Author: bcicirel

Newsnote: Carte de Visite: Jean-Baptiste Etienne c. 1870

bcicirel Vincentian Heritage, Vincentian History ,

 

The Vincentiana Collection of the Archives and Special Collections Department of DePaul University has acquired a carte-de-visite of Jean-Baptiste Etienne (1801-1874) the 14th superior general of the Congregation of the Mission and the Company of the Daughters of Charity. The image shows an elderly Etienne. It is estimated to have bee taken c. 1870 when Monsieur Etienne celebrated the 50th anniversary of his entrance into the Congregation. Cartes-de-visite were tremendously popular in mid to late 19th century France, and photography studios sprung up throughout Paris and the rest of France.

The photographer August Coudret had his studio on the boulevard Saint-Jacques. He began his professional work in 1867, thus supporting the dating of this photograph as c. 1870.

Vincent De Paul, The Lazarist Mission, And French Catholic Reform

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Lecture Topic: Vincent de Paul, the Lazarist Mission, and French Catholic Reform offers a major re-assessment of the thought and activities of the most famous figure of the seventeenth-century French Catholic Reformation, Vincent de Paul. Confronting traditional explanations for de Paul’s prominence in the dévot reform movement that emerged in the wake of the Wars of Religion, the volume explores how he turned a personal vocational desire to evangelize the rural poor of France into a congregation of secular missionaries, known as the Congregation of the Mission or the Lazarists, with three inter-related strands of pastoral responsibility: the delivery of missions, the formation and training of clergy, and the promotion of confraternal welfare. Alison Forrestal further demonstrates that the structure, ethos, and works that de Paul devised for the Congregation placed it at the heart of a significant enterprise of reform that involved a broad set of associates in efforts to transform the character of devotional belief and practice within the church. The central questions of the volume therefore concern de Paul’s efforts to create, characterize, and articulate a distinctive and influential vision for missionary life and work, both for himself and for the Lazarist Congregation, and Forrestal argues that his prominence and achievements depended on his remarkable ability to exploit the potential for association and collaboration within the dévotenvironment of seventeenth-century France in enterprising and systematic ways.

This is the first study to assess de Paul’s activities against the wider backdrop of religious reform and Bourbon rule, and to reconstruct the combination of ideas, practices, resources, and relationships that determined his ability to pursue his ambitions. A work of forensic detail and complex narrative, Vincent de Paul, the Lazarist Mission, and French Catholic Reform is the product of years of research in ecclesiastical and state archives. It offers a wholly fresh perspective on the challenges and opportunities entailed in the promotion of religious reform and renewal in seventeenth-century France.

Speaker Bio: Alison Forrestal, Acting Head and Lecturer in History, School of Humanities, National University of Ireland, Galway. She is Lecturer in Early Modern History at the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG), having previously held lectureships at Durham University and the University of Warwick. She is the author of multiple publications on the Catholic Reformation, including the monographs Catholic Synods in Ireland, 1600-1690 (1998), and Fathers, Pastors and Kings: Visions of Episcopacy in Seventeenth-Century France(2004), and the co-edited volumes Politics and Religion in EarlyBourbon France (2009), and The Frontiers of Mission: Perspectives on Early Modern Missionary Catholicism (2016).

Surrogate Fathers, Journal of Ecclesiastical History

bcicirel Vincentian Heritage, Vincentian History

An article written on the Lazarist successions to the Jesuits after their abolition in the eighteenth century in various locations has been published today by the Journal of Ecclesiastical History. This is the second output from my recent research project, begun with funding from the VSI and then the Irish Research Council. My article published by the Vincentian Heritage Journal last year dealt solely with the Evora succession; in contrast this article leans on records I found in Italy, Germany, France and elsewhere.

The team at JEH also put together some excellent tabular information based on my research, which is included in the article.

