At periods of religious revival especially, the courtesan has a consciousness of her debasement. Under the influence of gospel enlightenment the most abandoned women were reformed to the length of hastening to martyrdom, in order to wipe out the stains of their life in this baptism of blood. When the age of persecution was past, the church tried to reinstate fallen women; councils granted a dispensation from canonical penance to those who gave up their evil ways, and granted forgiveness of their sins to the men who should marry them.[15] Different societies were formed with the design of raising a dower for them. The middle age opened numerous asylums to them: St. Louis had a large refuge built for them, and gave them the name of “Filles-Dieu.”—“And caused,” says Joinville, “a great number of women to be put in a refuge, who from poverty were made to sin by the luxurious, and gave them 400 livres annually to live upon.” This dotation (endowment), enormous for the age, was higher than that of the “Quinze-Vingts,” which received only 300 livres.[16][17] Louis IX. also helped them with his advice, or founded with his money several similar institutions, as places affiliated to the “Filles-Dieu.” “The King,” says Joinville further, “caused houses of nuns to be instituted in several places of his kingdom, and gave them incomes to live upon, and recommended that they should be admitted into them who were willing to resolve (_fere contenance_) to live in chastity.” The Duke of Orleans, afterwards Louis XII., collected in a part of his “hotel” two hundred penitent girls, whom destitution and licentiousness had perverted during war; but France was then so ruined, and existence was so rough for modest women, that several of them became prostitutes with the design of getting admission. The Corporation of Paris also supplied penitent women with money-aids, which are found entered thus in a bill of the 16th century:—“To poor penitent girls, six _livres parisis_ for charity and alms, to get bread, of which they stand in great need.” Louis XIV. founded the Madeleine asylum; he granted his patronage to that of the Bon Pasteur, which a widow founded, and to Sainte Pélagie, the work of Madame de Miramion. Paris built, in the 18th century, four more establishments of this kind, under the titles of the Saviour, St. Valerius, St. Theodore, and St. Michael. These refuges, so richly endowed by royal or private munificence, had numerous subsidiary institutions in the provinces; the letters-patent of our Kings, even the bulls of the Popes, gave authority for making them permanent. Other societies reinstated fallen women by affiancing them to Christ.