Calvary, Congregation of Our Lady of

Calvary, Congregation Of Our Lady Of, an order of Benedictine nuns, originally founded at Poitiers by Antoinette of Orleans, of the house of Longueville. Pope Paul V confirmed this order in 1617; and in the same year the foundress took possession of a; convent newly built at Poitiers, with twenty-four nuns of the order of Fontevrault. In 1620 Mary de Medicis removed these nuns to Paris, and established then near the Luxembourg Palace. The design of their establishment was to honor the mystery of the sorrows of the Virgin for the sufferings of Christ, and some or other of the nuns were compelled to be day and night before the cross. Toward the close of the last century the order counted about twenty convents, all of which were destroyed by the French Revolution. Since that time, a convent in Paris, and several more in other parts of France, have been restored.