened, and the moral conduct of some clergy had caused scandal. Material poverty existed beside spiritual discouragement.

Vincent formally took possession of the parish on August 1, 1617. He was thirty-six years old and already carried the marks of a year that had profoundly changed him.

Seven months earlier, while accompanying the Gondi family on their estates, he had heard the confession of a dying peasant near the village of Gannes. The encounter revealed to him the spiritual abandonment of the rural population. On January 25, he preached at Folleville on the need for a sincere general confession. The response was so overwhelming that he would later call that sermon the beginning of the Mission.

At Châtillon, however, he was about to confront another form of abandonment. This time it would not be primarily the hunger of the soul, but the suffering of sick people who had no one to care for them.

Once again, a seemingly ordinary event would reveal an extraordinary vocation.

The News Before Sunday Mass

On Sunday, August 20, Vincent was preparing to celebrate Mass when someone approached him with troubling news.

A family living at La Maladière, on the outskirts of the town, was in desperate need. Every member of the household was ill. No one was strong enough to care for the others. They had little food and no reliable assistance. Their isolation had made an already serious illness nearly unbearable.

Vincent was deeply moved. During his sermon, he spoke to the congregation about the family’s suffering and urged the parishioners to help.

His words found fertile ground.

After Mass, many people—and especially many women—left the town carrying food and other provisions. Vincent would later remember that more than fifty women responded. Whatever the precise number, the reaction was remarkable. People who had begun the morning unaware of the family’s misery were soon walking toward La Maladière, determined to provide relief.

Vincent also went to visit the household. As he followed the road leading out of Châtillon, he encountered groups of people traveling in both directions. Some were carrying supplies to the family; others were returning after delivering what they had brought. The road resembled the path of a pilgrimage.

The response revealed the goodness hidden within the community. The people of Châtillon were not indifferent. Once they became aware of the suffering, they were willing to act.

But what Vincent saw also raised an uncomfortable question.

Generosity Was Not Enough

The sick family had received an abundance of food in a single afternoon. Yet it was August, and there was no way to preserve most of what had been brought. Some of the provisions would spoil before they could be used. For a few days the family might have more than enough, but afterward it could be abandoned once again.

There was great charity, but it was not well organized.

Vincent’s insight did not diminish the generosity of the people. On the contrary, it took their generosity seriously. The problem was not a lack of compassion. It was the absence of a structure capable of transforming compassion into faithful, continuing service.

This distinction would become one of the enduring characteristics of Vincentian charity. An emotional response to suffering can awaken the conscience, but emotion alone cannot guarantee that a sick person will be fed tomorrow, that medicine will be available next week, or that another isolated family will be discovered before it is too late.

The poor did not need a momentary flood of assistance followed by forgetfulness. They needed neighbors who would remain attentive. They needed care that was personal, competent, and dependable.

Vincent therefore proposed that the women who had responded so generously should form an association. Rather than everyone bringing food at the same time, they would take turns. Each woman would accept responsibility for a particular day. Together, they would ensure that the sick poor of the town were not left unattended.

In this simple proposal lay the foundation of an international movement.

The Women of August 23

Three days later, on Wednesday, August 23, a small group of women gathered and formally joined forces for charitable service.

The surviving document records eight places in the initial rotation. Among the women were the châtelaine, commonly identified as Françoise Bachet; Mademoiselle de Brie; Philiberte, the wife of Monsieur des Hugonières; Benoîte, the daughter of Ennemond Prost; Denise Beynier; one of Madame Perra’s daughters; Madame Colette; and Mademoiselle de la Chassaigne.

They came from different family circumstances, but they shared a common decision. They would assume responsibility together for the sick poor of Châtillon.

Their agreement was concrete. Each woman would serve for one full day. If she could not fulfill her turn for a legitimate reason, she was expected to notify the next person, who would replace her. The rotation would then continue in the established order.

The service was to begin the following day, August 24, the feast of Saint Bartholomew.

The women proposed to assist both body and soul. They would nourish the sick, tend to their illnesses, and accompany them with care. They would also help those approaching death to prepare spiritually and encourage those who recovered to begin a renewed life.

This twofold concern was essential. The sick person was not a problem to be solved or a body to be fed. Each person was a complete human being with physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual needs.

The women entrusted their new work to the Virgin Mary. They also invoked Saint Martin and Saint Andrew, patrons of Châtillon and traditional examples of Christian charity. Their association grew from faith, but it was a faith that immediately took visible form in cooking, carrying food, washing linens, tending wounds, listening, praying, and remaining close to people who might otherwise have been forgotten.

