Preview: 140 Years of Perpetual Adoration in Sacre-Coeur

On August 1, 2025, the Basilica of Sacre-Coeur will celebrate 140 years of Perpetual Adoration. To prepare for the anniversary, the basilica will hold a novena of 140 adorers per night before the great celebration, beginning on July 24. We'll talk about this on Monday, July 21 as the next in our Son Rise Morning series of 2025 anniversaries. As usual, I'll be on the air about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

If you want to book a flight to participate, you also need to book a room in the hostel, especially for August 1, because the events start at 3 p.m. and end after Midnight:

August 1, 2025
3:00 p.m.: Solemn Mass presided over by Cardinal Christophe PIERRE, Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, with Apostolic Blessing granted by Pope Leo XIV.
4:30 p.m.: Grand Eucharistic Procession (bring multicolored rose petals)
5:30 p.m.: Meditated Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament
6:00 p.m.: Solemn Vespers
6:30 p.m. Teaching on the Consecration to the Sacred Heart (At the Crypt. Mandatory, including for renewals of consecration.)
8:30 p.m.: Vigil of Consecration
9:30 p.m.: Compline
10:00 p.m.: Solemn Mass to give thanks to God
11:00 p.m.: Meditated Adoration until midnight
Midnight: Blessing of the faithful and the city with the Blessed Sacrament. Sung Te Deum.

In 2020, Solène Tadié wrote for the National Catholic Register about the perpetual adoration at Sacre Coeur:

Day and night since Aug. 1, 1885, the Body of Christ in the Holy Sacrament has been exposed and adored inside the basilica (except for Good Friday), whatever the external conditions, even the most extreme. This is remarkable, as the history of France hasn’t exactly been calm since that time, including for the Catholic Church, which is also facing an unprecedented wave of secularization at every level of society.

“The adoration hasn’t stopped even for a minute, including during the two world wars,” Sister Cécile-Marie, member of the Benedictine Sisters of the Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre and responsible for the nights of adoration at the basilica, told the Register. “Even during the 1944 bombing, when some fragments fell right next to the basilica, the adorers never left.”

Adoration continued throughout the COVID shutdowns with the Benedictine Sisters taking all the hours until others could enter the basilica. Sister Cécile-Marie highlights the bombing of the basilica in 1944 and that's appropriate because Sacre-Coeur was built after France lost the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, and after the uprisings of the Paris Commune.

The selection of the site for the basilica dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration, Montmartre, is where Saint Denis, one of the patron saints of Paris, was martyred. The church, built with travertine limestone that exudes calcite when it rains, is bright and white. It's architectural style is Byzantine and the interior is filled with chapels and beautiful mosaics.

Since it was built with the purpose of reparation for the sins of the French nation, many, like Clemenceau and Zola, opposed its construction, but it was finally completed in 1919. In 2022, Sacre-Coeur was named a national historical monument.

Whenever Mark and I visited Sacre-Coeur, we noted the contrast between the square outside the basilica, with souvenir hawkers and tourists just looking out over the vista of Paris beneath, to the quiet and hush of the church inside, with ushers urging men to take off their baseball caps, and muffled sounds of footsteps around the church.

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

Book Review: Proust's Defense of Gothic Cathedrals

From Wiseblood Books:

"Suppose for a moment that Catholicism had been dead for centuries, that the traditions of its worship had been lost. Only the unspeaking and forlorn cathedrals remain; they have become unintelligible yet remain admirable."

So begins Marcel Proust's Death Comes for the Cathedrals (La mort des cathédrales), originally published in Le Figaro (1904). Proust addresses the political and religious debate concerning the "the Briand bill," a parliamentary proposal which imperiled the fate of French Cathedrals-"the first and most perfect masterpieces" of Gothic architecture. The great author of In Search of Lost Time gives prophetic voice to his own fear that "France would be transformed into a shore where giant chiseled conches seemed to have run aground, emptied of the life that inhabited them and no longer bringing an attentive ear to the distant murmur of the past, simply museum objects, themselves frozen." As Proust makes plain, though the cathedrals of France and the traditional liturgy of the Roman rite are the spiritual inheritance of the Church, they are part of the patrimony of all humanity and, pending preservation, their loss would leave all the world impoverished.

This Wiseblood Books edition of Death Comes for the Cathedrals includes an introduction by its translator, Dr. John Pepino, and an afterword by Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, who wonders whether life may yet return to the cathedrals. Throughout, beautiful color images of Chartres and its architectural features grace the pages.

With impeccable--or providential--timing, Wiseblood Books released this translation of Marcel Proust's pamphlet urging the Third French Republic not to close the great Gothic Cathedrals of France and turn them into museums or other cultural sites as news came of the proposed, controversial changes to the interior of Notre Dame de Paris, which have been approved to some extent by the French National Heritage and Architecture Commission. 

The one comment I'd make about these changes at Notre Dame de Paris is that they seem to be aimed more at the tourist, who knows she simply has to visit the Cathedral as the guidebook tells her, and less at the worshipper, who comes to pray, to go to Confession, and to attend Mass. Note these lines from the Smithsonian Magazine story linked above:

Advocates argue that the approved plan will make Notre-Dame “even more beautiful and welcoming” for the millions of people who visit the site each year, according to a diocese press release. Critics, however, say that the renovations will reduce the standing of the historical building into a theme park. . . .

Visitors will now be able to enter the cathedral through its grand central doors rather than the side entrance as previously directed. The diocese also plans to rearrange altars and other items to free up space for people to move around, per the Times. . . .

The commission rejected some details of the diocese’s plan, including a proposal to remove statues from some chapels, per the Times. Experts have also asked to review a prototype of newly proposed benches, which would replace the traditional straw chairs. In theory, the benches might be designed to descend into the floor when not in use—freeing up more space for tourists, reports the AFP. . . .

What about the people of Paris who attend Mass, Evening Prayer, the devotions to the Crown of Thorns, or other services? Or Catholics from around the world visiting Paris and attending Sunday Mass? How are they served by these renovations? 

Back to the book:

Proust's argument is that these Gothic cathedrals, great monuments of French art, were built for the  celebration of the great and Holy Sacrifice of the Catholic Mass. They were built to facilitate the celebration of what we now call the Traditional Latin Mass, the Mass of the Ages. Their art and architecture, their acoustics were meant to resound with Gregorian and Polyphonic prayers, antiphons, and sequences. He does not want them destroyed by taking away their reason for being built, maintained, and used through the centuries, in spite of war, revolution, desecration, and other fashionable changes (clear glass replacing stained glass in Notre Dame de Paris during the reign of Louis XIV, for example).

