The Daughters of Charity were part of the Vincentians and had originally been under the orders of the Vicar general of the Congregation of the Mission. When Napoleon reintroduced them, because he needed them to staff the hospitals, he put them under the orders of their local bishops. A new vicar general, Hanon, decided to make a fuss about this and insisted that they owed obedience to him, he was correct but obviously spoiling for a fight. The result was that, in spite of several attempts to produce a compromise formula the sisters found themselves in a position where they had to swear an oath against their consciences or quit and abandon their duty to the sick and some did one thing and some did the other. Hanon was jailed but the refractory sisters were just sent home and kept under police supervision.

It is the sheer disproportion of the reaction that is noteworthy.

Susan