The Society of Jesus uses the phrase “our way of proceeding” to describe the distinctive attitudes, values, and behaviors that characterize a Jesuit. The Power of Religious Societies is about the “way of proceeding” of one early modern religious organization, that of the Daughters of Charity, founded in France by Louise de Marillac and Vincent de Paul in 1633. As an unenclosed company of women drawn from middling and lower social groups with a mission to aid the poor, its origins lay in Catholic Reform innovations in organized female spirituality. The period covered in the book is the first generation of Daughters, to the 1660s, when the company founded houses in Paris and the provinces and developed its particular identity. Its history, as well as that of Marillac, is relatively well known thanks to the work of Jenny Hillman, with Alison Forrestal's recent biography of de Paul also contributing. Peake, however, attempts a new view of the Daughters by focusing not on the individuals and institutions of the early communities but on their value system and image creation. By these means, the ideals of Catholic womanhood in the Reform era are examined.

The study takes as its methodological core the concept of moral management, defined as the implementation of a specific value system expressed in actions, behaviors, and mentalities. Peake argues that the success of the Daughters was linked to the efficient management of morality, in terms of the ethos imparted to the sisters and in their activities in the world. The central argument is that Marillac and de Paul aimed to mold the behavior and actions of the Daughters. They sought to reform them as individuals, to ensure they conformed to rigid moral standards. Ethics and control were the underlying motives, examined through sources such as de Paul's conferences, the Rules of the community, and the writings and correspondence of Marillac and other Daughters. Peake argues that the Daughters succeeded because of their strong internal identity and their careful conformity with the moral values of wider, specifically elite, Catholic society.

Chapter 1 provides an overview of the foundation of the Daughters of Charity. Beginning as a form of confraternity of dévote women of elite Parisian and court society organized to care for the poor—the Ladies of Charity—Marillac and de Paul decided to employ common women for the menial tasks while their elite sisters remained as financiers, patrons, and supervisors. The context was one of rapidly expanding monasticism and of institutional change in urban poor relief and hospitals, with secularization and centralization of activities. The Daughters sought a distinctive mission in this environment as an unenclosed order with a commitment to a communal life and an active apostolate among the poor. This brought difficulties, for the Tridentine Church forbade unenclosed lifestyles for religious women, and, indeed, many Daughters themselves desired a more contemplative, enclosed life, which their founders resisted. The navigation of these tensions was by means of careful moral management.

Chapter 2 focuses on Louise de Marillac and the creation of her religious persona—her own moral management. Peake argues that Marillac's family reputation and kinship were vital to her work, as were the female networks in which she moved. However, Marillac also created and managed an image that gave spiritual authority to her activities, acting as a living saint. She renounced the elite lifestyle of worldly possessions, fine foods, and family life and took up penance and mortification in imitation of saints such as Bridget of Sweden. Of course, as Peake demonstrates, the embrace of poverty was a long-standing means for religious women to gain spiritual authority, as was Marillac's passive submission to the authority of her confessor, de Paul. But these were distinctively moderate in tone to safeguard the practical mission and the Daughters’ dissimilarity from ascetic enclosed nuns. Thus, Marillac's careful management of her image neutralized the suspicion of clerical authorities and ensured the financial patronage of elite women, who were the Daughters’ essential support.

In chapter 3, the means by which the identities of the Daughters were created and sustained are discussed. Essential to their survival was the avoidance of enclosure. Yet their daily living reflected Benedictine or Augustinian Rules, following the canonical hours, albeit with practical work rather than study. Many Daughters also yearned for a more contemplative life, opposed by the founders. To maintain distinction from nuns, perpetual vows were rejected (although annual vows were permitted from 1642) as were grilles for the parlors of their houses. Instead, what Peake calls “mental enclosure” was inculcated through careful management of behavior in public space, education, and devotional practices: obedience to hierarchy, modesty, humility, extensive surveillance, limited communication outside of the order, subduing of the senses, and austere but moderate penitential practice. The aim was the creation of an image of the sisters dominated by an active vocation amongst the poor and a virtuous life modelled on women of the early church in conscious contrast to austere, highly educated, elite, enclosed nuns.

Chapter 4 examines the poor to whom the Daughters ministered. Charitable work was done first and foremost to save the souls of the caregiver and the pauper. This was to be achieved through love and self-sacrifice because of the conviction that the poor were the substitutes of Christ. But only the deserving poor merited attention: the sick, children, prisoners, and the honest pauper. Peake argues that these were specifically seen as the responsibility of women. To be deserving meant also being devout and observant; for orphans and children in little schools, religious education was the priority along with learning a trade and proper conduct.

Peake concludes that “moral management” was an important survival strategy for the Daughters of Charity, with their precarious position between a lay organization and a religious order. She acknowledges that most religious communities create their own special ethos but argues that the Daughters were the only unenclosed company to implement such a value system through a systematic method. In all, this is a thoughtful essay on the “culture” of the Daughters of Charity and is a useful companion to the works of Barbara Diefendorf, Elizabeth Rapley, and other authors on seventeenth-century French female spirituality.