Mark and I visited the Sainte Chapelle a couple of times during our 10 visits to Paris, which is a beautiful example of Gothic Art, but it is a hollow shell, exactly what Proust envisioned could happen to Chartres or other Gothic Cathedrals (Amiens, Reims, Paris, etc, etc.) There aren't any Altars in Saint Louis' reliquary for the Crown of Thorns, no Tabernacles, no Real Presence--the lower level sanctuary contained the tourist shop when we visited and of course, one must pay to enter this tourist attraction.

Proust is an unlikely source one might think for such a defense of the practice of the Catholic Faith in Notre Dame de Chartres and other great cathedrals, but he recognized the truths of French history, of her culture and the legacy of the high Middle Ages. As an artist he recognizes the integrity and continuity of that past and warned the people and the government of its loss. He also advised the Church in France to find in artists like him allies for defending that legacy. Proust knew that a nation, a people, the Church, an individual cannot be cut off from the past without great loss of identity and meaning. Fortunately for us--although some churches throughout France like Sainte Chapelle have been repurposed and lost--he persuaded the government and the public against what Aristide Briand had proposed. Proust, like Renan, and Flaubert, both of whom he quotes, may not have been a believing, practicing Catholic, but he was honest.

The book is well designed with several images of Chartres, but because the photos are not on glossy stock, the bright colors of the stained glass do not "pop" off the page as they could. The introduction provides good historical context and the afterword offers a personal view after the author's visit to Chartres.

When the fire devastated Notre Dame de Paris in 2019, I looked at our photo albums and re-read our travel journals from those visits. In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI prayed Vespers in Notre Dame de Paris including the veneration of the Crown of Thorns and his comments resonate still with my memories of the Gregorian Masses (Novus Ordo with Gregorian Chant) we attended in Notre-Dame de Paris:

We are gathered in the Mother Church of the Diocese of Paris, Notre-Dame Cathedral, which rises in the heart of the city as a living sign of God’s presence in our midst. My predecessor, Pope Alexander III, laid its first stone, and Popes Pius VII and John Paul II honoured it by their presence. I am happy to follow in their footsteps, a quarter of a century after coming here to offer a conference on catechesis. It is hard not to give thanks to the Creator of both matter and spirit for the beauty of this edifice. The Christians of Lutetia had originally built a cathedral dedicated to Saint Stephen, the first martyr; as time went on it became too small, and was gradually replaced, between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, by the great building we admire today. The faith of the Middle Ages built the cathedrals, and here your ancestors came to praise God, to entrust to him their hopes and to express their love for him. Great religious and civil events took place in this shrine, where architects, painters, sculptors and musicians have given the best of themselves. We need but recall, among so many others, the architect Jean de Chelles, the painter Charles Le Brun, the sculptor Nicolas Coustou and the organists Louis Vierne and Pierre Cochereau. Art, as a pathway to God, and choral prayer, the Church’s praise of the Creator, helped Paul Claudel, who attended Vespers here on Christmas Day 1886, to find the way to a personal experience of God. It is significant that God filled his soul with light during the chanting of the Magnificat, in which the Church listens to the song of the Virgin Mary, the Patroness of this church, who reminds the world that the Almighty has lifted up the lowly (cf. Lk 1:52). As the scene of other conversions, less celebrated but no less real, and as the pulpit from which preachers of the Gospel like Fathers Lacordaire, Monsabré and Samson transmitted the flame of their passion to the most varied congregations, Notre-Dame Cathedral rightly remains one of the most celebrated monuments of your country’s heritage. Following a tradition dating back to the time of Saint Louis, I have just venerated the relics of the True Cross and the Crown of Thorns, which have now found a worthy home here, a true offering of the human spirit to the power of creative Love.

Since I doubt that I'll ever return to Paris or Chartres or Amiens or Reims, I'm glad I have those memories and the feeling we often had while praying and worshipping in those Cathedrals, so well expressed by Pope Benedict in 2008:

Dear friends, during Vespers this evening, we are united in thought and prayer with the voices of the countless men and women who have chanted this psalm in this very place down the centuries. We are united with the pilgrims who went up to Jerusalem and to the steps of its Temple, and with the thousands of men and women who understood that their earthly pilgrimage was to end in heaven, in the eternal Jerusalem, trusting Christ to guide them there. What joy indeed, to know that we are invisibly surrounded by so great a crowd of witnesses!

Merry Christmas! 

Our Lady, pray for us!

2020: A Year of Major Anniversaries

I've posted on a couple of English Reformation related anniversaries in 2020 already: St. Thomas a Becket's 850th and St. Peter ad Vincula's 500th. There are many more fascinating anniversaries to be remembered and several more related to the English Reformation and its aftermath.

On Monday, January 13, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern to start noting these anniversaries--we'll probably continue the list on the following Monday. We'll see how many we get through on Monday the 13th!

Listen live here; the podcast will be archived here!

The oldest anniversary to highlight is the battle of Thermopylae, famed for The 300 Spartans in the pass, holding off Xerxes and his army. The Council on Foreign Relations listed it among their "Ten Anniversaries to Note in 2020":

2,500th Anniversary of the Battle of Thermopylae, August or September 480 BC. Few battles have changed history. The Battle of Thermopylae stands out as an exception. In early 480 BCE the Persian Emperor Xerxes set out to avenge his father’s loss at the Battle of Marathon ten years earlier and to subdue the Greek city states. Some 7,000 Greeks marched to Thermopylae, about 120 miles northwest of Athens, to meet the far larger Persian army. The terrain favored the Greeks; the pass at Thermopylae was narrow, with the Aegean Sea on one side and steep hills on the other. Xerxes called on the Greeks to surrender. Their leader, King Leonidas of Sparta, invited the Persian army to “molon labe”’ or to “come and get them.” After two days of bitter fighting a local shepherd showed the Persians a route behind Greek lines. Outflanked, many of the Greeks withdrew. Leonidas, 300 fellow Spartans, and a few others stayed to fight. They were all killed, and the Persians mutilated Leonidas’s body. Their stand became legendary, slowing Xerxes’s progress and setting the stage for Persia’s defeat at the Battle of Salamis. The Greek city states survived, and with them, what would become Western Civilization.

The famous epitaph of The 300:

Oh stranger, tell the Lacedaemonians that

we lie here, obedient to their words.

Ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε

κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.

