Louise Marillac

Louise de Marillac was born on 12 August 1591, the natural daughter of Louis de Marillac, lord of Ferrières-en-Brie and Villiers-Adam and a member of a prominent French family that included marshals of France and high officials of the crown. She never knew her mother, whose identity remains uncertain in the historical record. Her father acknowledged her and provided for her upbringing. As a child she was placed for a time at the Dominican royal monastery of Saint-Louis at Poissy, where an aunt was a nun and where she received an unusually thorough education in letters, the arts, and philosophy. After her father's death in 1604 she experienced a sharp decline in circumstances and lived in more modest lodgings in Paris. She wished to enter the Capuchin Poor Clares but was refused, apparently on grounds of delicate health.

In February 1613 she married Antoine Le Gras, a secretary in the household of Queen Marie de Médicis. The couple lived in Paris and had one son, Michel. Louise took part in the charitable work of the Ladies of Charity and led a devout married life, but she also suffered periods of anxiety and spiritual darkness, intensified by her husband's long illness. On Pentecost 1623 she received an interior assurance, later called her lumière, that she would one day live in a community devoted to the service of the poor under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, while remaining with her husband until his death. Antoine Le Gras died in December 1625. Thereafter Louise placed herself under the spiritual direction of Vincent de Paul, whom she had already come to know.

From the late 1620s she assisted Vincent in organizing and visiting the Confraternities of Charity in the parishes and countryside around Paris. On 29 November 1633 she received into her house a small group of country girls who wished to give their lives to serving the poor, thereby founding the Company of the Daughters of Charity. Unlike traditional nuns, these women were not cloistered; they lived in ordinary houses, wore a simple grey dress and white cornette, and went out to nurse the sick poor in their homes, to care for foundlings, galley slaves, the elderly, and the wounded, and to teach poor children. Louise composed a rule, formed the sisters in prayer and practical service, and spent the remaining decades of her life traveling, often in poor health, to establish and visit houses across France. The community received approval from the Archbishop of Paris and later papal recognition, and it became the model for active congregations of women in the modern Church.

Louise de Marillac died in Paris on 15 March 1660, a few months before Vincent de Paul. She was beatified by Pope Benedict XV on 9 May 1920 and canonized by Pope Pius XI on 11 March 1934. Her body is reserved in the Chapel of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal at the motherhouse of the Daughters of Charity on the Rue du Bac in Paris. She is invoked as a patron of social workers, widows, and the sick, and is remembered as co-foundress, with Vincent de Paul, of a new form of consecrated life that joined contemplative prayer to organized service of the most abandoned.