The previous articles traced the journey of the Charities from their foundation at Châtillon in 1617 to their expansion through the countryside and into Paris. We also followed Louise de Marillac as she visited, reorganized, and strengthened the confraternities, helping their members remain faithful to a service that was both compassionate and carefully organized.

By 1630, however, the Parisian Charities were encountering a difficulty that rules and goodwill alone could not resolve. Many members wanted to serve, but family obligations, social conventions, and the physical demands of the work made regular personal care increasingly difficult. At precisely this moment, an unknown country woman appeared. Her name was Marguerite Naseau, and her brief life would change the future of Vincentian charity.

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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

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5. Marguerite Naseau Shows the Way: From the Charities to the Daughters of Charity, 1630–1633

An Answer from an Unexpected Place

The first Confraternities of Charity had been founded primarily among married women and widows of the rural middle class. In Paris, many members belonged to prosperous bourgeois or noble households. They possessed resources, influence, and a genuine desire to help. Their donations could purchase food and medicine, while their social connections could open doors otherwise closed to the poor.

Yet the original rules required more than financial support. Members were expected to visit sick people personally, prepare meals, carry supplies, clean rooms, wash clothing, and offer companionship. Charity was not simply to pass from the hand of a benefactor to the hand of a recipient. It was to become an encounter between two people.

In a small village, these responsibilities could be shared among women who lived near one another and knew the families they served. Paris was different. Distances were greater, poverty was more concentrated, and the number of sick people could overwhelm a small confraternity. Some members had children, husbands, servants, and large households to supervise. Others were reluctant to enter crowded neighborhoods or expose themselves to contagious illness.

They began to consider sending their domestic servants to perform the more difficult tasks.

The solution seemed practical, but it introduced another problem. A servant ordered to carry a soup pot might complete the assignment faithfully without sharing the confraternity’s spiritual purpose. The poor could once again become a burden to be managed rather than people to be known and loved.

The Charities needed women who could undertake demanding daily service freely, personally, and as a vocation. That need was answered by someone who possessed neither wealth nor social influence.

The Cowherd Who Learned to Read

Marguerite Naseau was born around 1594 in Suresnes, a village west of Paris. She came from the rural world that seventeenth-century society often regarded as ignorant and insignificant. She had little formal education and spent part of her youth tending cattle.

Yet Marguerite possessed an extraordinary desire to learn.

Unable to attend school, she obtained a primer and began asking for help wherever she could find it. She would approach the parish priest, an assistant, or another person capable of reading and ask to be taught a few letters. She memorized them while tending the animals and returned later to learn more.

The process was slow, uncertain, and open to ridicule. Marguerite persisted. Gradually, the letters became words, and the words became sentences. Having taught herself to read, she did not keep the achievement for her own benefit. She began teaching other poor girls.

This was a remarkable decision. Marguerite had no school building, recognized position, or reliable income. She moved from village to village, gathering children and sharing what she had learned. She trained other young women so that they, too, could teach. She also supported several young men who hoped to study for the priesthood but lacked sufficient resources, sometimes sharing food and other necessities with them.

Her education had begun with dependence on the kindness of others. It matured into a mission of passing knowledge onward.

Marguerite’s story contained several qualities that would later become characteristic of Vincentian service: attention to neglected needs, confidence in the abilities of poor people, practical creativity, and a willingness to begin without waiting for ideal conditions.

A New Call Within the Same Vocation

During one of the missions preached in the region west of Paris, Marguerite came into contact with Vincent de Paul. She told him about her work educating village girls and expressed her desire to give herself more completely to God.

Vincent recognized the unusual strength of the woman standing before him. Marguerite was poor, but she did not view poverty only from the outside. She understood its insecurity, restrictions, and daily humiliations. She was accustomed to physical work and could move naturally among rural laborers and the urban poor. Most importantly, she was offering her service freely.

Vincent proposed that she assist the sick poor through the Confraternities of Charity. Marguerite accepted.

In February 1630, he directed her to Louise de Marillac and arranged for her to serve in the Parisian parish of Saint-Sauveur. There she entered a confraternity whose members were struggling with the physical demands of their commitments.

Marguerite did not arrive as a wealthy benefactor. Nor did she become a member of the confraternity in the same sense as its established Ladies. She came as a servant of the Charity, ready to perform the daily tasks that had become difficult for the members.

She carried food and medicine, entered the homes of the sick, washed and cleaned, and remained with those who needed care. The work was humble and repetitive. It offered little public recognition. For Marguerite, however, service of the poor was not merely employment. It was the concrete form of her dedication to God.

Showing Others the Way

Marguerite’s presence transformed the situation.

