This week’s featured purchase for the Vincentiana Collection at DePaul University’s Archives and Special Collections is an early 19th century hand-colored print depicting Vincent de Paul celebrating his first mass. The location of this event has traditionally said to have take place at the Church of Our Lady of Grace in the town of Buzet-sur-Tarn. This is also the town in which Vincent was said to have gathered around him a number of young men for whom he served as a tutor during his time as a student at the University of Toulouse. This print is believed to be part of a series depicting incidents in Vincent’s life.

Our colleague John Harney from Centre College in Danville, Kentucky has contributed a chapter to this volume: Catholicism in China, 1900-Present The Development of the Chinese Church, edited by Cindy Yik-Yi Chu. John’s chapter is entitled: Vincentian Missionaries in Jiangzi Province: Extending an American Catholic Community to China, 1921-1951. Much of the research upon which this article was based was done at the DeAndreis-Rosati Memorial Archives at DePaul University. The DeAndreis-Rosati Memorial Archives are the archives of the Western Province (U.S.) of the Congregation of the Mission.

With the French invasion and conquest of Algeria in 1830 French imperialism entered a new era. Throughout the 19th century, successive French governments tried to establish and maintain French spheres of interest in North Africa and the Middle East (and of course also in China). Even increasingly secular French governments saw missionaries as means for establishing of establishing and promoting French imperial interests. The French Lazarists and Daughters of Charity because of their official recognition by the state played important roles in these missions.

The present volume published in 1857 illustrates the ideology that would support the role of French missionaries in general and the Lazaristes and Daughters of Charity in particular.

The following quote captures this ideology perfectly:

“On le voit, la France chrétienne creuse sur cette terre antique de l’Orient un laborieux sillon, et l’on est en droit d’attendre de ces travaux une récolte abondante. Tant de charité après tant d’héroïsme, tant de bienfaits et tant de sang versé ne demeureront pas toujours stériles, et la vérité finira par pénétrer dans ces cœurs que la charité dèjà touches. Nos Prêtres, nos Sœurs de Charité, ont précédé notre armée en Orient; ils y restent après elle, ils y travaillent à l’œuvre de civilization pour laquelle elle a combattu; soldats pacifiques de la grande cause de de Dieu, leurs paroles, leurs labeurs, leurs bienfaits, concourent à èloigner la barbarie, à dissiper l’erreur, à faire pénétrer dans les âmes les rayons de l’éternelle vérité, et si un jour cet Orient, berceau du christianisme, revient à l’unique Eglise de Jésus-Christ, si la femme est affranchie, la famille reconstituée, la société régénérée, la monde s’étonnera et se demandera à qui sont dues de si grandes choses…alors, ceux qui connaissent les voies secretes de la Providence, loueront Dieu, qui aura parlé à ces peuples par la science et le zèle des prêtres et la bonté bienfaisante des Sœurs de la Charité.”

The Vincentiana Collection at the Archives and Special Collections Department at DePaul University recently purchased a series of contemporary prints illustrating the most famous Paris buildings of St. Vincent’s lifetime. Pictured above is the Baroque gem of the Chapel of the Visitation Monastery on the rue Saint-Antoine, designed by the architect Mansard, and constructed between 1632 and 1634. At this time Saint Vincent was serving as the monastery’s ecclesiastical superior. The print is taken from Jacques Francois Blondel’s mid-18th century volumes on classic Parisian architecture.