Église Saint-Sulpice

“ Sulpice, and is now in the seminary chapel.
With the exception of the walls and the furniture, all is old at St. Sulpice, and it is easy to believe that one is living in the seventeenth century. Time and its ravages have effaced many differences. St. Sulpice now embodies in itself many things which were once far removed from one another, and those who wish to get the best idea attainable in the present day, of what Port-Royal, the original Sorbonne, and the institutions of the ancient French clergy generally were like, must enter its portals. ”

“ One of these enduring effects is the intense faith of the prelates, who in the 18th century believed so little. At the present day, not made bishops until about fifty years of age, thirty of which have been passed in exercises of this description, their piety has taken the Roman, positive, practical turn which terminates in devotions properly so called. M. Emery, the reformer of Saint-Sulpice, gave the impulsion in this sense. ”

“ Sulpice has, however, in our time turned out a theologian like M. Carrière, whose vast labours are in many respects remarkable for their depth; men of erudition like M. Gosselin and M. Faillon, whose conscientious researches are of great value, and philologists like M. Garnier, and especially M. Le Hir, the only eminent masters in the field of ecclesiastical critique whom the Catholic school in France has turned out.
But it is not to results such as these that the teachers of St. Sulpice attach the highest value. St. Sulpice is, above all, a school of virtue. ”

“ The work of educating the French clergy is largely in the hands of the Congregation of S. Sulpice, a celibate body of course, and whose members are not paid, but merely clothed and boarded. They necessarily teach one uniform dogma, that is, within that sufficiently wide range of doctrine on which the Church has set her immutable seal. More than this, {351} they impress one uniform sacerdotal mould and type, and exercise one discipline on all committed to them. ”

“ Sulpice, in Baltimore, went to reside at Emmettsburg, and laid the foundation of Mount St. Mary's College, which was afterward destined to be the means of so much usefulness to the Catholic Church in America. From this point, now surrounded by so many hallowed associations in the minds of American Catholics, by the sound religious education imparted to so many young men from various parts of the United States, 'by the many fervent and holy priests, trained under his direction,' and by the prudent care with which he cherished the rising institute of the Sisters of Charity at St. ”

“ Sulpice is supposed to be very rich, the amount of the immense revenues never being made public. They were the feudal lords of the Island of Montreal in the earlier chapters of its history. Through their zealous efforts and the generosity of their parishioners was opened in the year eighteen hundred and twenty-nine the grand church adjoining, that of Notre Dame, built on the site of the original parish church. ”

“ The chapel was almost full; a school of girls in white veils filled one side; little girls of the middle-class, poorly dressed brats who played with their dolls occupied the other. There were a few poor women in sabots, and no men.
The atmosphere became extraordinary. The warmth of the souls thawed the ice of the room; here were not the vespers of the rich, such as were celebrated on Sundays at St. Sulpice, but the vespers of the poor, domestic vespers, in the plain chant of the country side, followed by the faithful with mighty fervour in silent and singular devotion. ”

“ Germain was becoming the quarter of the nobles, it was rebuilt in a style of ugly magnificence, befitting the maker of Versailles and Marly.
St. Sulpice, a vast bare barn, is chiefly interesting, indeed, as a gigantic specimen of the coldly classical type of church built under Louis XIV, when Gothic was despised, and even the Renaissance richness of St. Eustache and St. Étienne was decried as barbaric. It is a painful monument of declining taste. The exterior is chilly. The façade, whose sole recommendation nowadays is its size and its massiveness, is a triumph of its kind ”

“ For thirty years he remained a notable figure in France, doing his utmost to arouse his countrymen from religious indifference. In ecclesiastical policy his views were moderate; thus he opposed the definition of the dogma of papal infallibility both before and during the Vatican council, but was among the first to accept the dogma when decreed. He was a distinguished educationist who fought for the retention of the Latin classics in the schools and instituted the celebrated catechetical method of St Sulpice. ”

“ The Church has gained about 15,000 of this class out of a hundred thousand in Paris, and worked a great reformation. At St. Sulpice they have every other Sunday a meeting of these, called conférences, at which they are addressed by different persons, clergy or lay, on religious, moral, or instructive subjects. We went to the meeting on Sunday night, and were much pleased with what we saw and heard. Their minds are laid hold of and interested; by drawing together they get a sense of {114} union and the force of numbers, and are encouraged by each other's progress ”

