Even in the most degenerate ages, when the true maxims of the
gospel seem almost obliterated among the generality of those who
profess it, God fails not, for the glory of his holy name, to raise
to himself faithful ministers to revive the same in the hearts of
many. Having, by the perfect crucifixion of the old man in their
hearts, and the gift of prayer, prepared them to become vessels
of his grace, he replenishes them with the spirit of his apostles
that they may be qualified to conduct others in the paths of heroic
virtue, in which the Holy Ghost was himself their interior Master.
One of these instruments of the divine mercy was St. Vincent of
Paul. He was a native of Poul, a village near Acqs in Gascony, not
far from the Pyrenæan mountains. His parents, William of Paul and
Bertranda of Morass, occupied a very small farm of which they were
the proprietors, and upon the produce of which they brought up a
family of four sons and two daughters. The children were brought up
in innocence, and inured from their infancy to the most laborious
part of country labor. But Vincent, the third son, gave extraordinary
proofs of his wit and capacity, and from his infancy showed a
seriousness and an affection for holy prayer far beyond his age. He
spent great part of his time in that exercise when he was employed in
the fields to keep the cattle. That he might give to Christ in the
persons of the poor all that was in his power, he deprived himself
of his own little conveniences and necessaries for that purpose
in whatever it was possible for him to retrench from his own use.
This early fervent consecration of himself to God, and these little
sacrifices which may be compared to the widow’s two mites in the
gospel, were indications of the sincere ardor with which he began to
seek God from the first opening of his reason to know and love him;
and were doubtless a means to draw down upon him from the author of
these graces other greater blessings. His father was determined by
the strong inclinations of the child to learning and piety, and the
quickness of his parts, to procure him a school education. He placed
him first under the care of the Cordeliers or Franciscan friars at
Acqs, paying for his board and lodging the small pension of sixty
French livres, that is, not six pounds English, a year.
Vincent had been four years at the schools when Mr. Commet, a
gentleman of that town, being much taken with his virtue and
prudence, chose him sub-preceptor to his children, and enabled him
to continue his studies without being any longer a burden to his
parents. At twenty years of age, in 1596, he was qualified to go to
the university of Toulouse, where he spent seven years in the study
of divinity, and commenced bachelor in that faculty. In that city
he was promoted to the holy orders of subdeacon and deacon in 1598,
and of priesthood in 1600, having received the tonsure and minor
orders a few days before he left Acqs. He seemed already endowed
with all those virtues which make up the character of a worthy and
zealous minister of the altar; yet he knew not the full extent of
heroic entire self-denial, by which a man becomes dead and crucified
to all inordinate self-will; upon which perfect self-denial are
engrafted the total sacrifice of the heart to God, perfect humility,
and that purity and ardor of divine charity which constitute the
saint. Vincent was a good proficient in theology and other sciences
of the schools, and had diligently applied himself to the study of
the maxims of Christian virtue in the gospel, in the lives of the
saints, and in the doctrine of the greatest masters of a spiritual
life. But there remained a new science for him to learn, which was
to cost him much more than bare study and labor. This consists in
perfect experimental and feeling sentiments of humility, patience,
meekness, and charity; which science is only to be learned by the
good use of severe interior and exterior trials. This is the mystery
of the cross, unknown to those whom the Holy Ghost has not led into
this important secret of his conduct in preparing souls for the great
works of his grace. The prosperity of the wicked will appear at the
last day to have often been the most dreadful judgment, and a state
in which they were goaded on in the pursuit of their evil courses;
whilst, on the contrary, it will then be manifested to all men that
the afflictions of the saints have been the greatest effects of
divine mercy. Thus, by a chain of temporal disasters, did God lay in
the soul of Vincent the solid foundation of that high virtue to which
by his grace he afterward raised him.