The next great anniversary I'd select--the next oldest--is the birth of St. Genevieve of Paris, the Defensor Civitas, in 420 A.D. According to the National Catholic Register:

She saved Paris from a gloomy fate twice and is still remembered as one of the greatest female witnesses of Christian faith in history. Saint Genevieve, patroness of the French capital, will be in the spotlight all through 2020, as the country celebrates the 16th centenary of her birth.

Born around 420 in Nanterre (near Paris) in a family of patricians, she dedicated herself to God through a vow of virginity from an early age. She moved to Paris at her parents’ death as a consecrated person, leading at the same time a life of prayer and contemplation, while carrying out a local political mission inherited from her family and taking care of the needy.

She entered history at age 30 when, in 451, the Huns led by Attila threatened to invade the city after attempting to conquer numerous parts of Europe. At the risk of her life, Genevieve convinced the panic-stricken people of Paris not to run away and give their home up to the invader but to stay and pray. The city was eventually spared by the Huns after Attila suddenly changed his path. The Parisians then proclaimed Genevieve Defensor Civitas — that is, in charge of the protection of the city.

You can, and I did, spend a couple of hours in St. Etienne du Mont, the church with the only remaining rood screen in Paris, visiting St. Genevieve's shrine, venerating her relics, and appreciating all the other beautiful artwork, history and significance of that church. (The picture above is my best attempt at a picture of her shrine during a November 2010 visit!)

And then you can go over the Pantheon, the great church that King Louis XV wanted built as a shrine to replace the old church of the Abbey of St. Genevieve, but it was finished only just before the French Revolution and wasn't consecrated until the reign of King Charles X. The new Republic took over the Pantheon and made it a shrine to the Revolution and its heroes--it's a fascinating locus on French history. There are still murals and depictions of St. Genevieve in the Pantheon (and St. Joan of Arc too). Foucault's Pendulum has been moved to the Musee des Arts et Metiers (the museum Mark really liked in Paris), but there's still a copy in the Pantheon.

Next on my list is the 850th anniversary of St. Thomas a Becket's martyrdom. I think it has significance through the centuries for the relationship of Church and State, particularly in the matters of law and administration and the intercession of a spiritual and temporal power. Remember that although the British Museum and the Canterbury Cathedral and probably other venues in England will be commemorating this anniversary in 2020, St. Thomas a Becket was named the Worst Briton of the 12th Century in 2005!

Then I select the 450th anniversary of Pope Saint Pius V's Papal Bull, Regnans in Excelsis on April 27, 1570, which means it is also the 450th anniversary of Blessed John Felton's martyrdom. Regnans in Excelsis not only declared Elizabeth I excommunicated (as her father Henry VIII had been before her) but declared her deposed from the throne and stated that her subjects' vows to her were null and void:

And moreover, we declare her to be deprived of her pretended title to the kingdom aforesaid, and of all dominion, dignity and privilege whatsoever;

And also declare the nobles, subjects and people of the said realm and all others who have in any way sworn oaths unto her, to be forever absolved from any such oath and from any duty arising from duty, lordship, allegiance and obedience; and we do, by authority of these presents so absolve them, and so deprive the same Elizabeth of her pretended title to the crown and all other the abovesaid matters. We charge and command all and singular the nobles, subjects, peoples and others aforesaid that they do not dare obey her orders, mandates and laws. Those who shall act to the contrary we include in the like sentence of excommunication.

Bit of an overreach on how much authority Pope Pius V really had! or the power he had to enforce such declarations.

Blessed John Felton posted a copy of this Papal Bull less than a month later and suffered for it in the aftermath of the Northern Rebellion of 1569-1570:

When Pius V published the bull of excommunication and deprivation against Elizabeth, Felton obtained copies of it from the Spanish ambassador's chaplain, who immediately left the kingdom. Felton published the bull in this country by affixing a copy to the gates of the Bishop of London's palace between two and three o'clock of the morning of 15 May 1570. The government, surprised at and alarmed by this daring deed, at once ordered a general search to be made in all suspected places, and another copy of the bull was discovered in the chambers of a student of Lincoln's Inn, who confessed, when put to the rack, that he had received it from Felton. The next day the lord mayor, the lord chief justice, and the two sheriffs of London, with five hundred halberdiers, surrounded Bermondsey Abbey early in the morning. Felton, guessing their errand, opened the doors and gave himself into their custody, frankly admitting that he had set up the bull. He was conveyed to the Tower, where he was placed on the rack, but he resolutely refused to make any further confession.

He was arraigned at Guildhall on 4 Aug. 1570, and on the 8th of the same month was drawn on a sledge to St. Paul's churchyard, where he was hanged in front of the episcopal palace. He said that he gloried in the deed, and proclaimed himself a martyr to the papal supremacy. Though he gave the queen no other title than that of the Pretender, he asked her pardon if he had injured her; and in token that he bore her no malice, he sent her a present, by the Earl of Essex, of a diamond ring, worth 400l., which he drew from his finger. His body was beheaded and quartered, ‘and carried to Newgate to be parboiled, and so set up, as the other rebels were.’

Again, we'll see how many of these we--Anne or Matt and I--get through on Monday, January 13th!  There are several more important anniversaries we'll certainly discuss next time, too.

Have a great weekend!

50/50 Chance for the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris

After the death of my husband on January 16, 2019, the saddest thing that happened this year was the fire at Notre Dame de Paris on April 15, 2019. Seeing that beloved cathedral in flames and thinking of all the times he and I went there--especially the first time when we walked across Pont au Double from our Latin Quarter hotel--to tour Notre Dame, to pray in Notre Dame, to attend Mass in Notre Dame, was heart-breaking.

The news published this past week that the Cathedral realistically has a 50/50 chance of surviving because of the dangerous weight of the scaffolding was another heartbreak:

This year Christmas Mass was not celebrated at Notre Dame de Paris for the first time since the French First Republic, and the cathedral’s rector says that there is a significant chance the building cannot be rebuilt safely.

The church “is not out of danger,” Monsignor Patrick Chauvet said to the Associated Press Dec. 24. “It will be out of danger when we take out the remaining scaffolding.”

The scaffolding, which was present on the building prior to the April 15 fire due to restoration work, fused together during the blaze. There are an estimated 551 tons of metal still present on top of the cathedral.

“Today we can say that there is maybe a 50% chance (the cathedral) will be saved,” said Chauvet. “There is also (a) 50% chance of scaffolding falling onto the three vaults, so as you can see, the building is still very fragile,” he added.

