Aa. – A secret Catholic society for the formation of young lay students and clerics. The true name of this society is not known; it is known by the mysterious acronym Aa, which seems to mean «Assemblée des Associés». Its origins date back to 1632 in the Jesuit College of La Flèche (France), where it presented itself as a secret congregation within the public Marian Congregation of the College, which aimed to create a group of associates who would intensively pursue the goals of the Congregation, an already widespread practice, but under other names (ristretto, colloquium marianum, sodalitas SS. omnium, etc.), in various Jesuit Marian congregations in Italy, France, and Germany since the end of the 16th century. From La Flèche, the practice of secret association spread to the College of Clermont (Paris) in 1643; here the Aa was definitively organized, and its members, bound by the strictest secrecy regarding all that constituted the essence of the society, were called the Bons Amis by sympathizers and Bagotiens (disciples of the famous Father Bagot) by detractors.
The Breton Vincent de Meur, future first superior of the Seminary of the Foreign Missions of Paris, founded in 1658 the Aa of Toulouse, which later became, and remained until the last century, the ideal center of all the Aa. In 1676, the Aa, according to a plan already envisaged by de Meur, split into two sections: one for students preparing for the priesthood living outside seminaries (the Aa des clercs), and another for students not called to the ecclesiastical state (the Aa des laïcs). Even when divided, the Aa preserved unchanged its original ideal, which was to lead its members to a high degree of perfection through systematic practices of piety and the exercise of virtues, especially charity (cf. the interesting statutes). The Aa was also a seedbed of missionary vocations; this ideal was particularly kept alive by the Aa of Toulouse.
The Aa spread to more than thirty cities in France, Canada, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany, exerting its beneficial influence everywhere, especially among students preparing for the priesthood but studying outside seminaries. In Italy, the Aa had a very active center in Turin, founded in 1781 by a certain cleric Murge-ray, in connection with the Aa of Bordeaux. Among its members was the Lanteri (v.), who was a fervent supporter of it for over twenty years.