The saint went to Marseilles in 1605, to receive a legacy of five
hundred crowns which had been left him by a friend who died in that
city. Intending to return to Toulouse, he set out in a felucca or
large boat from Marseilles to Narbonne, but was met in the way
by three brigantines of African pirates. The infidels seeing the
Christians refuse to strike their flag, charged them with great fury,
and on the first onset killed three of their men, and wounded every
one of the rest; Vincent received a shot of an arrow. The Christians
were soon obliged to surrender. The first thing the Mahometans did
was to cut the captain in pieces because he had not struck at the
first summons, and in combat had killed one of their men and four
or five slaves. The rest they put in chains; and continued seven or
eight days longer on that coast, committing several other piracies,
but sparing the lives of those that made no resistance. When they
had got a sufficient booty they sailed for Barbary. Upon landing
they drew up an act of their seizure, in which they falsely declared
that Vincent and his companions had been taken on board of a Spanish
vessel, that the French consul might not challenge them. Then they
gave to every slave a pair of loose breeches, a linen jerkin, and a
bonnet. In this garb they were led five or six times through the city
of Tunis to be shown; after which they were brought back to their
vessel, where the merchants came to see them, as men do at the sale
of a horse or an ox. They examined who could eat well, felt their
sides, looked at their teeth to see who were of scorbutic habits of
body, consequently unlikely for very long life; they probed their
wounds, and made them walk and run in all paces, lift up burdens,
and wrestle, to judge of their strength. Vincent was bought by a
fisherman, who, finding that he could not bear the sea, soon sold
him again to an old physician, a great chemist and extractor of
essences, who had spent fifty years in search of the pretended
philosopher’s stone. He was humane, and loved Vincent exceedingly;
but gave him long lectures on his alchemy, and on the Mahometan law,
to which he used his utmost efforts to bring him over; promising,
on that condition, to leave him all his riches, and to communicate
to him, what he valued much more than his estate, all the secrets
of his pretended science. Vincent feared the danger of his soul
much more than all the hardships of his slavery, and most earnestly
implored the divine assistance against it, recommending himself
particularly to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, to which he
ever after attributed his victory over this temptation. He lived
with this old man from September 1605 to August 1606, when, by this
physician’s death, he fell to the share of a nephew of his master,
a true man-hater. By resignation to the divine will, and confidence
in providence, he enjoyed a sweet repose in his own heart under all
accidents, hardships, and dangers; and by assiduous devout meditation
on the sufferings of Christ, learned to bear all his afflictions with
comfort and joy, uniting himself in spirit with his Divine Redeemer,
and studying to copy in himself his lessons of perfect meekness,
patience, silence, and charity. This new master sold him in a short
time to a renegado Christian who came from Nice in Savoy. This man
sent him to his temat or farm situate on a hot desert mountain. This
apostate had three wives, of which one, who was a Turkish woman, went
often to the field where Vincent was digging, and out of curiosity
would ask him to sing the praises of God. He used to sing to her,
with tears in his eyes, the psalm _Upon the rivers of Babylon_, &c.
the Salve Regina, and such like prayers. She was so much taken with
our holy faith, and doubtless with the saintly deportment of the holy
slave, that she never ceased repeating to her husband, that he had
basely abandoned the only true religion, till like another Caiphas
or ass of Balaam, without opening her own eyes to the faith, she
made him enter into himself. Sincerely repenting of his apostasy,
he agrees with Vincent to make their escape together. They crossed
the Mediterranean sea in a small light boat which the least squall
of wind would overset; and they landed safe at Aigues-Mortes,
near Marseilles, on the 28th of June, 1607, and thence proceeded
to Avignon. The apostate made his abjuration in the hands of the
vice-legate, and the year following went with Vincent to Rome, and
there entered himself a penitent in the austere convent of the
Fate-Ben-Fratelli, who served the hospitals according to the rule of
St. John of God.
Vincent received great comfort at the sight of a place most venerable
for its pre-eminence in the church, which has been watered with the
blood of so many martyrs, and is honored with the tombs of the two
great apostles SS. Peter and Paul and many other saints. He was moved
to tears at the remembrance of their zeal, fortitude, humility,
and charity, and often devoutly visited their monuments, praying
earnestly that he might be so happy as to walk in their steps, and
imitate their virtues. After a short stay at Rome, to satisfy his
devotion, he returned to Paris, and took up his quarters in the
suburb of St. Germain’s. There lodged in the same house a gentleman,
the judge of a village near Bourdeaux, who happened to be robbed of
four hundred crowns. He charged Vincent with the theft, thinking it
could be nobody else; and in this persuasion he spoke against him
with the greatest virulence among all his friends, and wherever he
went. Vincent calmly denied the fact, saying, “God knows the truth.”