This video from inside the Cathedral recently released shows the huge gap in the roof and the extraordinary puzzle of the scaffolding above. When you look up now, you don't see the glories of the Gothic height. Outside, the flying buttresses have been buttressed by wooden structures.

We humans are so used indeed of thinking that we can bend all matter to our will, make anything happen, but the thought that the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris could have survived the French Revolution, two World Wars, and even the growing secularization and laicite of 20th and 21st century French and may not survive a fire caused by a stray cigarette or electrical short is stunning.

CNA News Podcast

Last Wednesday, I recorded an interview for one of the Catholic News Agency's podcasts, the CNA Newsroom podcasts, which will be posted today. The producer, Kate Veik, asked me to talk about the Blessed Carmelite Martyrs of Compiegne with a focus on a "good death", based on my 2017 article about the Carmelites on the National Catholic Register blog page. The interview should be posted today and there are various ways (apps) you can listen to it!

The Carmelites obviously died "good deaths": they offered their martyrdoms for an end to the bloodshed, violence, and anti-Catholicism of the Reign of Terror; they were true to Jesus and His Church and the vows they had made as cloistered religious.

It was nine (9) years ago on November 16, 2010 that I visited the site of their martyrdom, the grounds of the cemetery in which their bodies were buried in mass graves, and got as close as I could to their graveside behind a wall and a locked gate.

King St. Louis of France

(c) Stephanie A. Mann, 2012

Today, August 25, would be the memorial of St. Louis, King of France if it were not a Sunday. He is one of the patron saints of France and his equestrian statue stands across from St. Joan of Arc on the facade of Sacre Coeur in Paris. St. Louis is also on the sanctoral calendar of the Episcopalian Church here in the USA:

(Apr. 25, 1214-Aug. 25, 1270). The patron saint for the Third Order of St. Francis. Born in Poissy, Louis IX became King of France on Nov. 29, 1226, and ruled until his death. He lived an austere and prayerful life, and embodied the highest ideals of medieval kingship. He sought to live a Franciscan life of poverty and self-denial in the midst of royal splendor. Louis built the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris as a reliquary for the Crown of Thorns which he acquired in 1239. He participated in crusades in 1248 and 1270. Louis endowed a number of religious houses and supported the theological college founded by Robert de Sorbon in 1257. While on crusade in 1270 he urged the Greek ambassadors to seek reunion with the Church of Rome. He was canonized by Pope Boniface VIII in 1297. Louis died in Tunis while on crusade. He is commemorated in the Episcopal calendar of the church year on Aug. 25.

St. Louis may be the patron saint for the Third Order of St. Francis, but he had contacts with Dominicans too. In particular, St. Thomas Aquinas. In his book about St. Thomas Aquinas, The Dumb Ox, Chesterton describes the famous encounter between the monarch and the friar:

It is a real case against conventional hagiography that it sometimes tends to make all saints seem to be the same. Whereas in fact no men are more different than saints; not even murderers. And there could hardly be a more complete contrast, given the essentials of holiness, than between St. Thomas and St. Louis. St. Louis was born a knight and a king; but he was one of those men in whom a certain simplicity, combined with courage and activity, makes it natural, and in a sense easy, to fulfil directly and promptly any duty or office, however official. He was a man in whom holiness and healthiness had no quarrel; and their issue was in action. He did not go in for thinking much, in the sense of theorising much. But, even in theory, he had that sort of presence of mind, which belongs to the rare and really practical man when he has to think. He never said the wrong thing; and he was orthodox by instinct. In the old pagan proverb about kings being philosophers or philosophers kings, there was a certain miscalculation, connected with a mystery that only Christianity could reveal. For while it is possible for a king to wish much to be a saint, it is not possible for a saint to wish very much to be a king. A good man will hardly be always dreaming of being a great monarch; but, such is the liberality of the Church, that she cannot forbid even a great monarch to dream of being a good man. But Louis was a straight-forward soldierly sort of person who did not particularly mind being a king, any more than he would have minded being a captain or a sergeant or any other rank in his army. Now a man like St. Thomas would definitely dislike being a king, or being entangled with the pomp and politics of kings; not only his humility, but a sort of subconscious fastidiousness and fine dislike of futility, often found in leisurely and learned men with large minds, would really have prevented him making contact with the complexity of court life. Also, he was anxious all his life to keep out of politics; and there was no political symbol more striking, or in a sense more challenging, at that moment, than the power of the King in Paris. . . .

Somehow they steered that reluctant bulk of reflection to a seat in the royal banquet hall; and all that we know of Thomas tells us that he was perfectly courteous to those who spoke to him, but spoke little, and was soon forgotten in the most brilliant and noisy clatter in the world: the noise of French talking. What the Frenchmen were talking about we do not know; but they forgot all about the large fat Italian in their midst, and it seems only too possible that he forgot all about them. Sudden silences will occur even in French conversation; and in one of these the interruption came. There had long been no word or motion in that huge heap of black and white weeds, like motley in mourning, which marked him as a mendicant friar out of the streets, and contrasted with all the colours and patterns and quarterings of that first and freshest dawn of chivalry and heraldry. The triangular shields and pennons and pointed spears, the triangular swords of the Crusade, the pointed windows and the conical hoods, repeated everywhere that fresh French medieval spirit that did, in every sense, come to the point. But the colours of the coats were gay and varied, with little to rebuke their richness; for St. Louis, who had himself a special quality of coming to the point, had said to his courtiers, "Vanity should be avoided; but every man should dress well, in the manner of his rank, that his wife may the more easily love him."

And then suddenly the goblets leapt and rattled on the board and the great table shook, for the friar had brought down his huge fist like a club of stone, with a crash that startled everyone like an explosion; and had cried out in a strong voice, but like a man in the grip of a dream, "And that will settle the Manichees!"

The palace of a king, even when it is the palace of a saint, has it conventions. A shock thrilled through the court, and every one felt as if the fat friar from Italy had thrown a plate at King Louis, or knocked his crown sideways. They all looked timidly at the terrible seat, that was for a thousand years the throne of the Capets: and many there were presumably prepared to pitch the big black-robed beggarman out of the window. But St. Louis, simple as he seemed, was no mere medieval fountain of honour or even fountain of mercy but also the fountain of two eternal rivers: the irony and the courtesy of France. And he turned to his secretaries, asking them in a low voice to take their tablets round to the sear of the absent-minded controversialist, and take a note of the argument that had just occurred to him; because it must be a very good one and he might forget it. . . . 