For the link see
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-ecclesiastical-h…

Publication news. History of Daughters of Charity in Britain 1847-2017

bcicirel Vincentian Heritage, Vincentian History

Leaving God for God: Daughters of Charity in Britain 1847-2017

Leaving God for God is a study of five generations of Catholic Sisters in Britain from 1847 to 2017 and of their wide-ranging ministries to people in poverty.

Written with full access to the Daughters of Charity’s archives in London and Paris, this study assesses how the Sisters lived out their undertaking to serve the most marginalised in society in the modern era, coming up to the present day. Themes explored in the book include: the nature of the Daughters’ community culture; the development of Marian devotional life in Britain; the influence of lay and religious status and gender on the Church’s mission at home and overseas; the Sisters’ engagement in civil society and with the State; their response to the Second Vatican Council; and the interplay of national identities in Catholic Britain.

The history of Catholicism in England and Scotland is seen in fresh perspective through the lens of this singular transnational community of women. Their history, it is argued, challenges both the mainstream narrative about the nature of philanthropy and charity in Britain and the Church’s narrative about Catholic Sisters in the twentieth century.

Published in hardback by Darton, Longman and Todd Leaving God for God (448pp) is fully referenced and indexed and includes 64 pages of full-colour visual essays and a Gazetteer providing details on every House opened and closed by the Sisters since 1847.

Susan O’Brien is currently a senior member of St Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge and former Principal of the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology in Cambridge.

On sale from the Daughters of Charity in Britain through their website

http://www.daughtersofcharity.org.uk/LeavingGodforGod.aspx ; for £20 plus £3 packing and postage

or via Darton Longman and Todd and Amazon for £25 (UK)

Colombia…4 months later

bcicirel Catholicism, Christianity, DePaul Interfaith Programs, DePaul University, Global Interfaith Movement, Reflection, Seeds of Mission, Service, Social Justice

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(by Justine Carlson)

Human dignity is not negotiable.

This was a nugget of wisdom that I learned back in December while I was in Bogota, Colombia. It speaks volumes as to how one would answer the Vincentian question; What must be done? There is more that needs to be done than I realized. I was catching up with an old friend the other day and he asked me about my trip to South America a couple months back. I was taken back to the place where forgiveness, human dignity, reconciliation, faith, education, and power were normalized and brought into a new light.

 

One of the several greatest lessons I learned in Colombia was how education, religion, politics, and social justice can be intersectional. I am still trying to figure this out today as I witness several minority groups suffering and not provided with the same rights as the majority. As a Roman Catholic, my continuing question is how can I be an ally? How can I help? My time in Colombia has made me appreciate religious diversity, even more so than I did before. While most the country identifies as a Catholic/Christian country, how one lives out their faith there is different based on the individual through education, political participation, giving back to their local communities, and many other ways.

 

Another highlight that I took away from this experience was their approach to nonviolence. In Colombia during this time, part of the national peace agreement had passed, which grants equitable and equal human rights for all. This was a true historical moment for them. One last piece of wisdom that I’ll never forget is that faith is about uncertainty. Similarly, to the United States, many are uncertain of what their future will hold for them. It is not as easy as it sounds, but having a small bit of a hope and/or ounce of faith is how the people in Colombia that were experiencing trauma, homelessness, violence, whatever it may be, continue living the fullest life. Faith through resilience.

Eugène Boré: a letter from Azerbaijan

bcicirel Vincentian Heritage, Vincentian History

This letter, which I found recently in the British Library, is from Eugène Boré, one-time Lazarist superior general, penned from Julfa in Azerbaijan on 6 August 1841.

Boré, of course, needs little introduction. At least since 1894, when Léonce de la Rallaye wrote his first biography of the man (see Eugène Boré et les origines de la question d’Orient, Paris 1894), Boré’s contributions to the fields of education, philology and ethnography have been well established. Yet the fruits of his travels, which drew him successively from cities in the Middle East and the Ottoman Empire, deserve deeper scrutiny.