He bore this slander six years, without making any other defence,
or using harsh words or complaints, till the true thief being taken
up at Bourdeaux on another account, to appease his own conscience
and clear the innocent he sent for this judge, and confessed to
him the crime. St. Vincent related this in a spiritual conference
with his priests, but as of a third person; to show that patience,
humble silence, and resignation are generally the best defence of our
innocence, and always the happiest means of sanctifying our souls
under slanders and persecution; and we may be assured that providence
will in its proper time justify us, if expedient.
At Paris Vincent became acquainted with the holy priest Monsieur de
Berulle, who was afterward cardinal, and at that time was taken up
in founding the Congregation of the French Oratory. A saint readily
discovers a soul in which the spirit of God reigns. Berulle conceived
a great esteem for St. Vincent from his first conversation with
him; and to engage him in the service of his neighbor, he prevailed
with him first to serve as curate of the parish of Clichi, a small
village near Paris; and soon after to quit that employ to take
upon him the charge of preceptor to the children of Emmanuel de
Gondy, count of Joigny, general of the galleys of France. His lady,
Frances of Silly, a person of singular piety, was so taken with the
sanctity of Vincent, that she chose him for her spiritual director
and confessor. In the year 1616, whilst the countess of Joigny was
at a country seat at Folleville, in the diocess of Amiens, Vincent
was sent for to the village of Gannes, two leagues from Folleville,
to hear the confession of a countryman who lay dangerously ill.
The zealous priest, by carefully examining his penitent, found it
necessary to advise him to make a general confession, with which
the other joyfully complied. The penitent by this means discovered
that all his former confessions had been sacrilegious for want of a
due examination of his conscience; and afterward, bathed in tears,
he declared aloud, in transports of joy before many persons and the
countess of Joigny herself, that he should have been eternally lost
if he had not spoken to Vincent. The pious lady was struck with dread
and horror to hear of such past sacrileges, and to consider the
imminent danger of being damned in which that poor soul had been;
and she trembled lest some others among her vassals might have the
misfortune to be in the like case. Far from the criminal illusion
of pride by which some masters and mistresses seem persuaded that
they owe no care, attention, or provision to those whose whole life
is employed only to give them the fruit of their sweat and labors;
she was sensible from the principles both of nature and religion,
that masters or lords lie under strict ties of justice and charity
towards all committed to their care; and that they are bound in the
first place, as far as it lies in their power, to see them provided
with the necessary spiritual helps for their salvation. But to wave
the obligation, what Christian heart can pretend to the bowels of
charity, and be insensible at the dangers of such persons? The
virtuous countess felt in her own breast the strongest alarms for
so many poor souls, which she called her own by many titles. She
therefore entreated Vincent to preach in the church of Folleville,
on the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, in 1617, and fully to
instruct the people in the great duty of repentance and confession
of sins. He did so; and such crowds flocked to him to make general
confessions that he was obliged to call in the Jesuits of Amiens
to his assistance. The Congregation of the mission dates its first
institution from this time, and in thanksgiving for it, keeps the
25th of January with great solemnity.
