The Vincentian Studies Institute in the Division of Mission & Ministry Vincentian Heritage Journal: A Call for Proposals Proposal Submission Deadline: July 31, 2020

2020: DePaul University’s Community Responds to Crises

The DePaul University Vincentian Studies Institute would like to invite everyone from our community—faculty, staff, students, and alumni—to participate in a special call to submit publishable materials dedicated to the unprecedented crises we have been challenged to confront in 2020. Covid-19 has disrupted daily life and led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. At DePaul it has forced us to change how we work, how we teach, and how we learn. How has it changed you? Our nation has also erupted in protests over the brutal killing of George Floyd. His senseless death has reignited the Black Lives Matter movement and challenges us as a people to dismantle inequality, oppression, and systemic racism in the pursuit of justice. How has this affected you, your colleagues, or your family? How has your perception of DePaul, of Chicago, of our country, been changed? Considering both crises and their effect on marginalized peoples how do we see that they interplay? How can we move forward? How can our Vincentian values help guide us through this time of great pain and suffering? Ultimately, we would like to know, how have we responded as a Vincentian higher learning community?

What We Are Asking of You

We are asking for your contributions in the hope that they help us to reflect on what has happened and is still happening. Every type of production is welcomed: academic papers, short essays, poems, fiction, paintings, photographs, videos, etc. Individual or collective proposals are welcomed. Shorter works will be featured online, promoted by the Division of Mission & Ministry, and shared with the university community. Longer written works may be featured in a special collection published in the VSI’s scholarly journal Vincentian Heritage.

Process to Contribute

  • We ask that you submit your Proposal or short summary of your intended contribution, to: nmichaud@depaul.edu Please do so before July 31, 2020.
  • Proposals will be reviewed by the VSI board and you will be notified of their decision by August 21, 2020.
  • Once accepted, final drafts of your contributed work must be received by January 15, 2021.

New free to download eBook A General History of the Congregation of the Mission by Claude-Joseph Lacour, C.M.

The DePaul University Vincentian Studies Institute in the Department of Mission & Ministry, Chicago, Illinois, is pleased to announce our English language translation of A General History of the Congregation of the Mission Beginning after the Death of Blessed Vincent de Paul, by Claude-Joseph Lacour, C.M. This new title is offered free-of-charge to the public and is available for download now.

This work is the earliest known history of the Congregation of the Mission and dates from about 1730. Vincentian historian John E. Rybolt, C.M., building on the initiative of Stafford Poole, C.M., completed this English translation from the original French. The author, Claude-Joseph Lacour, C.M. (1672-1731), drew from already published materials and his own recollections. While the story he tells may seem familiar, Lacour included materials that are unknown anywhere else and delivers a first-hand account of the Congregation’s rapid growth in those early days. The text is essential reading for anyone wishing to better understand Vincent de Paul’s society of apostolic life of priests and brothers following his death.

A General History of the Congregation of the Mission is the latest monograph in our continuing series of scholarly, important works published by the V.S.I. It is designed for tablets and computer as a high-res interactive .pdf. The eBook has been rigorously annotated by Fr. Rybolt and is fully illustrated and searchable. We recommend that you utilize Adobe Reader or a similar program to optimize your reading experience.

It is available to download online free-of-charge here:

Click here to download

Vincentian Studies Institute Announces New Additional Texts of Vincent de Paul

The DePaul University Vincentian Studies Institute in the Division of Mission & Ministry is pleased to announce the online publication of four volumes of additional Vincent de Paul texts. These supplement the fourteen volumes of Correspondence, Conferences, and Documents of Saint Vincent de Paul, published in French a century ago by Pierre Coste, C.M. The translator and editor of these new works is John E. Rybolt, C.M.

These fully searchable, free to download pdf e-Books offer more than 650 additional texts compiled by Fr. Rybolt since the final translated volume of Coste’s collection of Vincent’s writings was published in 2014. They represent over 4,000 pages of letters, conferences, and documents which are largely unknown, at least in translation. Gathered over several years thanks to the contributions of many scholars, they appear here in their original languages of French, Latin, and Italian, followed by an English translation.

The four new volumes comprise one each of correspondence and conferences, and two volumes of documents. The Vincentian Studies Institute presents them as an open-ended collection, allowing for additional texts to be added as they come to light, as well as corrections and updates. Finally, it is anticipated that translations of these new materials will become available in other languages and thus further facilitate their use throughout the worldwide Vincentian Family.

We are making these new texts available to download for free on Via Sapientiae, the institutional repository of DePaul University. This repository hosts a wide variety of the V.S.I.’s publications and collected works and is utilized by thousands of scholars and interested readers worldwide each year. Click through to access each new volume of the collection:

Correspondence: CCD Additional Texts

Conferences: CCD Additional Texts

Documents, part one: CCD Additional Texts

Documents, part two: CCD Additional Texts

It is hoped that these new texts will further our understanding and appreciation of the great saint of charity, Vincent de Paul.

