In the XIXth century, the charitable practice of the urban elites develops within the field defined by both individual submission to the soteriological duties and conformity to cultural codes dictated by a new spirit of bourgeois sociability. On the ground of a plurality of confessions, on the other hand, that practice is caught in an obvious dialectic, with the tenants of each cult sometimes using their works for a demonstration of their respective rootings. In Mulhouse, that dialectical relation of the community becomes more imperative in the course of the century, as the protestant elites progressively move away from the rationalist temptation – philosophical in essence and impelled by the townhall – to the benefit of a re-centering of their works exclusively on their co-religionists. Inter confessional emulation is then made possible by the belated emergence of a Roman catholic elite, from then on enabled to participate in that logic of competition.