By the advice of Monsieur de Berulle, St. Vincent left the house of
the countess in 1617, to employ his talents among the common people
in the villages of Bresse, where he heard they stood in great need
of instruction. He prevailed upon five other zealous priests to bear
him company, and with them formed a little community in the parish
of Chatillon in that province. He there converted by his sermons the
count of Rougemont and many others from their scandalous unchristian
lives to a state of eminent penance and fervor, and in a short time
changed the whole face of the country.[215] The good countess his
patroness was infinitely pleased with his success, and gave him
sixteen thousand livres to found a perpetual mission among the common
people in the place and manner he should think fit. But she could not
be easy herself whilst she was deprived of his direction and advice;
she therefore employed Monsieur de Berulle, and her brother-in-law
cardinal de Retz, to prevail with him to come to her, and extorted
from him a promise that he would never abandon the direction of her
conscience so long as she lived, and that he would assist her at her
death. But being extremely desirous that others, especially those
who were particularly entitled to her care and attention, should
want nothing that could contribute to their sanctification and
salvation, she induced her husband to concur with her in establishing
a company of able and zealous missionaries who should be employed in
assisting their vassals and farmers. This project they proposed to
their brother, John Francis of Gondi, the first archbishop of Paris,
and he gave the college of Bons Enfans for the reception of the new
community. All things being agreed on St. Vincent took possession of
this house in April 1625. The count and countess gave forty thousand
French livres to begin the foundation.
St. Vincent attended the countess till her pious death, which
happened on the 23d of June the same year; after which he joined
his Congregation. He drew up for it certain rules or constitutions
which were approved by pope Urban VIII., in 1632. King Louis XIII.
confirmed the establishment by letters patent, which he granted in
May the same year; and, in 1633, the regular canons of St. Victor
gave to this new institute the priory of St. Lazarus, which being
a spacious building was made the chief house of the Congregation,
and from it the Fathers of the Mission were often called Lazarites
or Lazarians. They are not religious men, but a Congregation of
secular priests, who after two years’ probation make four simple
vows, of poverty, chastity, obedience, and stability. They devote
themselves to labor, in the first place, in sanctifying their own
souls by the particular holy exercises prescribed in their institute;
secondly, in the conversion of sinners to God; and thirdly, in
training up clergymen for the ministry of the altar and the care
of souls. To attain the first end, their rule prescribes them an
hour’s meditation every morning, self-examination thrice every day,
spiritual conferences every week, a yearly retreat of eight days,
and silence except in the hours allowed for conversation. To comply
with the second obligation, they are employed eight months every year
in missions among the country people, staying three or four weeks
in each place which they visit, every day giving catechism, making
familiar sermons, hearing confessions, reconciling differences, and
performing all other works of charity. To correspond with the third
end which St. Vincent proposed to himself, some of this Congregation
undertake the direction of seminaries, and admit ecclesiastics or
others to make retreats of eight or ten days with them, to whom they
prescribe suitable exercises; and for these purposes excellent rules
are laid down by the founder. Pope Alexander VII., in 1662, enjoined
by a brief, that all persons who receive holy orders in Rome, or in
the six suffragan bishoprics, shall first make a retreat of ten days
under the direction of the fathers of this Congregation, under pain
of suspension. St. Vincent settled his institute also in the seminary
of St. Charles in Paris, and lived to see twenty-five houses of it
founded in France, Piedmont, Poland, and other places.
This foundation, though so extensive and beneficial, could not
satisfy the zeal of this apostolic man. He by every other means
studied to procure the relief of others under all necessities,
whether spiritual or corporal. For this purpose he established many
other confraternities, as that called Of Charity, to attend all poor
sick persons in each parish; which institution he began in Bresse,
and propagated in other places where he made any missions; one
called Of the Dames of the Cross, for the education of young girls;
another of Dames to serve the sick in great hospitals, as in that
of Hotel Dieu in Paris. He procured and directed the foundation of
several great hospitals, as in Paris that of foundlings, or those
children who, for want of such a provision, are exposed to the utmost
distress, or to the barbarity of unnatural parents; also that of poor
old men; at Marseilles the stately hospital for the galley-slaves,
who, when sick, are there abundantly furnished with every help both
corporal and spiritual. All these establishments he settled under
excellent regulations, and supplied with large sums of money to
defray all necessary expenses. He instituted a particular plan of
spiritual exercises for those that are about to receive holy orders;
and others for those who desire to make general confessions, or to
deliberate upon the choice of a state of life. He also appointed
regular ecclesiastical conferences on the duties of the clerical
state, &c. It must appear almost incredible that so many and so great
things could have been effected by one man, and a man who had no
advantage from birth, fortune, or any shining qualities which the
world admires and esteems. But our surprise would be much greater
if we could enter into a detail of his wonderful actions, and the
infinite advantages which he procured others. During the wars in
Lorrain, being informed of the miseries to which those provinces
were reduced, he collected charities among pious persons at Paris,
which were sent thither, to the amount of fifteen or sixteen thousand
livres, says Abelly; nay, as Collet proves from authentic vouchers,
of two millions, that is, according to the value of money at that
time, considerably above one hundred thousand pounds sterling; and he
did the like on other occasions. He assisted King Louis XIII. at his
death, and by his holy advice and exhortations that monarch expired
in perfect sentiments of piety and resignation. Our saint was in the
highest favor with the queen regent, Anne of Austria, who nominated
him a member of the young king’s Council of Conscience, and consulted
him in all ecclesiastical affairs, and in the collation of benefices;
which office he discharged ten years.