This letter, which seems to have escaped the notice of his biographers, serves as a suitable show-piece for a new project on information gathering and semi-official diplomacy by missionaries, especially the Lazarists, in the Middle East during the nineteenth century. As always the Lazarists were adept at weaving connections of high standing. Several features of this particular missive showcase this. For one, it was addressed to Sir Austen Layard (1817-1894), the famous British archaeologist and diplomat. It seems Boré had created strong links with Layard – who was busy excavating the famous cities of Nimrud and Ninevah near Mosul in the 1840s – for he addresses him in tender language and invites him to stay with him on his journey through Persia.

More importantly, however, is the network of information-gatherers that emerges from the epistle. European travellers were still scarce in this region, and much diplomatic information passed through letters between visiting clergy and hommes de lettres. In one part of the letter Boré writes: “I have learnt that the British Embassy is returning to Teheran near the end of September, or at least so the rumour goes and people are saying that the mission is still entrusted to M. MacNeil.”

The MacNeil in question was, of course, Sir John MacNeil (1795-1883) secretary of the special embassy in Teheran and envoy to Persia up to 1844. This was not the only illustrious name mentioned in Boré’s letter. Later, he mentions that the last letter he received from Layard was passed to him from “Monsieur the Baron de Bode”. The baron in question was Clemen Augustus, Baron de Bode (1806-1887), Russian aristocrat, traveller and writer. (See C.A. de Bode, Travels in Luristan and Arabistan, London 1845).

That two prominent names mentioned here should proceed from the realms of England and Russia is not surprising. Soon, the rivalry between the two nations in Asian politics would become known as the Great Game, a long period of Anglo-Russian confrontation in Iran and elsewhere. Boré was of course no stranger to this: he was famously deputed by Louis Napoleon Bonaparte to safeguard French interests at Holy Sites in the Middle East in advance of the Crimean War (1853-1856). On the wider work of travellers like Boré, Layard and de Bode in this prickly period, Elena Andreeva’s edited collection Russia and Iran in the Great Game: Travelogues and Orientalism(London and NY, 2007) is a good start.

To be sure, Boré’s role in many events in this period is well known, even if stray letters such as this one slumber in foreign repositories. As a group, however, the work of the entire Lazarist network in the Middle East remains untilled territory. More surprises may yet come from their labours!

Forthcoming Publication Announcement “In Missouri’s Wilds St. Mary of the Barrens and the American Catholic Church, 1818 to the present.”

bcicirel Vincentian Heritage, Vincentian History

From the publisher Truman State University Press
“In 1818, a small group of Catholic clerics established a religious community in southeastern Missouri and opened a school, grounded in its European Vincentian roots but influenced by the isolation of its rural location. St. Mary’s of the Barrens because the first American institution of higher learning west of the Mississippi River and only the fourth Catholic seminary in the United States. Over the years, St. Mary’s emerged as a significant institution whose early leaders played an important role in the development of the Catholic Church on the American frontier. The school’s subsequent history reflected the changing status of the growing American Catholic community. In this history of “the Barrens,” Rick Janet demonstrates how its story reflects the broader sweep of the American Catholic experience.”

Richard J. Janet currently serves as professor of history at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, where he has taught since 1985. He received the PhD in modern European history from the University of Notre Dame. Janet is the author of numerous articles, essays, and reviews (both scholarly and popular). His work on the history of the Congregation of the Mission in the United States is supported by the Vincentian Studies Institute of DePaul University.

ISBN: 978161281982
Available as an ebook and paperback edition.

That Countercultural Virtue

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In this meditation, Fr. Jack Melito, C.M., focuses on the virtue of Simplicity as understood and lived by Vincent de Paul.  Experiencing the God of the Universe while living a life of Simplicity reveals to the practitioner the efficacious nature of that virtue.  In whatever age, a life ordered by the virtue of Simplicity is a life readily identified as countercultural.

“Simplicity: A Countercultural Value” is a chapter from the book Windows on His Vision (pp. 146-147) available at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/windows/2/

It is also available as an ebook here: https://via.library.depaul.edu/vincentian_ebooks/8/