Company of the Blessed Sacrament
It was organized under the authority of a board composed of nine members, changed every three months, and which included a superior, usually a layman, and a spiritual director who was a priest.
The brief obtained from the pope in 1633 by the Count de Brassan, one of the members, was of no importance and the company, eager to secure a new one, was granted only a few indulgences which it would not accept, as it did not wish to be treated as a simple confraternity.
Guido Bagni, papal nuncio from 1645 to 1656, often attended the sessions of the company but its existence was never regularly acknowledged by an official document from Rome.
In order to assist missionaries traveling to Asia, in 1660 the Compagnie de Chine was founded, modeled on the Dutch East India Company.
[6] To alleviate such destitution, in 1652 the Company started relief efforts centered around the development of a charitable storehouse stocked with provisions, clothing, and agricultural implements to be distributed among the impoverished peasants.
[5] The centralized approach to extreme poverty in France was based on the premise that medical care was a right for those without family or income, and formalized the admission process in hospitals to prevent overcrowding and unsanitary conditions.
[7] Christophe du Plessis-Montbard, a member of the Company of the Blessed Sacrament, began to work with the Parliament in 1653 on developing plans for a new Parisian general hospital.
[5] Also instrumental in shaping these plans were Les Dames de la Charité, an organization of wealthy lay women led at the time by Marie Madeleine d'Aiguillon.
On one occasion, by secret manoeuvring, the Company succeeded in preventing twenty-five otherwise eligible young Huguenots from being received as attorneys at the parlement of Paris.
On the same date Parliament issued a decree prohibiting all illicit assemblies, confraternities, congregations, and communities, but Lamoignon, a member of the Company and its first president, succeeded in preventing it from being designated by name.
It seems that the meetings of the board and the elders were held regularly enough in 1664 to be instrumental in obtaining the banning of Moliere's comedy Tartuffe, but had ceased almost completely by 1665.
