COMPAGNIE DU SAINT-SACREMENT

A society, clerical and (mainly) lay, active in 17th-century French Catholic renewal. In part the company's aims and methods of promoting personal holiness and Christian social ideals anticipated those of today's lay apostolate groups. Proposed in 1627 by Henry de Lévis, Duke of Ventadour, supported by Fathers Philippe

d'Angoumois, Charles de condren, and Jean Suffren, the company was definitively established in 1630. Its statutes called for a superior, usually a layman; a director, always a cleric, to foster the spirit of the rules; meetings every Thursday, the day dedicated to the Blessed Sacrament, devotion to which inspired the company and gave it its name. Meetings included prayer, reports on activities and new needs, spiritual reading, and alms. Works were to embrace every kind of Christian social action— practical charity for the afflicted, concern for magistrates' administration, settling of disputes, and repression of vice. Absolute secrecy was enjoined for both spiritual motives and practical efficacy in sensitive areas of public life. The local ordinary's permission was required. Louis XIII and richelieu lent support and Pope urban viii gave his blessing but no official approval to the society. From Paris the company spread to more than 50 provincial centers linked by correspondence. Meetings attracted bishops, priests, nobles, parliamentarians, judges, bourgeois, and craftsmen; SS. vincent de paul and John eudes were members, as were Jean Jacques olier, Charles de Condren, and Jacques Bénigne bossuet.

Judgment of the true extent of the company's influence is restricted by reason of its rule of secrecy. Not all Christian social action of the period derived from it (St. Vincent's works, e.g., though aided by the company were independent of it); yet its members shared in many charitable projects of every kind. The company's aims led it to oppose freethinkers, Jansenists, Protestants, nobles given to dueling, and unscrupulous merchants. Sometimes concern for good gave way to zealotry. Thus many enemies were made. In 1660 two publications attacked the company by name as a conspiracy and inflamed public sentiment; Jules mazarin, already hostile to the society, had the Parlement forbid all secret meetings (December 1660). This was the death blow. Although some meetings could be held until 1665, the company disappeared after 1666. A number of the institutions it started, however, continued to function, among them the paris foreign mission society.

Bibliography: r. de voyer d'argenson, Annales de la compagnie du Saint-Sacrement, ed. h. beauchet-filleau (Paris 1900). r. allier, La Cabale des dévots, 1627–1666 (Paris 1902), important but biased. a. fliche and v. martin, eds., Histoire de l'église depuis les origines jusqu'à nos jours (Paris 1935–) 19.2: 545–556, passim. a. latreille et al., Histoire du Catholicisme en France, 3 v. (Paris 1957–62) 2:316–318. g. wagner, Catholicisme. Hier, aujourd'hui et demain, ed. g. jacquemet (Paris 1947–) 2:1413–15. e. lÉvesque and r. heurtevent, Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique. Doctrine et histoire, ed. m. viller et al. (Paris 1932–) 2.1:1301–11. c. lefebvre, Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, ed. a. baudrillart et al. (Paris 1912–) 13:405–412.

[w. h. principe]