In the first article of this series, we returned to Châtillon-les-Dombes in August 1617, when an appeal on behalf of a suffering family awakened an extraordinary response. Vincent de Paul recognized both the generosity of the townspeople and the danger that their help would disappear once the first emotion had passed. On August 23, eight women agreed to serve the sick poor by turns, beginning the following day.

That initial agreement answered an immediate crisis. The longer Rule written during the months that followed attempted something more ambitious: to make charity faithful, competent, communal, and enduring. It transformed a rotation of generous women into a Confraternity with a spiritual identity, a system of governance, and a carefully defined way of approaching people who were poor.

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:

2. The First Rule: Serving the Poor with Tenderness, Order, and Faith

A Rule Born from Experience

The Rule of the first Confraternity of Charity was not conceived as an abstract plan. It emerged from a road crowded with parishioners, a house filled with sick people, an excess of food that might soon spoil, and the realization that tomorrow’s needs would be as urgent as today’s.

On August 23, 1617, the first women had made a simple agreement. Each would take responsibility for one day, caring for the sick poor of Châtillon in an established rotation. If one woman could not serve on her appointed day, the next would replace her. The arrangement ensured that assistance would not arrive all at once and then disappear.

That provisional document was brief because the need was immediate. The women began their service the following day. Only afterward could Vincent and the members reflect on what they were learning.

Daily experience exposed questions that the original agreement had not answered. Who should determine whether a sick person qualified for assistance? Who would keep the money? Where would linens, clothing, utensils, and medicines be stored? What should happen if a member repeatedly failed to fulfill her responsibilities? How should disagreements be resolved? How could the women sustain their spiritual motivation when the work became difficult, unpleasant, or exhausting?

The longer Rule, written during November and December 1617, responded to these practical realities. It filled approximately twenty-four handwritten pages. Its length reveals how seriously the new association regarded its mission.

The Rule was not intended to control compassion, but to protect it from disorder, discouragement, and forgetfulness.

“True Daughters of God”

The Rule began not with procedures or financial regulations, but with a conviction about Christian identity. Charity toward one’s neighbor was described as an unmistakable sign of the true children of God.

The women of Châtillon desired to become, in that sense, God’s daughters. Their service was not an additional pious activity attached to an otherwise complete Christian life. It was a concrete expression of their relationship with God.

The Confraternity was established to honor Jesus Christ and his Mother and to assist the sick poor of the town. Its members would imitate Christ by approaching people who were suffering and recognizing his presence in them.

This theological foundation influenced every practical detail that followed. If Christ was encountered in the sick person, then indifference, impatience, condescension, and careless service were incompatible with the purpose of the Confraternity.

The poor person was not simply someone to whom a charitable woman brought leftovers. The relationship was reversed: the members called themselves “servants of the poor.” The person lying sick in a humble room was to be approached with the attention and reverence that a servant would offer an honored master.

This did not erase the enormous social differences of seventeenth-century France. The women still belonged to a hierarchical society in which wealth, family, gender, and legal status determined much of a person’s life. Yet the Rule placed a demanding Gospel vision within that society. It asked women with resources to cross the threshold of a poor person’s home and become servants there.

Body and Soul

The Confraternity had a twofold mission: to assist the sick poor corporally and spiritually.

The corporal service included food, clothing, clean linens, basic nursing, medicine, and whatever household goods were necessary during illness. The spiritual service included prayer, consolation, religious instruction, preparation for the sacraments, and compassionate accompaniment of people approaching death.

These two dimensions were not treated as competing priorities. Hunger could not be answered with words alone, but neither was the sick person reduced to a body that needed food and medicine.

A member entering a home was expected to observe carefully. Did the patient have suitable clothing? Was a clean nightshirt needed? Was the bed adequately furnished? Had the person received the appropriate remedies? Was anyone available during the night? Could the household prepare meals, or was the sick person completely alone?

The women were also asked to understand whether the illness was likely to be brief or prolonged and whether the patient’s condition was improving or deteriorating. Their service required judgment, attention, and continuity.