Amidst so many and so great employs his soul seemed always united
to God; in the most distracting affairs it kept, as it were, an eye
always open to him, in order to converse continually with him. This
constant attention to him he often renewed, and always when the
clock struck, by making the sign of the cross (at least secretly
with his thumb upon his breast) with an act of divine love. Under
all crosses, disappointments, and slanders, he always preserved a
perfect serenity and evenness of mind, which it did not seem in the
power of the whole world to disturb; for he considered all events
only with a view to the divine will, and with an entire resignation
to it, having no other desire but that God should be glorified in
all things. Whether this was to be done by his own disgrace and
sufferings, or by whatever other means it pleased the divine majesty,
he equally rejoiced. Not that he fell into the pretended apathy or
insensibility of the proud Stoics, or into the impious indifference
of the false Mystics, afterwards called Quietists, than which nothing
is more contrary to true piety, which is always tender, affectionate,
and most sensible to all the interests of charity and religion. This
was the character of our saint, who regarded the afflictions of
all others as his own, sighed continually with St. Paul after that
state of glory in which he should be united inseparably to his God,
and poured forth his soul before him with tears over his own and
others’ spiritual miseries. Having his hope fixed as a firm anchor
in God, by an humble reliance on the divine mercy and goodness, he
seemed raised above the reach of the malice of creatures, or the
frowns of the world; and he enjoyed a tranquillity within his breast
which no storms were able to ruffle or disturb. So perfect was the
mastery which he had gained over his passions, that his meekness and
patience seemed unalterable, whatever provocations he met with. He
was never moved by affronts, unless to rejoice secretly under them,
because he was sure to find in them a hidden treasure of grace, and
an opportunity of vanquishing himself. This is the fruit of the
victory which perfect virtue gains over self-love; and it is a more
perfect sacrifice to God, a surer test of sincere virtue, a more
heroic victory, and a more glorious triumph of the soul to bear a
slander, an injurious suspicion, or an unjust insult, in silence and
patience, than the most shining exterior act of virtue; a language
often repeated, but little understood or practised among Christians.
Perfect self-denial, the most profound humility, and an eminent
spirit of prayer were the means by which St. Vincent attained to
this degree of perfection; and he most earnestly recommended the
same to his disciples. Humility he would have them to make the basis
of his Congregation, and it was the lesson which he never ceased to
repeat to them, that they ought to study sincerely to conceal even
their natural talents. When two persons of extraordinary learning
and abilities once presented themselves, desiring to be admitted
into his Congregation, he gave them both a repulse, telling them,
“Your abilities raise you above our low state. Your talents may be of
good service in some other place. As for us, our highest ambition is
to instruct the ignorant, to bring sinners to a spirit of penance,
and to plant the gospel-spirit of charity, humility, meekness, and
simplicity in the hearts of all Christians.” He laid it down also as
a rule of humility, that, if possible, a man ought never to speak
of himself or his own concerns, such discourse usually proceeding
from, and nourishing in the heart, pride and self-love. This indeed
is a rule prescribed by Confucius, Aristotle, Cato, Pliny, and other
philosophers; because, say they, for any one to boast of himself is
always the most intolerable and barefaced pride, and modesty in such
discourse will be suspected of secret vanity. Egotism, or the itch
of speaking always of a man’s self, shows he is intoxicated with the
poison of self-love, refers everything to himself, and is his own
centre, than which scarce anything can be more odious and offensive
to others. But Christian humility carries this maxim higher, teaching
us to love a hidden life, and to lie concealed and buried, as being
in ourselves nothingness and sin.
