Sisters of Charity Federation in the Vincentian and Setonian Tradition
A voluntary membership association of Roman Catholic Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life of women whose mission in the Church continues the original charisms of Vincent de Paul (1581-1660, canonized 1737), Louise de Marillac (1591-1660, canonized 1934), and Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton (1774-1821, canonized 1975). The founding congregations of the Sisters of Charity Federation trace their roots to the first sisterhood native to the United States, the Sisters of Charity of Saint Joseph's (S.C.), founded (1809) by Elizabeth Bayley Seton (Mother Seton) near Emmitsburg, Maryland. For membership, congregations must document the influence of the Common Rules of the Daughters of Charity (Paris, 1672), as the root of their spiritual heritage.

French Origin of the Vincentian Tradition
In his Conferences to the Daughters of Charity, Saint Vincent explained September 29, 1655, that he and Saint Louise cofounded the Confraternity of the Charity of the Servants of the Sick Poor of the Parishes (whose members the people of Paris called Daughters of Charity) “to honor the great charity of Our Lord Jesus Christ” through service to persons who were sick and poor (Leonard, 3:98). The Company of the Daughters of Charity, founded November 29, 1633, developed from the parish-based Confraternities of Charity, and became the first successful institute of non-cloistered religious women to serve in the active apostolate in France. As such, the Common Rules of the Daughters of Charity became a prototype. The rule developed by Louise de Marillac and Vincent de Paul was first explained to the sisters July 31, 1634, and refined over time on the basis of the lived experience of the sisters who sought to live a lifestyle for mission characterized by humility, simplicity, and charity. According to Saint Louise, “If humility, simplicity, and charity which gives support are well-established among you, your little Company will be composed of as many saints as there are persons in it” (Sullivan, p. 532).

Saint Vincent invited the sisters to sign the Act of Establishment of the Company August 8, 1655. His immediate successor as superior general, Very Reverend René Alméras, C.M., (1613-1672; superior general 1661-1672), reorganized the original text of forty-three articles which constituted the primitive rule. Alméras arranged them into chapters, with the assistance of Sister Mathurine Guérin (1631-1704), and included some unpublished oral traditions. This edition, in effect for the Daughters of Charity from 1672 until after Vatican II, reflects the thinking and collaboration of both Saint Louise and Saint Vincent.

In imitation of Saint Vincent's first Daughters, many congregations throughout the world carry the title “Sisters of Charity” and seek to live in their time the Vincentian mission having what Vincent de Paul described, August 24, 1659, “for cloister the streets of the city, for enclosure obedience, going only to the homes of the sick and to places necessary for their service” (Leonard, 4:264). The mission of the Company of Charity required a structure and lifestyle that circumvented the seventeenth-century requirement of enclosure for religious women. Louise explained in a letter to the Abbé de Vaux, June 29, 1649, that she and Vincent established the Daughters of Charity as “just a secular family” (Sullivan, 293). “For whoever says religious says cloistered, and Daughters of Charity should go everywhere,” as Saint Vincent explained to the Company of Charity June 29, 1649 (Leonard, 4:261).

The Daughters of Charity confirmed their commitment to mission through annual, private vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and service of poor persons. The cloister would have prevented the sisters from doing their mission, which, according to Saint Vincent's explanation May 30, 1659, called them to a state of charity through ministry among the sick poor, rather than a state of perfection through perpetual, public vows. The Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul first received (1646) ecclesiastical approval by the archbishop of Paris, but that approbation, together with the royal letters patent, were inexplicably lost. Louise de Marillac wished to preserve the integrity of the Vincentian charism and to protect the Company of the Daughters of Charity from ecclesiastical interference. At her insistence, the substitute document was revised to place the Daughters of Charity under the perpetual direction of Saint Vincent and his successors as superior general of the Congregation of the Mission. Cardinal de Retz, archbishop of Paris, gave his approval January 18, 1655. The statutes of the Company were confirmed in the name of Pope Clement IX by his legate, Cardinal Louis de Bourbon, duke de Vendôme, July 8, 1668.

Throughout subsequent centuries at least sixty other founders around the world adopted this rule for their institutes, including Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton and Empress Caroline Augusta of Hapsburg-Lotharingen (widow of Emperor Francis I). The latter obtained the Common Rules of Saint Vincent from the Daughters of Charity in Lemberg (Lvov) in the region of Galicia (then in the Holy Roman Empire). That foundation became the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul of Vienna (1832) at Gumpendorf, Austria, and the root community for the Sisters of Charity of Satu-Mare, Romania, from which sprang the Vincentian Sisters of Charity in the United States, also members of the Sisters of Charity Federation.