The spiritual dimension demanded similar sensitivity. The members were to encourage without frightening, accompany without overwhelming, and speak according to the condition of the person. Someone who was recovering needed hope and encouragement to live well. Someone approaching death needed a peaceful presence and the opportunity to prepare.

The Rule reflected the religious language of its century, but its underlying insight remains recognizable: care must address the whole person.

The White Tablecloth

Among the Rule’s most memorable passages are its instructions for serving a meal.

The woman assigned to a sick person was not merely to leave a container of food at the door. She was to enter the home, greet the patient kindly, arrange the meal, and help the person eat if necessary.

A small tray or table was to be prepared. A clean white cloth was spread upon it. A plate and spoon were set out, and the drinking glass was rinsed. Soup was poured over bread, while the meat was placed separately on a small plate. The woman said grace with the sick person and then served the meal.

If the patient was too weak, she cut the meat and helped with the soup. She offered something to drink and gently encouraged the person to eat. During the meal, she was to speak with cheerful and consoling words, seeking to lift the patient’s spirits.

These instructions may appear domestic and ordinary, but that is precisely their importance. The Rule located dignity in small actions.

The white tablecloth did not make the food more nourishing. It changed the meaning of the encounter. It transformed the sickroom, however briefly, into a place where the poor person was treated as an honored guest.

The Confraternity’s service was therefore more than the distribution of goods. The meal became an act of hospitality. Cleanliness, presentation, conversation, and human presence all mattered.

It was not sufficient to do good; the good had to be done well.

Personal Service, Not Charity at a Distance

The Rule insisted on personal involvement. A member could not consider her obligation fulfilled merely because she had contributed money or paid someone else to serve in her place.

This requirement was demanding. Some women had households, children, and servants of their own. Others depended upon the permission or cooperation of husbands and family members. Visiting sick people exposed them to unpleasant conditions and, at times, contagious illness. Preparing food, carrying supplies, cleaning rooms, and tending bodies were physically tiring tasks.

The Rule nevertheless placed the encounter with the sick person at the center. The members were not simply financiers of a charitable project. Their presence was part of the assistance they offered.

At the same time, the Confraternity recognized that some patients required more continuous care than the daily rotation could provide. It could therefore employ two trustworthy women of modest means as nurses for sick people who lived alone or could not move. These nurses received appropriate payment and were considered members of the Confraternity, although they did not possess a deliberative vote in its assemblies.

This arrangement reveals both the practicality and the social limitations of the early organization. The Confraternity created a collaboration among women of different economic circumstances, but it did not eliminate distinctions of class and authority.

Women Responsible for the Work

The Confraternity needed leadership, but Vincent did not reserve its daily administration to himself. The women elected officers from among their own membership.

The prioress held primary responsibility. She determined which sick people should be admitted to the Confraternity’s care and when those who recovered could be discharged. She ensured that food and assistance were provided according to the Rule and coordinated the other members.

Two assistants helped her. One served as subprioress and treasurer. She received money, issued receipts, purchased provisions, cared for linens and furnishings, distributed what the members needed for their daily service, arranged for laundry, and maintained written accounts.

The Confraternity possessed clothing, bedding, cooking utensils, furniture, medicines, and other goods that could be loaned or used in the homes of the sick. These resources required careful management. They belonged to the common mission and could not be treated as anyone’s personal property.

Because women faced legal restrictions in managing certain financial and public affairs, the Confraternity also elected a male procurator. He handled legal business and negotiations involving funds, but he was accountable to the association. He had to report on his work and act with the advice of the pastor, the prioress, the treasurer, and the other assistant.

The pastor retained spiritual authority and a vote in the assemblies. The Confraternity was not independent of the parish or the ecclesiastical structures of its time. Nevertheless, the Rule entrusted women with substantial responsibility for identifying needs, administering resources, organizing service, and evaluating results.

For wives, widows, and unmarried women living in seventeenth-century France, this was a meaningful field of public action.

