ABSTRACT
The Company of the Daughters of Charity was founded at a time of change in the Catholic Church, the French state, and the European economy. Spiritual, social, economic, and political forces shaped the community's development and allowed it to circumvent Church mandates. The Council of Trent laid out a comprehensive vision of a reformed Church that operated within more precise theological and behavioral parameters. The reformers at Trent, however, did not have the authority or power to create an enforcement mechanism for these regulations, and hence the decrees of Trent were potentially toothless. The Daughters of Charity were part of a broader movement of general spiritual renewal constructed by Catholics faced with the new threat of rival Christian faiths in Western Europe. The foundation of the Daughters of Charity took place in the midst of a century best known for its political, social, and economic disasters.