 

DePaul Names Holtschneider Chair in Vincentian Studies at Anniversary Celebration

Left to right, Salma Ghanem, interim provost, Dr. Matthieu Brejon de Lavergnée, chair professor of the Dennis Holtschneider Chair and Guillermo Vásquez de Velasco, dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, are photographed after the presentation of the Inaugural Chair Lecture of the Holtschneider Endowed Chair. In addition, DePaul University celebrate the 40th year anniversary of the Vincentian Studies Institute, Tuesday, Sept. 23, at Cortelyou Commons in DePaul’s Lincoln Park Campus. (DePaul University/Randall Spriggs)

 

Last month, the university celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Vincentian Studies Institute. Founded in 1979 and sponsored by DePaul as part of the Division of Mission and Ministry, the Vincentian Studies Institute promotes a living interest in the heritage of the Vincentian Family, established by St. Vincent de Paul and St. Louise de Marillac.

 

Read the rest of the article here.

Unique Vincent Image

The Vincentiana collection at De Paul University’s Office of Mission and Ministry has acquired a unique and poignant water color image of Vincent de Paul entitled: “Monsieur” Vincent, Aumônier des Galères priez pour nous.” (“Monsieur Vincent, Chaplain of the Galleys, pray for us.”)

The image portrays Vincent freeing a galley convict who kneels before him.  The painting includes an image of a galley at sea.  In the lower right hand corner the image is signed: “En captivité. Pont St. Vincent.  19 – VII – 40.”

The artist’s signature is then below.  Research has led us to believe that the image was painted by a French POW who had been stationed at the fort overlooking the town of Pont-St. Vincent, located in the department of Meurthe-et-Moselle in the northeast of France.  The fort was part of the vast border fortifications built by France after its defeat by Germany in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian war.  This particular fort guarded the area between Langres and Mirecourt and the valley of the Moselle. The fort was captured in June 1940 during the German Blitzkrieg of France.  The painting is dated July 19, 1940.  The artist’s signature is difficult to read.  For more information on this fort, and the French border fortification system visit the following website: http://fortiffsere.fr/troueedecharmes/index_fichiers/Page4584.htm

New Bronze Bust Acquired

The Vincentiana Art Collection of De Paul University’s Division of Mission and Ministry has recently acquired an early 20th century cast bronze bust of a Daughter of Charity.  The piece is signed by the Austrian artist Adolf Josef Pohl (1872-1930).

The bust is very finely crafted, and captures the difficult details and proportions of the sister’s cornette.  The piece is 9” in height and 7” in width.  There is a foundry mark as well.  The bust joins the other more than 200 pieces of Vincentian fine art in the Division’s collection including other bronzes, paintings, tapestries, embroidered pieces, and photographs.  Many items in the collections are on public display throughout the university, and in the offices of the Division of Mission and Ministry at 55 E. Jackson Boulevard.  Visitors are always welcome.

 

 

 

Unusual Vincent de Paul portrait acquired

The Vincentiana Collection at the Archives and Special Collections Department of DePaul University has recently acquired an unusual Vincent de Paul portrait.  The painting done in 1974 by the artist George Prout (1913-2016) depicts Vincent de Paul looking into a cradle.  The infant reaches out to grab his finger.  The expression on Vincent’s face is quite charming.  While the depiction of Vincent de Paul with foundlings is all but universal in post-revolutionary iconography of the saint; this particular image has a warmth that puts it in a category of its own.

 

Martyrs in China

The Vincentiana Collection in Archives and Special Collections at DePaul University has recently acquired a rare black and white postcard c. 1900 which commemorates the massacre of ten French Daughters of Charity at Tien-Tsin in June 1870.  The Chinese attack on the sisters and confreres was part of a backlash against Foreign and missionary presence in China.  Rumors circulated in the local community that the orphan children were being murdered by the sisters and their body parts harvested for medicine.  Two confreres were also massacred.  The churches and missionary compounds were burned to the ground in the attacks.  This postcard commemorates the site of the sisters’ deaths in the garden of the orphanage.  The rebuilt church in the background is Notre Dame des Victoires.  These anti-foreign tensions would continue in China leading thirty years later to the famous Boxer rebellion.

 

Vincent de Paul manuscript letter

The Vincentian Studies Institute is happy to announce the recent acquisition, from a Spanish auction house, of a Vincent de Paul manuscript letter.  The previously known letter is dated April 19, 1658 and is written to Firmin Get who was the superior of the house in Marseilles.  The letter is in a secretary’s hand with Vincent de Paul’s autograph signature.  The letter appears in Pierre Coste’s collected “Correspondence, Conferences, Documents” of Vincent de Paul, Volume 7, pages 148-149, letter #2574.  This letter will join the growing Vincentiana manuscript collection at DePaul University’s Archives and Special Collections which is the repository for the Vincentiana Collections of the Vincentian Studies Institute of the United States.