Vincent de Paul, Saint

VINCENT DE PAUL (or Depaul, as he signed; Italian de' Paoli), Saint. - B. at Pony near Dax in Gascony on 24 April 1585, d. at Paris on 27 Sept. 1660.

Of a very modest peasant family, he was the third of the six children of Jean (d. 1598) and of Bertrande de Moras (d. after 1610); he studied at Dax, then at Toulouse, where in 1604 he became a bachelor of theology. Ordained a priest on 23 Sept. 1600, he moved to Paris in 1609 in the hope of obtaining a benefice. In 1610 he became almoner to Margaret of Valois, on 17 May 1610 he obtained the abbey of St-Léonard-de-Chaumes, and on 6 May 1612 the parish of Clichy-la-Garenne. Meanwhile he had come to know Pierre de Bérulle (v.) and received the imprint of his spirituality. He did not abandon his studies in the meantime, and in 1623 he obtained the licentiate in canon law.

He held the parish of Clichy until 1626, and meanwhile for half a year in 1617 that of Châtillon-des-Dombes; he was first a tutor, then almoner (1618) to Philippe-Emmanuel de Gondi, general of the galleys. In Dec. 1618 he met St. Francis de Sales in Paris, and the following year St. Jane Frances de Chantal, who had arrived for the founding of the monastery of the Visitation. In 1622 St. V. was designated by St. Francis himself as superior of the nuns, whom he continued to govern until the end of his life. A few years later St. V. was also in close contact with the famous abbot of Saint-Cyran (v.), whom he tried in vain to hold back and to withdraw from the baneful influence of the doctrines that manifested themselves and spread under the name of Jansenism. The contacts extended also to Antoine Arnauld and to Mother Marie Angélique, but the orthodoxy of St. V. was never clouded: he always professed the greatest devotion to the Holy See, accepted without any reservation the condemnation of the 5 famous propositions, and always took care to keep his own on guard against the factious activity of the new heretics. The Saint also took his stand against incipient Quietism, and likewise took a large part against that mania for dueling which was the cause of so much mourning among the French nobility. His spiritual activity in the various fields brought the Saint close not only to the better part of the Parisian upper class but also to the court: first to Louis XIII and to Card. de Richelieu, then especially to Anne of Austria, regent after the King's death (d. in May 1643). In 1644 he was called to be a member of that Council of Conscience which had among its attributions especially the handling of the ecclesiastical affairs of the Kingdom; but the spiritual influence of St. V. cast a shadow over the powerful Card. Mazarin, the Queen's minister, who no longer took part in it after 1654 and was always regarded with distrust by Mazarin, also because he was always for peace on the occasion of the disputes of the Fronde. The field of activity of St. V. was Paris, and it unfolded along three principal paths: the first is that of assistance to the poor. To this end, as early as 1617 he had organized at Châtillon a Confraternity of Charity to provide for the poor who were sick and needy; he founded a similar one in 1623 at Clichy, and others were founded on the example of these in the parishes of France. But especially in Paris the Saint associated the Ladies of Charity (v.) with those forms of beneficence that the manifold miseries of a great city required. There was no misery he did not seek to meet, beginning with those of the condemned to the galleys, up to the Christian slaves in Barbary; from beggars to prisoners, from abandoned infants to women in danger or fallen. He interested the Ladies in the miseries of the sick at the Hôtel-Dieu, in particular to prepare them for death; and to help the Ladies he called in the Daughters of Charity (v.), to whom he gave little by little an organization of their own. In the public calamities caused by wars and riots he came to meet the immense needs of the most desolate provinces of Lorraine (1638), of the Île-de-France (1648), of Picardy (1650).

The Saint's second concern was that of the sanctification of the people by means of a humble and simple preaching and of frequent missions, and for this he hastened to associate with it zealous priests whom he gathered into the Congregation of the Mission (v.). For this purpose he had the Collège des Bons-Enfants (1625) with a suitable endowment which Madame de Gondi provided. In Jan. 1632 the missionaries also obtained the priory of St. Lazarus, which belonged to the Canons Regular, and from it they took their name in France. Besides the missions of the French people, they later also took on those of the infidels, particularly in Madagascar. With the institution of the Missionaries is also closely connected the Saint's third concern: that of the reform of the clergy, which he attended to through ecclesiastical retreats (1633), the Association of the Tuesday conferences, and the seminaries (1642).

Undeniably in the development of this activity of his the Saint had the help and cooperation of many, and the Company of the Most Blessed Sacrament (v.), begun in 1630, must not be forgotten, of which he was a member even before 1637; but while this came to an end in 1666 because of the hostility of the court, the Saint's work expanded more and more, nor did the Revolution succeed in preventing it from coming to life again. When he died, his influence had crossed the frontiers of his country. The cause of beatification began in 1697 and ended on 21 Aug. 1729; in 1737 Clement XII canonized him, and on 12 May 1885 Leo XIII proclaimed him patron of the works of charity. His feast for the universal Church is 19 July.

THE WRITINGS

St. V. published only the Règles ou Constitutions communes de la Congrégation de la Mission (Paris 1658). Nevertheless, in 1748 the letters he had signed were estimated at 30,000. The Coste edition contains in its first 8 vols. those that have been preserved, that is, fewer than 300, addressed to 400 different correspondents, of every social condition, of first-rate interest for the history of religious life in the 17th century. Of the Entretiens aux Filles de la Charité the text of 120 conferences is preserved (tt. IX and X of the Coste ed.), living models of catechesis, which use with equal effectiveness Sacred Scripture and the events of everyday life. The Coste edition in its vols. XI and XII gives 224 texts or summaries of allocutions addressed to the priests of the Mission; and of a particularly direct and vigorous spiritual teaching. The doctrine that St. V. teaches certainly goes back to that of de Bérulle and of St. Francis de Sales, whose works he assiduously read, but passed through and lived through his own experience and his own spiritual rethinking. In the face of Quietist degenerations and Jansenist rigorism it represents the continuation of the best French ascetic current.

Pio Paschini-Andrea Dodin