We are Sisters of St. Paul, founded in 1696, by Father Louis CHAUVET, parish priest of a little French village, Levesville-la-Chenard.
Our first house in the center of the village belonged to him.
Our first chapel was the parish church, our first field of apostolate, the surrounding hamlets.
Our first mission consisted in working to improve the human and spiritual level of the villagers by educating the girls and visiting the poor and the sick.
In the spirit of simplicity, never considering themselves as important or necessary,
• the Sisters shall never forget that their Community was established
• only to do what other more important Communities in the Church
• cannot undertake by way
• of instructing the children
• and caring the sick
• they are only to glean after those Communities, so to speak•
(Draft of a Rule, Chapter I)
We are the sisters of those first peasant girls of Beauce who gathered together to form a fraternal community. They had neither dowry nor income but earned their living so as to be able to perform their apostolic work as gratuitously as possible, for:
• their Community started in a simple village
• with a small group of poor girls who,
• from the outset, combined very austere mortification
• with the hardest work
• in order to earn their living.
• Until now, the poorest have been preferred to others,
• so that the sisters, by persevering in a life of work and poverty,
• might be in position to do the work confided to them,
• as gratuitously as possible•
(Draft of a Rule, Chapter I)
We have been marked by the spirit of Marie Anne de Tilly, whose distinguishing characteristics are brought out in her last will and testament:
• Superior of the girl's school of Levesville-la-Chenard
• where, in this capacity, I am helping
• four poor girls to improve their reading, writing and religious knowledge
• in order to become good teachers.
• I do not wish to be surprised by death, the hour of which is unknown;
• seeing that my strength is dwindling away
• due to the continued ill-treatment
• I have had to endure in word and deed for having left the world
• and given myself to God for the good of the Church and the service
• of my neighbor•.
There was never any class distinction among the Sisters of the Community of Levesville. Father de Truchis, our second Superior, emphatically notes down this distinguishing feature:
• Since the Rules and the constant practice of the
• Community from the beginning admit no discrimi-
• nation among the sisters, we formerly expressed aver-
• sion when it was suggested that we should take in
• girls who would occupy a rank inferior to the others.
• We now reaffirm our stand on this point. It would
• indeed be very strange that girls who, by their state,
• are the servants of the poor, should take in other girls
• to be in a lower position than they, for this would
• cause them to consider these girls as servants and to
• look upon themselves as ladies of rank•.
These religious destined to live in the world are reminded by the first Rule that:
• They are by no means dispensed from the virtues
• practiced in the monasteries;
• on the contrary, they are bound to practice them
• even more faithfully
• than religious of the most austere orders,
• because they are exposed to greater dangers•.
The Virgin Mary was to be their model, and Paul the Apostle, their patron:
• They have taken Mary
• for their principal intercessors with him.
• This will give them a renewed incentive
• to work earnestly to acquire these virtues,
• seeing that she practiced them to the most eminent degree.
• They will also have a special devotion to the Apostle St. Paul.
• They will consider him their patron,
• for not only did he imitate
• Our Lord perfectly in his poverty, humility, and sufferings,
• but he also set them an example which they wish to follow,
• so that they may zealously engage in teaching
• and earn a living from the work of their own hands•.
When they began to spread abroad, it is with the purpose of
• going to those place where they are wanted•
to form little communities of two or three,
putting up at the village school or the hospice,
at the service of the people,
their primary activity being
to educate young girls,
to visit and care for the poor and the sick.
Their sole property was the house that Msgr. Paul Godet des Marais gave them later on in Chartres and which became their house of formation.
It is not enough to recall the beginning if we are to give a full account of a Congregation that has a history of three centuries.
It would be necessary to re-discover the spirit of daring that animated the Community which enthusiastically agreed to send four of its sisters to Cayenne in 1727:
• The Count of Maurepas,Secretary of State, asked the
• Bishop of Chartres for sisters to tend the sick in the
• hospital of Cayenne and to instruct the children of
• that town. Thereupon, for were chosen from among
• the great number of sisters who offered to go.•
It would be necessary to recount the series of heroic deeds lived out in Guiana and the Antilles by our predecessors who adapted themselves so readily to the circumstances of life, whether this meant living among the deportees or dying a premature death from endemic fever contracted when caring for the sick.
It would be necessary to know more about the remarkable women who have oriented the destiny of the Congregation: Mother Maria, in the role of Superior or General; Mother Benjamin, that extraordinary leaders in the Far East, and a great many other besides.
It would be necessary to meditate on the hours of our Passion, to learn of how we lived through the storm of the French Revolution of 1789, how we bore the long trial of secularization in the twentieth century, and how we are represented today by our sisters actually living behind the bamboo curtain.
All these past events are bound up with the present. On them is based our future which is open to the light of God's plan, so far unknown to us.