From a Rotation of Service to a Confraternity

The agreement of August 23 responded to an emergency. But Vincent understood that an improvised association could gradually lose its energy. Enthusiasm might fade. Personal disagreements could arise. Responsibilities could be neglected. Future members would need to understand not only what they were expected to do, but also how and why they should do it.

During the following months, the initial arrangement was therefore developed into a more extensive rule. The experience of actual service helped shape it. The needs encountered in the homes of the sick became lessons for the organization.

The new body received the name Confraternity of Charity. Its members were known as the servants of the poor or servants of Charity.

The language was significant. These women were not merely benefactors distributing what they could spare. They were servants entering into a relationship with people who were poor. Their work required humility, patience, tenderness, reliability, and respect.

The rule joined practical organization with spiritual formation. It provided for officers, meetings, accounts, inventories, and the careful administration of the Confraternity’s limited resources. It also called the members to prayer, the sacraments, mutual support, and reflection on the manner in which they served.

The women did not simply carry out individual acts assigned by the parish priest. They formed a body, deliberated together, elected officers, managed goods, reviewed their service, and shared responsibility for the future of the work. Within the religious and social structures of seventeenth-century France, this gave them a notable sphere of initiative and leadership.

Charity had become a community, not merely an activity.

November 24 and December 8

On November 24, the rule of the Confraternity received diocesan approval. This recognition gave the work an ecclesial stability that the first informal agreement had not possessed.

Two weeks later, on December 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, Vincent solemnly established the Confraternity in the chapel of Châtillon’s hospital. Before the assembled people, he explained its purpose and invited women who wished to become members to come forward.

Eleven women presented themselves.

Officers were elected to guide the new Confraternity. Françoise Bachet became its first leader. Other members assumed responsibility for finances, clothing, linens, furniture, and the goods entrusted to the association.

The simple rotation begun in August had now become a stable institution. It possessed a recognized identity, a spiritual purpose, a system of governance, and a method of service.

Yet its institutional form never replaced the original encounter. At its heart remained the suffering family at La Maladière and the question raised by the road filled with generous people: How can compassion be organized so that no one is abandoned when the first wave of emotion has passed?

A Work Entrusted to Women

The foundation at Châtillon also marked an important development in the place of women within the Church’s active ministry.

Women had long cared for sick relatives, assisted neighbors, supported hospitals, and distributed alms. Religious confraternities were not new. What distinguished the Charity of Châtillon was the way in which direct service, spiritual accompaniment, administration, and collective responsibility were brought together.

The members remained laywomen. They did not enter a convent or withdraw from family and society. Married women, widows, and unmarried women could participate according to their circumstances. Their homes, neighborhoods, and parish became the setting for their vocation.

They would encounter Christ not by leaving the world, but by approaching people suffering within it.

This development should not be described as though the social limitations placed upon women suddenly disappeared. The Confraternity continued to exist within the ecclesiastical and legal structures of its century. Nevertheless, it offered women a recognized public mission: discovering need, deciding how to respond, organizing resources, visiting the sick, and sustaining the work through prayer and shared governance.

The women of Châtillon were not secondary figures in a story belonging only to Vincent de Paul. Without their response, their perseverance, and their willingness to accept responsibility, the first Confraternity could not have existed.

The Seed of a Wider Movement

Vincent left Châtillon in late December 1617 and returned to the Gondi household. His stay in the parish had lasted less than five months.

But he did not leave the experience behind.

Châtillon had taught him that effective evangelization and organized service belonged together. A mission might awaken faith, but a Charity could give that renewal a permanent expression in the life of a community. In the years that followed, he would establish Confraternities in the towns and villages where missions were preached.

Each new foundation would be adapted to local circumstances. Some served sick people in their homes. Others responded to hospital patients, prisoners, children, or destitute families. There would be successes, failures, corrections, and new beginnings. The original rule would be revised many times, but its fundamental vision remained recognizable.

Three decades after Vincent’s departure, he received word that the Charity of Châtillon was still vigorous. The association had survived the absence of its founder because it had not been constructed around his permanent presence. It had been entrusted to the women of the community.

What began on August 23, 1617, was small: eight places in a rotation of service, a short provisional document, and a commitment to care for the sick poor one day at a time.

Yet within that modest beginning were principles capable of crossing centuries and continents: attention to hidden suffering, personal encounter, shared responsibility, careful organization, spiritual depth, and trust in the leadership of laywomen.

The name would change. The forms of poverty would change. The methods of service would change. But the question first faced on the road to La Maladière remains at the heart of AIC’s mission today:

How can generous hearts act together so that charity becomes faithful, organized, and enduring?

At a Glance (infographic):