The Lives of the Saints through 100 Masterpieces

Vincent de Paul

The Lives of the Saints 214 Vincent de Paul September 27 No legendary saint can have had a life as eventful, as adventurous, and as full of the unexpected as did the very real Vincent, born in 1581 of a peasant family in the village of Pouy, in Gascony, France. A few years after being ordained a priest, he was captured by Turks and sold as a slave in Tunis. His master was a renegade from Savoy whom Vincent brought back to the Christian faith, and together they escaped to gain the shores of Italy. This adventure earned for him an audience with the pope, and then a position as chaplain to Queen Margot, the spouse of Henry IV of France. However, he preferred to become a simple parish priest in Clichy, while also tutoring the children of the Prince of Gondi, general of the galleys. So it was that Vincent discovered the galley men. Able diplomat that he was, he got himself appointed chaplain to the head of the galleys so as to be able to help those utterly destitute men. The peasants in the far countryside fared only slightly better than the galley workers, so he founded the Congregation of Priests of the Mission (or Lazarists) to reevangelize the more remote areas of France. His method was to have one foot in the royal court, and the other among the most miserable, capitalizing on his sway over the powerful to come to the aid of the most deprived. Thus he founded a hospice for children to save abandoned babies, created an establishment to take in “repentant maidens,” and founded a religious order most original for his time—the Daughters of Charity, nuns who were not cloistered but, quite the contrary, roamed the streets to care for the sick and elderly. Concurrently with his charitable activities, Saint Vincent played an important political role. From the vantage point of his influence at court, which he continued to frequent, he fought the Jansenist heresy—which denied the supernatural order and the love of God for souls—and even pursued wayward priests and worldly bishops. By the time he died in 1660, his reputation as a saint was everywhere acknowledged. He was canonized in 1737. Antoine Engeller (copy of a painting of the Dominican Friar André, 1700) Saint Vincent de Paul Preaching Church of Our Lady of Fontenayle -Comte, France ...