St. Vincent exerted his zeal against the novelties concerning
the article of divine grace which sprang up in his time. Michael
Baius, doctor and professor of divinity at Louvain, advanced a new
doctrine concerning the grace conferred on man in the two states
before and after Adam’s fall, and some other speculative points;
and pope Pius V. in 1567, condemned seventy-six propositions under
his name. Some of these, Baius confessed he had taught, and these
he solemnly revoked and sincerely condemned with all the rest in
1580, in presence of F. Francis Toletus, afterward cardinal, whom
Gregory XIII. had sent for that very purpose to Louvain. Cornelius
Jansenius and John Verger, commonly called Abbé de St. Cyran,
contracted a close friendship together during their studies first
at Louvain, afterward at Paris, and concerted a plan of a new
system of doctrine concerning divine grace, founded, in part, upon
some of the condemned errors of Baius. This system Jansenius, by
his friend’s advice, endeavored to establish in a book, which from
St. Austin, the great doctor of grace, he entitled, Augustinus.
After having been bishop of Ipres from 1635 to 1638, he died of the
pestilence, having never published his book, in the close of which
he inserted a declaration that he submitted his work to the judgment
of the Church.[216] Fromond, another Louvanian divine, and abler
scholar, and a more polite writer, polished the style of this book,
and put it in the press.[217] Verger became director of the nuns
of Port-Royal, had read some ancient writers on books of devotion,
and wrote with ease.[218] But his very works on subjects of piety,
however neatly written, betray the author’s excessive presumption and
forbidding self-sufficiency. He became the most strenuous advocate
for Jansenism, and was detained ten years prisoner in the castle of
Vincennes. He died soon after he had recovered his liberty, in 1643.
This man had by his reputation gained the esteem of St. Vincent; but
the saint hearing him one day advance his errors, and add that the
Church had failed for five or six hundred years past, he was struck
with horror, and from that moment renounced the friendship of so
dangerous a person. When these errors were afterward more publicly
spread abroad, he strenuously exerted himself against them; on which
account Gerberon, the Jansenistical historian, makes him the butt
of his rancor and spleen. But general and vague invectives of the
enemies to truth are the commendation of his piety and zeal.[219] Our
saint’s efforts to destroy that heresy, says Abelly, never made him
approve a loose morality, which on all occasions he no less avoided
and abhorred than the errors of the Jansenists. He was particularly
careful in insisting on all the conditions of true repentance to
render it sincere and perfect; for want of which he used to say with
St. Ambrose, that some pretended penitents are rendered more criminal
by their sacrilegious hypocrisy in the abuse of so great a sacrament,
than they were by all their former sins.
