Monastère de L'ordre de la
Visitation de Sainte Marie de Caen
3 Rue de l'Abbatiale
14000 Caen, France

The nuns of the Visitation of Mary, called also Filles de Sainte-Marie or the Visitandines were founded in 1610 at Annecy in the Duchy of Savoy by St Francis de Sales, Bishop of Geneva, and by St Jane de Chantal. Their aim was to secure the benefit of the religious life for persons who had neither the physical strength nor the attraction for the corporal austerities at that time general in religious orders. St Francis wished especially to apply in souls of good will and in a permanent institution the spiritual method dear to him: to reach God chiefly through interior mortification and to endeavour to do in every action only the Divine Will with the greatest possible love. The Visitation is therefore the principal work of St Francis de Sales, the perpetuation of his doctrine and spirit, the living commentary on the "Introduction à la vie dévote" and the "Traité de l'amour de Dieu".

The Visitandines are contemplatives, and in order that they might not be turned aside from the chief aim the founder often recurs in his letters to the necessity of not imposing external duties which would divert them from their first vocation. Even in the time of St Francis de Sales the Visitation several times accepted temporarily the mission of reforming foreign communities or even houses of penitent women, and God has blessed their devotion. It was likewise the need of the times which at a certain period led many convents to open within their cloisters boarding-schools for young girls. These boarding-schools which still exist in certain communities have done great good to youth.