Company of the Blessed Sacrament

The Compagnie of the Blessed Sacrament was a founded secret society in 1627 by Henri de Levis, Duc of Ventadour. Its mission: to make " all the possible good and to move away all the possible evil ". It is named in the honor of the Eucharistie, which is the source and the top of the life of the Church.

Its official goal was of " to apply for the needs for next in all the extent for charity ". Bossuet expresses, in 1652, the project of the Company of the Blessed Sacrament: " to build Jerusalem in the middle of Babylon ". If it cultivated the secrecy it is that it considered that it was: " the heart of the Company… It in particular makes it possible to release works of the misdeeds of the clean love ".

At the beginning, Richelieu, Louis XIII, and the pope supported his creation. As she was opposed to the Jansenists, this Company was the object of calumnies which one finds echo until our time. It is still people to show this Company, for example, to make the play of the Enquiry (!), of " to make run the sang" (!), to be " intégriste" or to support " the order moral". Calumniated, certainly, but not without giving pretext to it: thus of its practice of the " fraternal correction " : each one chose a friend among his fellow-members " to be made inform its defects and to receive by its means the salutary helps of the fraternal correction. "

It counted among its members of many personalities:

Bossuet, which tried to limit libertinage of Louis XIV and pushed Louise of Vallière to enter to the convent,
Vincent of Paul,
the prince de Conti
Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV
Nicolas Fouquet
Guillaume de Lamoignon, the First President of the Parliament

Like releasing from this recruitment gratin very, the Company of the Blessed Sacrament erases in its center precedences related to the social status. She gives the impression thus to join again with the primitive Church. Nevertheless, the servants who accompanied the fellow-members, Thursday, were made catéchiser in a part with share. This feature condenses the ambivalence of the Blessed Sacrament.

This company, which became a kind of " party of the dévots" gathering many old slingers, started to become a countervailing power and was consequently regarded as being able to harm the law and order by Mazarin and Colbert. Louis XIV fought it while making stop one of its more high representatives, Nicolas Fouquet.

Molière was opposed to it to its way by writing Tartuffe but the queen, principal support of the Company of the Blessed Sacrament, made prohibit the part. Indeed, the Company did not finish any being caught some to the blasphemers, to the duellists, to the libertines, to the merchants of meats which do not respect the Lent, to the tenants of cabarets… All the means were good there: denouncement… She condemned even the use of the tobacco, the songs of the hawkers, the too machine-made toilets. Thus, in Marseilles in 1647: " Fust solved of travaillerer has to remove ceste large immodestie nudities of the women ". It is well it:
" Couvrez this center that I saurois to see:
Par of similar objects the hearts are wounded,
Et that made come from thought culprits. ".

In 1656, it is under the pressure of the party of the excessively pious people that Mazarin creates the General hospital.

In 1660, Mazarin tried to remove the company by prohibiting all the secret societies, but this one resisted. Of Rene de Voyer d' Argenson: “ Of the 26e of September, day of Sunday. I learned that the Mazarin Cardinal to have said to the princess of Conti, her niece, that it avoit makes a great coup d'etat, to have broken the assemblies of the Company of Blessed Sacrament; that the League avoit have less beginnings and that it seroit not worthy of its ministry, if he avoit does not destroy all these cabals of excessively pious people. ” the Company was finally officially dissolved by Louis XIV in 1666 after the death of the queen mother. Molière could rejouer Tartuffe without problem starting from 1669.

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