In the year 1658 St. Vincent assembled the members of his
Congregation at St. Lazarus, and gave to every one a small book of
rules which he had compiled. At the same time he made a pathetic
exhortation, to enforce the most exact and religious observance of
them. This Congregation was again approved and confirmed by Alexander
VII., and Clement X. St. Vincent was chosen by St. Francis of Sales
director of his nuns of the Visitation that were established at
Paris. The robust constitution of the zealous servant of God was
impaired by his uninterrupted fatigues and austerities. In the
eightieth year of his age he was seized with a periodical fever,
with violent night sweats. After passing the night almost without
sleep, and in an agony of pain, he never failed to rise at four in
the morning, to spend three hours in prayer, to say mass every day
(except on the three first days of his annual retreat, according
to the custom he had established), and to exert, as usual, his
indefatigable zeal in the exercises of charity and religion. He
even redoubled his diligence in giving his last instructions to his
spiritual children; and recited every day after mass the prayers of
the Church for persons in their agony, with the recommendation of
the soul, and other preparatory acts for his last hour. Alexander
VII. in consideration of the extreme weakness to which his health
was reduced, sent him a brief to dispense him from reciting his
breviary; but before it arrived the servant of God had finished the
course of his labors. Having received the last sacraments and given
his last advice, he calmly expired in his chair, on the 27th of
September 1660, being fourscore and five years old. He was buried in
the church of St. Lazarus in Paris, with an extraordinary concourse
and pomp. An account of several predictions of this servant of
God, and some miraculous cures performed by him whilst alive, may
be read in his life written by Collet,[220] with a great number of
miracles wrought through his intercession after his death at Paris,
Angiers, Sens, in Italy, &c. Mr. Bonnet, superior of the seminary at
Chartres, afterward general of the Congregation, by imploring this
saint’s intercession, was healed instantaneously of an inveterate
entire rupture, called by the physicians _entero-epiplo-celle_,[221]
which had been declared by the ablest surgeons absolutely incurable;
this miracle was approved by cardinal Noailles. Several like cures
of fevers, hemorrhages, palsies, dysenteries, and other distempers
were juridically proved. A girl eight years old, both dumb and lame,
was cured by a second Novena or nine days’ devotion performed for
her by her mother in honor of St. Vincent. His body was visited by
cardinal Noailles in presence of many witnesses, in 1712, and found
entire and fresh, and the linen cloths in the same condition as if
they were new. The tomb was then shut up again. This ceremony is
usually performed before the beatification of a servant of God,
though the incorruption of the body by itself is not regarded as a
miraculous proof at Rome or elsewhere, as Collet remarks.[222] After
the ordinary rigorous examinations of the conduct, heroic virtues,
and miracles of this saint at Rome, pope Benedict XIII. performed
with great solemnity the ceremony of his beatification, in 1729. Upon
the publication of the brief thereof, the archbishop of Paris caused
the grave to be again opened. The lady marechale of Noailles, the
marshal her son, and many other persons were present; but the flesh
on the legs and head appeared corrupted, which alteration from the
state in which it was found twenty-seven years before, was attributed
to a flood of water which twelve years before this had overflowed
that vault. Miracles continued frequently to be wrought by the
relics and invocation of St. Vincent. A Benedictin nun at Montmirel,
afflicted with a violent fever, retention of urine, ulcers, and other
disorders, her body being swelled to an enormous size, and having
been a long time paralytic, was perfectly cured all at once by a
relic of St. Vincent applied to her by Monseigneur Joseph Languet,
then bishop of Soissons. Francis Richer, in Paris, was healed in a no
less miraculous manner. Miss Louisa Elizabeth Sackville, an English
young lady at Paris, was cured of a palsy by performing a novena at
the tomb of St. Vincent; which miracle was attested in the strongest
manner, among others, by Mrs. Hayes, a protestant gentlewoman with
whom she lodged. Miss Sackville became afterward a nun in the French
abbey called of the Holy Sacrament, in Paris, lived ten years without
any return of her former disorder, and died in 1742. St. Vincent was
canonized in 1737 by pope Clement XII.
* * * * *
This saint could not display his zeal more to the advantage of his
neighbor than by awaking Christians from the spiritual lethargy in
which so many live. He set before their eyes the grievous disorder
of lukewarmness in the divine service, and explained to them, like
another Baptist, the necessity and obligations of sincere repentance;
for those certainly can never be entitled to the divine favor who
live in an ambiguous, divided, and distracted state of sinning
and repenting; of being heathens and Christians by turns. Still
more dreadful is the state of those who live in habitual sin, yet
are insensible of their danger, and frightful miseries! Into what
extravagance, folly, spiritual blindness, and sometimes incredulity,
do men’s passions often plunge them! To what a degree of madness and
stupidity do men of the finest natural parts sink, when abandoned by
God! or rather when they themselves abandon God, and that light which
he has set up in the world! Let us by tears and prayers implore the
divine mercy in favor of all blind sinners.