In the painting above by Niklaus Manuel, the two saints sit across the table from one another. There are two dark discs above their heads, which represent halos. Notice too the dog sitting under the table next to St. Louis's feet, while a dove (the Holy Spirit) inspires St. Thomas Aquinas!

St. Louis of France, pray for us!

St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us!

St. John Gabriel Perboyre

Like many Catholics, I receive lots of mail from religious orders, offering cards, Masses, religious items, etc. My late mother always had this rule: if you use what they send you, send them a donation! Her other rule was, once you order from them, they will keep sending you "free gifts" and other offers! This is their way of raising funds obviously and we have to be just and generous. At least that's what my mother taught me.

Yesterday was the feast of Saint Augustine Zhao Rong and companions, 120 martyrs who suffered between 1648 and 1930 in China, canonized in 2000 by Pope Saint John Paul II. I received a medal from the Vincentian Association of the Miraculous Medal (AMM)--which I'd ordered after receiving their Summer Newsletter--of another martyr who suffered in China canonized by Pope Saint John Paul II in 1996: Saint John Gabriel Perboyre, a French missionary. More from the AMM about this saint:

The eldest son of Pierre and Marie, John Gabriel, was born on the 6th of January 1802. In 1816 John Gabriel accompanied a younger brother, Louis, to a high school in Montauban that had been started by their uncle, Fr. Jacques Perboyre, C.M., to prepare young men for the seminary. In the Spring of 1817, his teachers noting John Gabriel’s intelligence and piety suggested he remain with his brother and continue his studies. Though willing to return home if needed on the farm, John Gabriel wrote to his father that he believed that the Lord was calling him to the priesthood.

From his earliest days in the seminary, John Gabriel had longed for the China mission. In 1832, however, his superiors appointed him a novice director in the Vincentian Motherhouse. The departure of some Vincentians to China in 1835 renewed his missionary longing. Poor health stood in the way, but finally his doctor saw the voyage to the Orient as a possible cure. Five months at sea brought John Gabriel to Macao where he studied Chinese.

In December of 1835, Father Perboyre, along with several missionaries, set sail from Macao in a Junk. Since the Chinese law forbade the entry of Christian missionaries, the Christian captain and crew disguised themselves as merchants and smuggled John Gabriel on to the mainland of China.

Following a five month overland journey to the Vincentian mission center in Ho-nan, Father Perboyre suffered a severe attack of fever that forced him to rest for three months. But he was able enough to continue his mastering of the Chinese language. In the company of two Chinese Vincentians he spent the years 1837 and 1838 reanimating the faith in Catholic villages by preaching, catechizing and administering the sacraments. Some of the Vincentian mission areas were desperately poor and John Gabriel shared the meager fare of his flock.

For more than a century, China outlawed Christianity and had a death penalty on all Europeans attempting to spread the faith. Authorities often overlooked this law, but in 1839 the Viceroy of the province of Hu-pei began a persecution and used his local Mandarins to obtain the names of priests and catechists in their areas. In September 1839, the Mandarin of Hu-pei, where there was a Vincentian mission center, sent soldiers to arrest the missionaries. Warned of the danger by some Christians, the priests scattered in different directions. John Gabriel hid in a bamboo forest, but a beaten and tortured catechist led the soldiers to him.

Frequently tortured in prison, Father Perboyre refused to betray his faith and his associates. In May 1840 his case went to the Emperor where he was found guilty of preaching Christianity and condemned to death. John Gabriel Perboyre was executed on September 11, 1840, in the Chinese custom of being tied to a stake and triple strangled. Andrew Fong, a generous and valiant catechist who had aided Father Perboyre in his imprisonment, retrieved his body and buried it in the Christian cemetery where Blessed Francis Regis Clet, C.M., was buried. Both their remains now repose in the chapel of the Vincentian Motherhouse in Paris, France.

I visited the Motherhouse on Rue de Sevres (after a visit to the Chapel of the Miraculous Medal and before visits to La Grande Epicerie and Le Bon Marche!), but did not see his shrine or that of Clet. I'll have to review my souvenirs to see if I purchased a brochure!

AMM also provides this prayer composed by Saint John Gabriel Perboyre:

O my Divine Savior,
Transform me into Yourself.
May my hands be the hands of Jesus.
Grant that every faculty of my body
May serve only to glorify You.

Above all,
Transform my soul and all its powers
So that my memory, will and affection
May be the memory, will and affections
Of Jesus.

I pray You
To destroy in me all that is not of You.
Grant that I may live but in You, by You and for You,
So that I may truly say, with Saint Paul,
“I live – now not I – But Christ lives in me. Amen.

His feast day is September 11.

The image of the martyr chained to the cross reminds me of Blessed John Forest, the English martyr burned alive for the religious crime of heresy during Henry VIII's reign. He was not tied to a stake but suspended above the fire just as this martyr was not nailed to the cross but hanged from it and strangled.

You might notice in the AMM newsletter that St. John Gabriel Perboyre's feast is not permitted to be celebrated in China by the Communist authorities. While Catholics and other Christians--and some Muslims--are suffering harassment and persecution by the Communists, I'm praying with St. John, St. Augustine and companions, and other martyrs who have suffered to intercede for the suffering Church in China now.

Image source and attribution: public domain (statue outside)

Image source and attribution: public domain (statue of martyrdom)

From 2008: Pope Benedict XVI at the Cathedral of Notre Dame

When I came home from Mass and lunch yesterday, the news story about the devastating fire at Notre Dame de Paris was on television. I remembered all the times Mark and I visited Notre Dame, attended Mass at Notre Dame, or just walked by it. When Pope Benedict XVI prayed Vespers in Notre Dame on September 12, 2008, we watched it on EWTN. He spoke about the Cathedral in terms of its legacy and its beauty as a gift of God:

Blessed be God who has brought us together in a place so dear to the heart of every Parisian and all the people of France! Blessed be God, who grants us the grace of offering him our evening prayer and giving him due praise in the very words which the Church’s liturgy inherited from the synagogue worship practised by Christ and his first disciples! Yes, blessed be God for coming to our assistance – in adiutorium nostrum – and helping us to offer him our sacrifice of praise!