The Ladies could continue organizing assistance, raising money, identifying needs, and accompanying poor families. Marguerite provided a dependable daily presence among the sick. The two forms of service did not have to compete. They could complement one another.

Other Parisian confraternities soon requested young women like her.

Marguerite herself attracted companions. Just as she had once encouraged village girls to learn and teach, she now invited young country women to dedicate themselves to the poor. Some were sent by pastors or missionaries. Others heard about the work and offered to help.

Years later, Vincent remembered Marguerite as “the first Sister who had the happiness of showing others the way.” The description did not mean that she had entered a community already in existence. No such community yet existed. She showed the way by living a vocation before it possessed an official name or stable structure.

She demonstrated that poor women were not merely recipients of charity. They could become its protagonists.

This represented a significant development in the history of the confraternities. From 1617 onward, Vincent had invited women with sufficient means and independence to organize themselves for the service of poorer neighbors. Marguerite revealed another possibility: women from humble backgrounds could offer not wealth but their labor, experience, intelligence, and capacity for commitment.

They understood the poor because they came from among them.

Collaboration Across Social Boundaries

The arrival of the country women did not make the Ladies of Charity unnecessary. On the contrary, the expanding work needed their leadership, financial support, and social influence. Nor could the young women serve effectively without formation, supervision, and dependable resources.

A new pattern of collaboration therefore began to emerge.

The Ladies administered the confraternities, gathered funds, visited families, and took responsibility for the overall organization. The young women carried out much of the daily nursing and household service. Louise accompanied both groups, helping them understand that their different roles belonged to one mission.

Such collaboration was not always easy. Seventeenth-century French society was sharply divided by rank. A noblewoman and a peasant woman did not ordinarily meet as partners in a shared undertaking. The young servants could be treated as ordinary domestic employees, while the Ladies might expect obedience without recognizing the spiritual meaning of their vocation.

Louise had to protect the country women from being absorbed into private household service. They had not come to Paris to become personal maids. They had come to serve the sick poor through the Charities.

At the same time, the young women needed to respect the legitimate responsibilities of the confraternity. They were entrusted with food, medicine, money, and access to vulnerable households. Good intentions had to be joined to reliability, discretion, cleanliness, and accountability.

The relationship required formation on both sides. It called wealthy women to recognize the dignity and capabilities of their poorer companions, and it called the country women to develop the practical and spiritual discipline necessary for sustained service.

Louise Becomes Their Formator

Louise de Marillac quickly understood the potential of the new development.

She welcomed the young women, spoke with them, observed their abilities, and helped place them in the confraternities where they were most needed. She taught them how the Charities operated and explained the responsibilities involved in caring for the sick. They needed to know how to prepare suitable meals, administer simple remedies, maintain clothing and bedding, keep rooms clean, and report serious concerns.

Formation also included reading, catechism, prayer, and the spiritual meaning of their vocation. Louise did not want their work to become mechanical. The poor were to be served with tenderness and respect because faith recognized Christ in them.

The young women, however, were initially scattered among different parishes. One might live near Saint-Sauveur, another at Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, and another in a different part of the city. Each worked under local arrangements, often without regular contact with the others.

This made consistent formation extremely difficult.

Louise could meet them individually or gather them occasionally, but she could not easily accompany their daily lives. Some might become isolated or discouraged. Others could be treated as hired servants rather than women following a common vocation. Without mutual support, the demands of poverty, illness, and exhausting work could wear them down.

A set of regulations could describe their responsibilities, but written instructions could not create a shared life. The young women needed bonds with one another.

Marguerite’s Radical Availability

Marguerite continued to embody the generosity Louise hoped to form in the others.

She was willing to change parishes when the Charities needed her elsewhere, even when she had grown attached to the people she served. She owned little and gave away much of what she had. She was patient, adaptable, and remarkably free from concern for personal comfort.

Her generosity could also exceed ordinary prudence. Because no stable community or complete rule yet existed, there were few boundaries to guide her. She found it difficult to refuse anyone in need and would have welcomed every suffering person if circumstances had allowed.

The final act of her life revealed both the greatness and the danger of this total availability.

While serving in Paris, Marguerite encountered a young woman suffering from the plague. Rather than leave her without shelter, she received her and allowed her to share her bed. Marguerite contracted the disease.

Recognizing what had happened, she said goodbye to her companion and went to Saint-Louis Hospital, where plague victims were isolated. She faced her death with serenity and died in February 1633.

She did not live to see the foundation of the Daughters of Charity. Yet her death made the need for a stable community even clearer. Heroic generosity could inspire others, but the mission could not depend on isolated acts of self-sacrifice. Those who served required formation, companionship, wise limits, and a common way of life.

