VISITATION, ORDER OF THE: A Roman Catholic order founded by St. Francis of Sales (q.v.) and named in honor of the visitation of the Virgin (Luke i. 39 sqq.). Wile, however, Francis termed himself the father of the order, he designated as their mother their real founder, Jeanne Fr6miot Françoise de Chantal, with whom he was bound by a sort of spiritual union. According to the biographers of both, Francis saw in a dream her who was to aid him in establishing a female religious order, later recognizing the lady of his vision in Mme. de Chantal. She, in her turn, though having no dream, received a manifestation of the bishop who was destined to be her spiritual guide and friend. While preaching at Dijon in the Lent of 1604, the attention of Francis was attracted, in his very first sermon, to a lady who listened to him with especial devoutness. At the close of his sermon he learned that she was the Baroness de Chantal, daughter of Fr6miot, the Burgundian president of parliament, sister of the archbishop of Bourges, a widow of some years' standing, and then residing, not altogether happily, on the estate of her fatherin-law with her four small children. She was profoundly dissatisfied with her confessor, and immediately recognized in Francis her true spiritual guide. The pair met at her father's house, but not till later did she reveal her sufferings to Francis, and afterward she made a full confession. Among other things, she spoke of her desire to pass the remainder of her life in the Holy Land, to which Francis at first gave no response, and she also begged him to take her under his spiritual guidance. After several days he consented to become her spiritual guide, though cautioning her against haste and against the danger of the intrusion of any earthly element in their relations. He then left Dijon with the promise to write to her frequently. The bond thus formed became ever closer, though at first Mme. de Chantal bitterly reproached herself for her course, especially fearing that she had transgressed the laws of the Church by placing herself under the guidance of the bishop, though the latter pointed out that St. Theresa also had had a special spiritual mentor in addition to her confessor. But she long remained in doubt, her faith wavered, it was difficult for her to subject her unbelief to the Church, and her meditations seemed fruitless. In this feeling of vague unrest there seems to have been an unconscious element of personal affection for Francis of Sales. He became to her something more than

a priest and a confessor, and though she could give this indefinable quality no specific name, she felt it estranged her from the Church. But she did not cease from pious meditations and works of asceticism, nor did she abandon the thought of retiring from the world. Francis, with whom she often discussed the subject, no longer kept her wavering between hope and fear. After the middle of 1605 he repeatedly implied that her spiritual regeneration was nearing perfection, and he urged her more and more to contemplate as her final step complete self-renunciation and perfect submission to God. Though as late as Aug., 1606, he had not decided whether she should become a nun, in a personal interview he received her vow of celibacy and obedience, and approved her determination to bring up her daughters in convents.

The first definite intimations of the purpose of Francis to establish a community of female religious under the direction of himself and Mme. de Chantal date from 1607. He planned to locate the community at Annecy, the seat of the bishop of Geneva since the Reformation, so that his association with Mme. de Chantal should become still closer, though the ostensible reason was that there she might be nearer her married daughter, the baroness of Thorens. In the spring of 1610 Mme. de Chantal, abandoning her father and her children, went to Annecy, where, in the night before the dedication of the house of the new order, she seemed to see her father and children invoking divine wrath upon her, her distress being increased by the fear that she had led astray the mind of Francis. After three hours of agony, however, she conquered her temptation, and henceforth the mystic bond between the bishop and his spiritual child became even more strong. Mme. de Chantal was no less devoted to Francis than he to her, giving him constant proofs of her solicitude both for his body and his soul. On the other hand, her affection for her children so diminished that, when her son was about to visit her in Annecy, Francis was obliged to admonish her to give him cordial greeting. She died at Moulin Dec. 13, 1641; was beatified by Benedict XIV. in 1751, and canonized by Clement XIII. in 1767.

The order of the nuns of the Visitation was established in the summer of 1610, when, on Trinity Sunday, Mme. de Chantal and two others received their habit from the hands of Francis of Sales. The order had no solemn vows, no monastic seclusion, and no habit, except a black veil and black clothing. Though Mme. de Chantal had exercised extreme asceticism, this was not made incumbent on the order, and only the recitation of the shorter office of the Virgin was required of the sisters. Retreats were always permitted to women not belonging to the order; and in imitation of the Virgin's visit to St. Elizabeth the nuns were obliged to visit the poor and the sick. In conformity with the usage of the earlier Church, all the houses of the order were to be subject to their diocesan, and every year the sisters interchanged their rosaries, breviaries, crucifixes, etc. The congregation, as it was at first called, increased rapidly, but Francis soon found himself obliged to impose a more rigorous rule of Augustinian type, in which form the order was

217

officially recognized by Paul V. in 1618, and confirmed by Urban VIII. in 1626. The order had no special head, but was placed under the control of the diocesan. A simple black habit with a long black veil and a black head-band was required, and conventual seclusion was introduced, thus rendering it no longer possible to visit the poor and sick. On the other hand, there was no intensification of asceticism. At the death of Francis the order had thirteen houses, to which Mme. de Chantal added eighty-seven. The order reached its greatest prosperity in the eighteenth century, when it had about 200 houses; and about the middle of the nineteenth century it had approximately 100 houses with 3,000 nuns in France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, Syria, and North America. At the end of the nineteenth century it had 164 convents with about 7,000 nuns: eight in Germany, four in Austria, two in Switzerland, and one in Spain. Other convents are to be found in Italy, Portugal, England, Syria, and North America, but by far the greater number were in France. In consequence of the change in the character of the order in 1618, the chief activity of the nuns of the Visitation became the education of girls, especially of higher Roman Catholic society. During the Jansenistic troubles nuns of this order were sent to Port Royal to take the place of the expelled Cistercian nuns.

Eugen Lachenmann.

The order was introduced into America at Georgetown, D. C., in 1799. There were in 1911 twenty-one houses or academies, with 795 sisters or postulants, 27 professed religious, and 1,935 pupils.

Bibliography: On the foundress consult her Lettres inMites, ed. C. Barth_lemy. 2 vols., Paris, 1860; the Acta beatifrcationia et canonizationis, Rome, 1732; Saints J. F. Fremyot de Chantal, sa vie et sea cauvres, 8 vols., Paris, 1874-79; H. de Maupas du Tour, La Vie de . . . mire J. F. F. de Chantal, Paris, 1644; E. Bougaud, Hist. de Ste. Chantal et des oripines de la Visitation, 13th ed., Paris, 1899. Other accounts are by: G. BeauSls, Annecy, 1751; C. A. Saccarelli, 2 vols., Augsburg, 1752; w. H. Coombes, 2 vols., London, 1830; G. Hettenkofer, Augsburg, 1836; F. M, de Chaugy, 3 vols., Vienna, 1844; E. M. de Barth& lemy, Paris, 1880; Emily Bowles, London, 1872; Cecilia A. Jones, London, 1874.

On the order consult: Helyot, Ordres motwatiquea, iv. 309 s4Q.; the Annecy ed. of the works of St. Francis of Sales, especially vol. vi.; the Conatitutiones, Paris, 1822, 1645, etc.; C. Menetrier. Projet de l'hist. de l'ordre de 7a visitation, Annecy, 1701; L. Clarus, Leben der been Miitler . . . des Ordena van der Heimsuchung Mariens, 2 vols., Regensburg, 1861; H. Heppe, Geschichte der quietistiseken Mystik in der katholischen Kirche, pp. 4358, Berlin, 1875; St. Jane Frances FremyoE de Chantal. Her Exhortations . , Clifton, 1858; Heimbucher, Orden und Kongregationen, ii. 288-295; KL, s. 1558-61.