We are gathered in the Mother Church of the Diocese of Paris, Notre-Dame Cathedral, which rises in the heart of the city as a living sign of God’s presence in our midst. My predecessor, Pope Alexander III, laid its first stone, and Popes Pius VII and John Paul II honoured it by their presence. I am happy to follow in their footsteps, a quarter of a century after coming here to offer a conference on catechesis. It is hard not to give thanks to the Creator of both matter and spirit for the beauty of this edifice. The Christians of Lutetia had originally built a cathedral dedicated to Saint Stephen, the first martyr; as time went on it became too small, and was gradually replaced, between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, by the great building we admire today. The faith of the Middle Ages built the cathedrals, and here your ancestors came to praise God, to entrust to him their hopes and to express their love for him. Great religious and civil events took place in this shrine, where architects, painters, sculptors and musicians have given the best of themselves. We need but recall, among so many others, the architect Jean de Chelles, the painter Charles Le Brun, the sculptor Nicolas Coustou and the organists Louis Vierne and Pierre Cochereau. Art, as a pathway to God, and choral prayer, the Church’s praise of the Creator, helped Paul Claudel, who attended Vespers here on Christmas Day 1886, to find the way to a personal experience of God. It is significant that God filled his soul with light during the chanting of the Magnificat, in which the Church listens to the song of the Virgin Mary, the Patroness of this church, who reminds the world that the Almighty has lifted up the lowly (cf. Lk 1:52). As the scene of other conversions, less celebrated but no less real, and as the pulpit from which preachers of the Gospel like Fathers Lacordaire, Monsabré and Samson transmitted the flame of their passion to the most varied congregations, Notre-Dame Cathedral rightly remains one of the most celebrated monuments of your country’s heritage. Following a tradition dating back to the time of Saint Louis, I have just venerated the relics of the True Cross and the Crown of Thorns, which have now found a worthy home here, a true offering of the human spirit to the power of creative Love.

We agreed with this sentiment as we had often felt it during Mass or before the Blessed Sacrament behind the High Altar:

Dear friends, during Vespers this evening, we are united in thought and prayer with the voices of the countless men and women who have chanted this psalm in this very place down the centuries. We are united with the pilgrims who went up to Jerusalem and to the steps of its Temple, and with the thousands of men and women who understood that their earthly pilgrimage was to end in heaven, in the eternal Jerusalem, trusting Christ to guide them there. What joy indeed, to know that we are invisibly surrounded by so great a crowd of witnesses!

Today, by the way, is Joseph Ratzinger's birthday: April 16, 1927.

This is a precious document of the Vespers of the Monday of Holy Week, chanted in Notre Dame before it closed its doors yesterday--before the fire. 

Seeing the great cathedral on fire, being destroyed before my eyes through those digital images, was heart-breaking to me. I looked through our photo albums and cried: I was there with Mark and he was there with me and we were in awe.

Je vous salue Marie,
pleine de grâce
Le Seigneur est avec vous,
vous êtes bénie entre toutes les femmes
et Jésus, le fruit de vos entrailles, est béni.
Sainte Marie,
Mère de Dieu,
priez pour nous,
pauvres pécheurs
maintenant et à l’heure de notre mort.
Amen.

Image credit, published under a Creative Commons License

Memories of Paris with Mark

You may have noticed that I did not post much during December last year and not much so far this year. My husband Mark's health was failing during these past several weeks and he collapsed and died on Wednesday, January 16. His Rosary, Funeral Mass, and burial are all today. I've just posted some fun pictures of our wining and dining in Paris during our visits there--plus one of us in front of Mark's favorite place to have a croques-monsieur--I think he had one there every time we went to Paris (10 times). Last week, at my request, Mark had just cropped out a gentleman to his left who was leaving the restaurant! We'll always have Paris!

Please pray for the repose of his soul and for me and his family and friends. He is a wonderful man!

George Sand and the English Augustinians

So my husband and I were eating pizza at a nearby restaurant and I found a review in the Wall Street Journal of a newly-translated biography of George Sand, Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin. It highlighted the detail that Aurore was raised by her grandmother and sent to the convent school of the English Augustinians in Paris. This convent, Notre-Dame-de-Sion on the rue des Fossés-Saint-Victor (now rue de Cardinal Lemoine) was founded by English Catholic exiles. In her memoirs, Aurore described the experience:

THIS convent was one of the three or four British communities established in Paris during Cromwell’s ascendency…. It is the only one now in existence, its house having endured the various revolutions without suffering greatly. Its traditions say that Henriette of France, the daughter of our Henry IV. and wife of the unfortunate Charles I. of England, had often come to pray in our chapel with her son James II. All our nuns were English, Scotch, or Irish. Two-thirds of the boarding pupils and lodgers, as well as some of the priests who came to officiate, belonged to these nations. During certain hours of the day the whole school was forbidden to speak a word of French, which was the best means for learning English rapidly. Naturally our nuns hardly ever spoke anything else to us. They retained the habits of their country; drank tea three times a day allowing those among us who were good to take it with them.

The cloister and the church were paved with long tombstones, beneath which were the venerated bones of those Catholics of Old England who had died in exile, and been buried by favor in this inviolable sanctuary. There were English epitaphs and pious inscriptions everywhere on tombs and walls. Large old portraits of English princes and prelates hung in the Superior’s room and in her private parlor. The beautiful and amorous Mary Stuart, reputed a saint by our chaste nuns, shone there like a star. In short, everything in that house was English, both of the past and of the present; and when within its gates, one seemed to have crossed the Channel. All this was a “nine days’ wonder” to me, the Berri peasant.

Aurore was incorrect about the date of its founding. King Charles I was on the throne in 1634 when it was founded. She was there from 1817 to 1820 and her memoirs reflect some loneliness and restlessness in the cloister:

We were cloistered in the full sense of the word. We went out twice a month only, and never spent a night out except at New-Year’s. There were vacations, but I had none; as my grandmother said she preferred not to interrupt my studies, so as to have me at the convent a shorter time. She left Paris a few weeks after our separation, and did not come back for a year; then went away for another year. She had demanded that my mother was not to ask to take me out. My cousins the Villeneuves offered me their home for all holidays, and wrote to my grandmother for her permission. I wrote too, and begged her not to grant it; and had the courage to tell her, that not going out with mother, I ought not and did not wish to go out with any one. I trembled lest she should not listen to me; and though I felt the need and the wish to enjoy these outings, I made up my mind to pretend illness if my cousins came to fetch me armed with a permit. This time my grandmother approved my action; and instead of finding fault, praised my feeling in a way I found rather exaggerated. I had done nothing but my duty; yet it made me spend two whole years behind bars. 

