I. Charism - La Salle.org

IV. DISCOVERING, LIVING, SHARING THE GIFT OF GOD 57
Eudes…). Culturally and politically, their youth, in both cases, was
spent in the baroque world of the first part of the 17 th Century:
Louis XIII, the Cardinal Ministers (Richelieu and Mazarin), the 30
Years War, the Fronde rebellion and the war with Spain, Corneille,
Saint-Amant, Voiture, Saint-Evremond… and even Descartes. It
was a period which favoured somewhat wild individualistic exploits,
Utopia (Cyrano de Bergerac), and reasons of State in the political
field. It ended with the coming to power of Louis XIV in 1661.
From then on, it was notions of rationality and of order which were
to dominate in the State as well as in cultural and religious life. One
set in motion, organising them, the intuitions of the first part of the
century. John-Baptist de La Salle belonged fully to this second period.
From which, doubtless to some extent, arose the contrast
between his personality and that of Madame Maillefer and Adrien
Nyel, noticed by his biographers, especially Blain.
For “running” the schools, a change of model.
Adrien Nyel arrived in Reims in 1679 with the young boy who
accompanied him - doubtless an assistant-teacher from among the
children of the General Hospital of Rouen. He had been given a
mission: to establish one or more schools for the poor boys of
Reims, a mission which he accepted and which led him to ask to be
relieved of his duties in Rouen by the Bureau of the Poor of the city.
It was Madame Maillefer who sent him; she was most probably
pursuing the project thought up by Nicolas Roland 36 . With the latter
dead, she approached a person that she knew: Françoise Duval,
Superior of the Sisters of the Child-Jesus of Reims, who was capable
of linking up with the work of Nicolas Roland. Jeanne Maillefer
provided the funds necessary for the opening and running of a
school for poor boys in Reims.
36
See Yves POUTET, op. cit., p. 628-632.