A Foundation Born Through Discernment

Louise had already begun considering whether the young women should live together. She believed that common life would allow them to receive deeper formation, pray together, support one another, and prepare for their service in the parishes.

Vincent proceeded more cautiously.

He did not oppose the idea, but he wanted to discern whether it was truly necessary and whether the women could persevere. He had learned not to force a work into existence before experience had revealed its proper form. The new community was not created according to a complete plan drafted in advance. It emerged gradually from the needs of the poor and the experience of the Charities.

Throughout 1633, the question became more urgent. The young women were already serving. The confraternities wanted their assistance. Louise was forming them as well as she could, but their scattered placements prevented the unity and stability they needed.

By September, Vincent appeared convinced that the time had come. In the weeks that followed, Louise gathered some of the women for further instruction and retreat. Together, she and Vincent prepared the next step.

On November 29, 1633, a small group—traditionally described as five or six young women—began living in Louise’s home. That day is recognized as the foundation of the Company of the Daughters of Charity.

There was no elaborate ceremony. No large institution opened its doors, and no finished constitution announced the creation of a new form of consecrated life. A few country women simply entered the home of a widow so that they could learn to serve the poor more faithfully.

The modesty of the beginning reflected the Vincentian method: look at the need, respond concretely, evaluate the experience, and allow the work to grow through service.

A Community Formed for the Streets

The first daily regulations were practical. Time was set aside for prayer, Mass, spiritual reading, examination of conscience, work, and formation. The women learned to read and received instruction in catechism. Their service was organized by rotation.

Some carried soup and other food to the sick. Others cared for clothing, firewood, medicines, and household supplies. They obtained prescriptions, delivered remedies, and attended to whatever poor families could not manage alone.

Community life did not separate them from the Charities. It prepared them to serve the confraternities more effectively.

This distinction was essential. The Daughters of Charity were not founded to replace the Ladies or to absorb their associations. The confraternities retained their own identity, officers, resources, and mission. The Daughters offered a new form of availability within the same charitable movement.

Together they made possible a broader response:

• The Ladies of Charity organized, financed, supervised, advocated, and maintained relationships with benefactors and authorities.
• The Daughters of Charity offered regular, direct, and physically demanding service in homes, streets, schools, hospitals, and parishes.
• Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac provided spiritual guidance, formation, coordination, and continuing discernment.

The partnership brought together women whom the social order normally kept apart. It did not eliminate the inequalities of seventeenth-century France, but it created spaces in which social rank could be placed at the service of a common mission.

Not Nuns in a Convent

The small group gathered in 1633 did not fit the usual model of women’s religious life.

At that time, women who entered established religious communities were generally expected to live within a cloister. Entrance could also require a dowry, placing convent life beyond the reach of many poor country women.

The work envisioned for the Daughters required something different. They had to walk through city streets, enter private homes, carry food, visit hospitals, and respond wherever suffering appeared. Enclosure would have made their mission impossible.

Their identity developed gradually. They would live in community and dedicate themselves to God, yet remain free to go out in service. They wore the ordinary dress of country women rather than a traditional religious habit. Their first house was not a monastery but Louise’s home.

The innovation did not begin as a theoretical challenge to existing customs. It began because the poor needed forms of service that existing structures could not provide.

Only later would the theological and canonical significance of the new way of life become fully apparent. In November 1633, the priority was immediate: form the women, sustain their vocation, and send them where they were needed.

The Legacy of the First Sister

Marguerite Naseau was absent from the house on the day the first women gathered. Nevertheless, her spirit was present.

She had shown that a poor and largely self-educated woman could become a teacher, organizer, caregiver, and spiritual influence on others. She had crossed the distance between village and city, between education and nursing, and between personal inspiration and organized service.

Most of all, she had revealed a new understanding of charity. The poor did not have to wait passively for others to rescue them. They possessed gifts capable of transforming their own communities. When given formation, trust, and responsibility, they could become the most credible servants of those whose lives they understood.

The founding of the Daughters of Charity therefore grew directly from the experience of the Confraternities. It answered a limitation discovered within them, but it did not diminish their importance. Instead, the two foundations became distinct and complementary expressions of one vision.

By the end of 1633, the charitable movement born at Châtillon had crossed another threshold. What had begun as a rotation of parish women now included a network of confraternities, a system of visitation and formation, and a small community of women wholly available for service.

The following year would bring another decisive expansion. In 1634, a new group of Ladies would turn its attention toward the immense suffering inside the Hôtel-Dieu of Paris. Their organization would gather some of the capital’s most influential women and carry the Charities beyond parish boundaries.

The circle of the first Vincentian foundations was almost complete.

At a Glance (infographic):