We had mass in our chapel, received visits in the parlor, took our private lessons there; the professor being on one side of the grating while we were on the other. All the convent windows towards the street had not only gratings, but immovable linen screens besides. It was really a prison, but a prison with a large garden and plenty of company. I must confess that I never felt the rigors of captivity for an instant; and that the minute precautions taken to keep us locked up and prevent us from getting a glimpse of the outer world, often made me laugh. This care was the only stimulant we had to long for freedom; for there was not one of us who would ever have dreamt of crossing her mother’s threshold unattended: yet almost every girl at the convent watched for the opening of the cloister door, or peeped furtively through the slits in the linen screens. To outwit supervision, go down into the court three or four steps, see a cab pass by, was the dream and the ambition of forty or fifty wild and mischievous girls, who the very next day would go about Paris without in the least enjoying it; because once outside the convent inclosure, stepping on the pavement and looking at people were no longer forbidden fruit.

According to her latest biographer, Martine Reid, Aurore became "very devout" while with the English exiles, and even thought of a religious vocation for a time. St. Augustine's Priory in Ealing has this brief note about Notre-Dame-du-Sion in Paris:

Our history dates back to 1631 when an English woman, Lettice Mary Tredway, an English nun at the convent of Notre Dame de Beaulieu at Douai, together with Father Thomas Carre, a priest at the English College at Douai, conceived the idea of founding an order in France for those English women who wished to pursue their religious vocation but were prevented from doing so in England due to religious persecution.

In 1634 the Augustinian convent of the Canonesses Regular of the Lateran opened in Paris. Six English women were selected to start this new community, among them a thirteen year old girl, Margaret Dormer. She was too young to become a nun and so the school began, with Margaret Dormer the first pupil.

Over the next 250 years the community and school on the Rue des Fosses St Victor found itself at the heart of European events. The French Revolution saw the nuns enduring the terror of those years, their convent even being used as a prison for women. In the following years under Napoleon the community often played host as the Emperor enjoyed walking in the quiet of the convent gardens. Following Napoleon’s defeat, the Duke of Wellington visited the community. Revolution in 1848 saw the nuns remain at their posts, but in 1862 new premises had to be found when the property on the Rue des Fosses St Victor was demolished, and the convent and school moved to Neuilly, on the outskirts of the city.

In 1911, after nearly three hundred years, the anti-clerical laws of France saw the community compelled to leave France for England, a country where nuns were now welcome, to practise their vocation and run their school.

Image of the cloister of the convent (by Hubert Robert); Image credit for the location of the convent on rue des Fossés-Saint-Victor.

A Brief Encounter and A New Publication

Last week my husband and I went to the Spiritual Life Center to attend one of the "Dinners with the Doctors" presentations--Erin Doom of the Eighth Day Institute on St. John of Damascus--and enjoyed the evening very much. Toward the end of the Q and A, a lady came in and sat at one of the tables; she looked familiar. At the conclusion of the presentation, she came over and asked, "Don't I know you?"

She was my college French instructor (15 hours of college credit)! Mark and I had also known her and her husband at the Newman Center at WSU and at our home parish at Blessed Sacrament. She lives in France, in the Moselle region, but visits the USA often. She was at the Spiritual Life Center for a retreat before going to visit some friends in Florida for Christmas. It's one of those coincidences: if we hadn't attended and if she hadn't come into the room (helping with some clean up as part of her retreat), we wouldn't have reconnected.

One of the things we mentioned to her was that we had been able to travel to Paris so many times since we had last seen her. Mark talked about how much her French lessons had helped me on those trips. We exchanged business cards and parted. On our way home, Mark and I reminisced about our college years at WSU. Who knows if we'll ever see her again! She commented that she hopes we'll visit France again soon.

There's my segue into mentioning that I've had an article accepted in a brand new publication, Faith & Culture. It's the Journal of The Augustine Institute, edited by Joseph Pearce. He had accepted an article on Paris for the St. Austin Review a few years ago and used it in his new publication instead. It's available here. More about the The Augustine Institute here.

Variations on the Stations

So I was doing some research for a blog post for the National Catholic Register on the Stations of the Cross and how they've developed. The 14 Stations most of us see in our parish churches were fostered by the Franciscans in Spain during the 17th century. As the Catholic Encyclopedia notes, various popes helped with the spread of these Stations and devotion to the Way of the Cross:

Realizing that few persons, comparatively, were able to gain these by means of a personal pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Innocent XI, in 1686, granted to the Franciscans, in answer to their petition, the right to erect the Stations in all their churches, and declared that all the indulgences that had ever been given for devoutly visiting the actual scenes of Christ's Passion, could thenceforth be gained by Franciscans and all others affiliated to their order if they made the Way of the Cross in their own churches in the accustomed manner. Innocent XII confirmed the privilege in 1694 and Benedict XIII in 1726 extended it to all the faithful. In 1731 Clement XII still further extended it by permitting the indulgenced Stations to all churches, provided that they were erected by a Franciscan father with the sanction of the ordinary. At the same time he definitely fixed the number of Stations at fourteen. Benedict XIV in 1742 exhorted all priests to enrich their churches with so great a treasure, and there are few churches now without the Stations. In 1857 the bishops of England received faculties from the Holy See to erect Stations themselves, with the indulgences attached, wherever there were no Franciscans available, and in 1862 this last restriction was removed and the bishops were empowered to erect the Stations themselves, either personally or by delegate, anywhere within their jurisdiction.

The usual list of 14 stations, or stops along the Way of the Cross, combine scriptural and traditional events:

1. Christ condemned to death;
2. the cross is laid upon him;
3. His first fall;
4. He meets His Blessed Mother;
5. Simon of Cyrene is made to bear the cross;
6. Christ's face is wiped by Veronica;
7. His second fall;
8. He meets the women of Jerusalem;
9. His third fall;
10. He is stripped of His garments;
11. His crucifixion;
12. His death on the cross;
13. His body is taken down from the cross; and
14. laid in the tomb

Although that is not the usual wording for some of the stations. There has been a desire for more scriptural stations, without the  traditional events--Stations which can be connected with definite events in the Gospel accounts. Pope St. John Paul II used a different set of stations in 1991 and then Pope Benedict XVI approved them for public use:

1. Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane
2. Jesus is betrayed by Judas and arrested
3. Jesus is condemned by the Sanhedrin
4. Jesus is denied by Peter
5. Jesus is judged by Pilate
6. Jesus is scourged and crowned with thorns
7. Jesus takes up his cross
8. Jesus is helped by Simon of Cyrene to carry his cross
9. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem
10. Jesus is crucified
11. Jesus promises his kingdom to the repentant thief
12. Jesus entrusts Mary and John to each other
13. Jesus dies on the cross
14. Jesus is laid in the tomb

Reading that list, I realized that I had seen Stations of the Cross like that before--in Paris, in the church of St. Roch in the First Arrondisement! I had taken pictures of two of them, the second and the third stations:

The second Station shows Judas embracing Jesus and preparing to betray Him with a kiss while the Apostles are startled on the right and the guards are carrying weapons and torches on the left.

