The Vincentians: A General History of the Congregation of the Mission. Vol. I: From the Foundation to the End of the Seventeenth Century, 1625–1697 (review)

This volume, originally published in 1992, is part of a planned five-volume general history of the Congregation of the Mission, founded by St. Vincent de Paul. The first two volumes have appeared in French and Italian, and the present work is a competent and readable English translation of the first volume.

The authors want "to help the current (Vincentian) community understand its history better." They set out to present the "essential facts" employing "an historical framework that is global and sufficiently scientific." Further, the authors state they made the "important choice" to "favor the story 'of the Missioners' over what we call 'the mission.'" They note, "At the center of the story are people, not institutions" (p. 6).

This is an unevenly written and repetitive work that lacked a strong editorial hand at the time of its original European publication. The best chapters provide interesting and valuable descriptions of the community life and ministerial experiences of early Vincentians. Statistical analyses are strongly supportive of the narrative at these points.

However, the work suffers from the authors' choice to define "the mission" as the story of "institutions" rather than the story of how a transcendent religious charism institutionalized by a saintly founder evolves as its members individually and collectively struggle (sometimes successfully and sometimes not) to remain faithful amid the constant change produced by the forces of history and faith.

Unfortunately, the authors also fail to provide and interpret adequately the "essential facts," including the development of the early-modern European confessional absolutist state (particularly Bourbon France) and the interplay of the theological, disciplinary, and spiritual forces of the Tridentine reforms in France. Examples of this include their unfocused descriptions of the history and context of the Gallican/Ultramontane struggles during the reign of King Louis XIV, and the nature and consequences of the legal and religious relationship of the congregation to the French state first created by King Louis XIII's approval of the community in 1627.

The authors also present their judgments about the congregation's history and the founder's intentions in the light of contemporary choices of how to live out that charism. One major problem that plagued the Congregation of the Mission for most of its history was nationalistic divisions, specifically the "problems with French identity." These divisions took place when Vincent's call for absolute unity and uniformity (as an infallible basis for authenticity and efficacy) were narrowly identified by a community headquartered in Paris, with a dominant French leadership that believed French cultural and spiritual practices naturally provided a firm foundation for a French community that had become international. The authors note:

This is not what St. Vincent had intended. He had wanted a French community of evangelizers, not exporters of a culture and hegemony. He wanted to sow charity abroad, not colonies for Paris-something that, however, would be attempted in China and in other countries in the following two centuries.

(p.100)

For the authors, the interpretation of Vincentian history seems to be too easily settled by the sentence "this is not what St. Vincent had intended." Such sweeping generalizations, supported by debatable historical evidence, but made definitive by a direct appeal to a religious founder do not help this study fulfill its stated purposes.