Congregation of France
Open-knowledge reference entry

The Congregation of France (French: Labaye de Sainte Genevieve et la Congregation de France, lit. 'The Abbey of Sainte Genevieve and the Congregation of France') was a congregation of houses of canons regular in France. Its members were called Génovéfains after the Abbey of St Genevieve, the motherhouse of the congregation.
History
The congregation was founded by Cardinal de La Rochefoucauld, commendatory abbot of St Genevieve at the behest of Louis XIII to reform the monastic communities in France, starting with those closest to Paris. In April 1622 La Rochefoucauld was named papal commissioner for the reform of the old religious orders in France. He called Charles Faure from the Abbey of St. Vincent in Senlis, where Faure had already initiated the formal observance of the Rule of St. Augustine. Faure was elected Prior General of the new congregation, a position he held until his death in 1644. Although the motherhouse was St. Genevieve, the congregation held its General Chapter at St.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1126032. VIAF identifies the subject as 167733842. The Library of Congress control number is nr97021731. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1622 and 1644.
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This entry incorporates text from “Congregation of France” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.