The third Station shows Jesus before Caiaphas. I have not been able to find out, and wasn't able to in 2006 when I first visited Saint Roch, why this church had a different set of Stations. They are not exactly the same as the Scriptural Way of the Cross presented by John Paul II, but they are different than the traditional 14 Stations!

St. Roch is a huge Baroque style church filled with art; you may see more examples here.

If anyone knows more about these stations, and why they are different, please let me know by leaving a comment below. The parish does have Stations of the Cross on Good Friday, so the devotional for those prayers may exist somewhere but I have not found it!

Samuel L. Clemens and St. Joan of Arc

Samuel L. Clemens had no respect for organized religion nor for the Catholic Church, yet he loved the Maid of Orleans, St. Joan of Arc. Unlike G.B. Shaw, who wrote about St. Joan of Arc to make political points and even to mock the Church's canonization of her whom an (English) ecclesiastical court had condemned as a heretic, Clemens focused on St. Joan's character, which he admired. For example, he wrote, as Mark Twain:

Great as she was in so many ways, she was perhaps even greatest of all in the lofty things just named -- her patient endurance, her steadfastness, her granite fortitude. We may not hope to easily find her mate and twin in these majestic qualities; where we lift our eyes highest we find only a strange and curious contrast -- there in the captive eagle beating his broken wings on the Rock of Saint Helena [Napoleon Bonaparte]. . . .

He even acknowledged and admired the depth of her faith, without skepticism or much difficulty, because he trusted her:

She was deeply religious, and believed that she had daily speech with angels; that she saw them face to face, and that they counselled her, comforted and heartened her, and brought commands to her direct from God. She had a childlike faith in the heavenly origin of her apparitions and her Voices, and not any threat of any form of death was able to frighten it out of her loyal heart. She was a beautiful and simple and lovable character. In the records of the Trials this comes out in clear and shining detail. She was gentle and winning and affectionate, she loved her home and friends and her village life; she was miserable in the presence of pain and suffering; she was full of compassion: on the field of her most splendid victory she forgot her triumphs to hold in her lap the head of a dying enemy and comfort his passing spirit with pitying words; in an age when it was common to slaughter prisoners she stood dauntless between hers and harm, and saved them alive; she was forgiving, generous, unselfish, magnanimous; she was pure from all spot or stain of baseness.

And Twain concludes with this remarkable statement, one which I would make of no one of my acquaintance, dead or alive:

There is no blemish in that rounded and beautiful character.

As Ignatius Press comments on their website about the novel he wrote about his heroine:

Very few people know that Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) wrote a major work on Joan of Arc. Still fewer know that he considered it not only his most important but also his best work. He spent twelve years in research and many months in France doing archival work and then made several attempts until he felt he finally had the story he wanted to tell. He reached his conclusion about Joan's unique place in history only after studying in detail accounts written by both sides, the French and the English.

Because of Mark Twain's antipathy to institutional religion, one might expect an anti-Catholic bias toward Joan or at least toward the bishops and theologians who condemned her. Instead one finds a remarkably accurate biography of the life and mission of Joan of Arc told by one of this country's greatest storytellers. The very fact that Mark Twain wrote this book and wrote it the way he did is a powerful testimony to the attractive power of the Catholic Church's saints. This is a book that really will inform and inspire.

“ I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others needed no preparation and got none.”--— Mark Twain

You may also read the book online here. I read the novel many years ago in the Dover Thrift edition and was amazed by its verisimilitude and historical accuracy. When my husband and I were going often to Paris I enjoyed seeing all the statues of St. Joan of Arc in the churches and in the squares of that glorious city. They were often positioned near the lists of the young men from the parish who died in World War I. 

My husband and I took a day trip to Rouen, visiting the site of her martyrdom, the shrine church built there in her honor, the great abbey church in which she was rehabilitated by the by the Church, and the great Cathedral of Notre Dame. You can see the interiors of each of these edifices on the tourism page for Rouen,individually linked above: les visites virtuelles!

St. John Baptist de la Salle and King James II

St. John Baptist de la Salle's feast day was yesterday, but I noticed this detail when reading a brief biography of him: he made an exception to his policy of educating the poor when King James II of England, in exile, made a specific request:

Although the schools had originally been founded for orphans and the children of the poor, a new departure was made at the request of King James II of England, who was then living in exile. He urged the founding of a college for the sons of his adherents, mainly Irish, who were living in France, and Father John opened such a school for fifty young men of gentle birth.

Because de la Salle emphasized teaching in the vernacular, the Irish youth learned French and French history so they could be of service to King Louis XIV.

Manhattan College in New York posts an explanation of a stained glass window depicting James II visiting this special school, which de la Salle founded in Paris:

This window is based on a drawing by 19th century artist Edouard Garnier.

Catholic King James II of England was defeated at the Battle of the Boyne, July 12, 1690 by his son-in-law, William of Orange. Supported by the French King, Louis XIV, he took up residence at St. Germain-en-Laye near Versailles, France. He asked La Salle to establish a school for the children of his Irish followers. La Salle established the school in Paris in 1700 for the Irish children.

James II, along with Archbishop Noailles of Paris, is here visiting the Irish children.

The cathedral in the background of the window is Notre Dame of Paris, the seat of Archbishop Noailles.

A rather old fashioned life of the saint offers these comments about his Irish students:

Of the subsequent careers of the lads who studied under St. John de la Salle in the exiles' boarding- school we know but little. Some of them doubtless remained at the court of Louis XIV and discharged satisfactorily the offices for which they were fitted. Some of them, we may be sure, took part in the several unsuccessful attempts to place the son and grandson of King James known respectively as the Old Pretender and the Young Pretender on the throne of England. More of them probably imitated the example of their fighting sires and in the French army struck stout blows against their English foes at Blenheim and Ramillies and, maybe, even half a century later, at Fontenoy. The wanderlust, always so potent in Irish blood, may have lured others of them across the Atlantic to Canada and the southern colonies. All that is but a matter of conjecture. But it is pleasant to reflect that through them the influence of St. John Baptist de la Salle spread into divers professions and into various parts of the world, and that the young Jacobites were better and wiser men because of their contact with the holy founder.