Three Worlds, Three Portraits: Introduction

The chapter introduces the subject, approach, and focus of the book. The book offers a new insight into the history of the unenclosed Catholic Company the Daughters of Charity (les Filles de la Charité) by focusing on the contents and implementation of its value system in the first half of the seventeenth century. The chapter discusses the backbone of the book, the methodological concept of moral management which is a ‘travelling concept’ (Mieke Bal) utilized here for the first time in research on seventeenth-century Catholicism. Moral management is defined as the implementation, within the organization and its charitable activities, of a specific value system that is expressed in actions, behaviour, and mentalities, and that aims at securing the survival of the Company threatened by its perplexing religious identity.