The Monthly Assembly

The women served individually on their assigned days, but the Confraternity could survive only if they continued to act as a community.

On the third Sunday of each month, the servants of the poor assembled in a chapel of the parish church or the hospital. Mass was celebrated for the Confraternity, prayers were recited, and the pastor or his assistant offered a short spiritual exhortation.

The meeting then turned to the condition of the sick and the practical needs of the work. Problems were discussed and decisions made by vote.

The procedure is striking. Each voting member was asked for her opinion, beginning with the woman most recently admitted and continuing according to seniority. The procurator, treasurer, prioress, and pastor voted afterward. Although authority remained structured, every member with a deliberative vote was given an opportunity to speak before the principal officers.

The women also reviewed portions of the Rule and examined their service. They were to remind one another charitably of failures or negligence, but without disorder, quarrels, or unnecessarily prolonged discussion.

These meetings combined prayer, formation, administration, and evaluation. They offered a place where an isolated difficulty in one sickroom could become the responsibility of the whole Confraternity.

The members were not expected to be perfect. The Rule assumed that mistakes would occur, enthusiasm would weaken, and correction would be necessary. What mattered was that problems should not remain hidden until they destroyed the work.

Accounts, Registers, and Accountability

The spiritual identity of the Confraternity did not excuse it from financial discipline.

The treasurer kept money, documents, linens, furnishings, and records. An annual account was presented after Pentecost in the presence of the pastor, officers, procurator, and representatives of the town and hospital.

The registers preserved the regulations, the act of establishment, membership records, dates of admission and death, accounts, inventories, and lists of people assisted. Over time, such books became the institutional memory of each Charity.

This attention to documentation protected both the people served and the women serving them. It reduced the possibility of mismanagement, helped the members understand whether resources were sufficient, and allowed new officers to continue the work of their predecessors.

Transparency was not separate from charity. Responsible administration was itself a form of respect for the poor, because the resources placed in the Confraternity’s hands existed for their benefit.

A Spiritual Life in the World

The members of the Confraternity did not become religious sisters. They remained in their homes and continued their ordinary family and social responsibilities.

Yet the Rule offered them a genuine path of spiritual formation. They were encouraged to pray, receive the sacraments, read spiritual works, participate faithfully in the monthly assembly, and examine the quality of their relationships with one another and with the poor.

Among the recommended spiritual readings was Francis de Sales’s Introduction to the Devout Life, a work that insisted holiness was possible in every legitimate state of life. Devotion was not restricted to monasteries and convents. It could be lived by married women, widows, workers, householders, and people engaged in the affairs of society.

The Confraternity gave that conviction an organized form. Its members sought God not apart from their obligations, but within them—and especially in the homes of people who were sick and poor.

Their service became a school of humility, charity, and simplicity. Prayer sustained action, while the encounter with suffering purified prayer of self-absorption.

Order at the Service of Tenderness

The first Rule of Châtillon united elements that can easily become separated: spiritual conviction and practical competence, personal tenderness and financial accountability, individual initiative and communal discernment.

Its regulations were detailed because the people being served mattered. Food had to arrive at the proper time. Medicine had to be administered carefully. Linens had to be clean. Money had to be recorded. Members had to be dependable. The sick person had to be treated with patience and dignity.

Yet the Rule did not seek organization for its own sake. Every office, account, meeting, and procedure existed so that a suffering person would not be forgotten.

The white tablecloth and the account book belonged to the same vision. One expressed the beauty of the personal encounter; the other ensured that such encounters could continue.

Organization gave charity memory. Community gave it perseverance. Faith gave it meaning. Tenderness gave it a human face.

The Rule written for one small town would soon travel far beyond Châtillon. As Vincent preached missions across the countryside, new Confraternities would be created, each adapting the original pattern to local circumstances.

The next stage of the story would show whether a model born beside one sick family could respond to the many different faces of poverty found across seventeenth-century France.

At a Glance (infographic):