In 1669, Nicolas Barré drew up the “ Document signed by the First Sisters. Since 1662 (Sotteville) teachers had been teaching in various parishes in Rouen, “ in total abandonment to Divine Providence, without being a community, going from house to house teaching the ordinary people”.
After some years, at the suggestion of Nicolas Barré, they began to live as a community, under the leadership of a superior. But it was not until 1677 that the founder drew up the “ Statutes and Rules of the Christian Charitable Schools”.
“ The Institute of the Christian and Charitable Schools has its origin in the Heart of God, who so loved the world that He gave His only Son to teach people and show them the path of salvation, so that those who believed in Him might not perish, but have eternal live.”
An addition to the “ Statutes and Rules” (1685), a few pages called “ A Memoir of Instruction”, placed the young Institute in its historical context.
We find there the reasons for the foundation, its aims, and the means of achieving them. This short work brings to life before our eyes the first sisters, who “attract the confidence of all those who hear them”, by their humility, their zeal, their dedication. He notes that they reach parents through children, mistresses through servants, and even men through women. The unselfishness and availability of the sisters is stressed and given as the reason for the flourishing of this new group.
THE SPIRITUAL MASTER
Nicolas Barré did not just address himself to the Charitable Teachers. His practice of spiritual companionship, his desire to help others walk in the ways of God, made him an incomparable spiritual counsellor. He wrote in response to concrete circumstances, demands and expectations, and remained attentive to the practicalities of life, people and events.
It is assuredly in his “Spiritual Letters” that Nicolas Barré give us his approach to the principal themes which marked the spirituality of his time: Incarnation, humility, adoration, the greatness of God, the nothingness of the creature without God.
Origins of the Infant Jesus Sisters
In Rouen, Nicolas Barré was touched by the poverty and ignorance of the children and young people he saw in the slums. In 1662, during a parish mission, given in Sotteville-Ies-Rouen, he gathered together a few young women helpers. Having given them some formation he asked them to take charge of the instruction of the little girls while the mission was going on. Their participation was the founding event from which the first “little school” was opened through Nicolas Barré’s initiative.
In 1666, Nicolas Barré proposed that the Charitable Teachers become a community and this idea was welcomed wholeheartedly by the little group. He himself took on their spiritual and pedagogical formation. In 1669, forty two teachers committed themselves by signing a document, in which we find a definition of the aims of the Institute: to instruct, in the manner of the apostles, in total selflessness. From 1670 onwards, Nicolas Barré sent his Charitable Teachers to Reims, then to Lisieux and later to Lyon, where they participated in the foundation of new Institutes.
Nicolas Barré was anxious about the lot of the under privileged children, so he set up trade schools where they could learn a skill and so be able to earn their living. From 1675, the parishes of Paris, where Nicolas Barré had been sent, requested that “little schools” be opened for them also.
YESTERDAY
Starting from Rouen, the school multiplied, often with simply two or three sisters. They were to be found especially in the country parishes of diocese of Rouen, Evreux, Lisieux, Coutances. Then St. Omer, Boulogne, Amiens and Arras. Some of these first schools opened at the time exist still today: Aumale (1680), Fécamp (1683), Louviers (1686). In 1790, there were 183 sisters dispersed in 113 places.
Then came the French Revolution. The sisters had to go into hiding. Some were sent to prison; others returned to their own villages where they continued to teach. Many did not seem to be unduly unarmed. As soon as the storm had abated, back they came to take up their activities in the schools and parishes.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, laws were promulgated separating Church and State. Secularisation had come in. The government forbade Religious Congregations to own schools or even to teach. Three options presented themselves to the sisters: exile in England and Belgium, secularisation where they were, or return to their families. Again they waited until the storm blew over and again they picked up the threads: In 1923, they returned to Rouen and in 1928 arrived back to Mesnil-Esnard. The church no longer linked the making of religious vows with the obligation of being cloistered. The sisters professed vows from 1921 onwards. One factor remained a constant throughout the history of the congregation: the Teachers always lived in little communities.
TODAY
Today, in 1998, the deepest desire of the Infant Jesus Sisters – Providence of Rouen, is still to educate. Any profession or activity which contributes to the instruction and growth of persons, according to the Gospel spirit of Nicolas Barré, can be carried on by the Sisters of the Institute. They are sent, as a priority, where there are young people in need. In the parishes and parochial groups, the sisters work with priests and laity and take part in pastoral work, in movements, in catechetical teams, in liturgy, in initial and ongoing formation. In the towns, in the countryside, in isolated regions, they collaborate with associations that already exist to struggle against illiteracy, to help parents and children abandoned to their own devices. They try to create or revive hostels and shelters.