“ The lectures intra muros thus became the regular course of teaching. Nevertheless, as change is a thing unknown at St. Sulpice, the old names remain what they were. The seminary has no professors; all the members of the congregation have the uniform title of director.
The company founded by Olier retained until the Revolution its repute for modesty and practical virtue. Its achievements in theology were somewhat insignificant, as it had not the lofty independence of Port-Royal. ”

“ Sulpice are two immense shells, given to Francis the First by the Republic of Venice; but for all that, the eau bénite seemed just as holy, and I made the sign of the cross just as devoutly.
For devotion, I prefer the largest churches, because the seclusion is more perfect, as at Notre Dame. Behind some pillar or in the depths [41] of some dim chapel, one can find perfect solitude where he can be alone with God. Alone with God! that in itself is prayer. The world-weary soul finds it good simply to sit or kneel with clasped hands in the divine Presence. ”

“ After three years at the seminary of St Sulpice he became a priest, at a time when priests had little honour and no popularity in France. The young advocate, glowing with all the inspirations of undeveloped eloquence—a man destined to play so notable a part in his generation, and no doubt aware in his heart of the genius which nobody else as yet suspected—fell, in the flush of his youth, into obscure priestly offices, such as doubtless demonstrated to him a “something” in the Christian faith enough to exercise and employ all the helpful energies of man. ”

“ Sulpice has had but one representative in this path so thickly sown with unexpected incidents and--it may perhaps be added--with dangers; but he is unquestionably the most remarkable member of the French clergy in the present day. I am speaking of M. Le Hir, whom I knew very intimately, as will presently be seen. In order to understand what follows, the reader must be very deeply versed in the workings of the human mind, and above all in matters of faith. ”

“ It was founded by a group of devoted men sprung from the upper-middle class; and chief among them was M. Olier, a man justly celebrated for his saintly life. He was appointed in 1642 to the parish of St. Sulpice when it was noted as the most depraved quarter of Paris. He labored unremittingly and very successfully to reform this unpromising flock, and the young priests who were associated with him in his task constituted the nucleus of the seminary and community of St. Sulpice. ”

“ S. Roche is doubtless a very fine building, with a well proportioned front and a noble flight of steps; but the interior is too plain and severe for my taste. The walls are decorated with unfluted pilasters, with capitals scarcely conformable to any one order of architecture. The choir, however, is lofty, and behind it, in Our Lady's chapel, if I remember accurately, there is a striking piece of sculpture of the Crucifixion, sunk into a rock, which receives the light from an invisible aperture, as at S. Sulpice. ”

“ For the Church is the Fountain of Truth, and I am nought by myself but a vile receptacle of Error.”
“Take care, my father,” said Modernus. “Sulpice is capable of overdoing submission to the Church even to the point of Heresy. Do you not see that he submits with frenzy, in transports and swooning? Is wallowing in submission a good way of submitting? He is annihilating himself; he is committing suicide.”
But the Bishop reprimanded his deacon for holding such ideas, which were contrary to charity, and sent the postulant to the noviciate of the mendicant friars of Trinqueballe. ”

“ The love of order and devotion to duty were the guiding principles of their lives. M. Garnier was a learned Orientalist, and better versed than any living Frenchman in the Biblical exegesis as taught by the Catholics a century ago. The modesty which characterised St. Sulpice deterred him from publishing any of his works, and the outcome of his studies was an immense manuscript representing a complete course of Holy Writ, in accordance with the relatively moderate views which prevailed among the Catholics and Protestants at the close of the eighteenth century. ”

“ At Sulpice I have seen, allied as I admit, with very narrow views, the perfection of goodness, politeness, modesty, and sacrifice of self. There is enough virtue in St. Sulpice to govern the whole world, and this fact has made me very discriminating in my appreciation of what I have seen elsewhere. I have never met but one man in the present age who can bear comparison with the Sulpicians, that is M. Damiron, and those who knew him, know what the Sulpicians were. ”

“ Until then the Anglican Church teaches her priests {352} an uniform dogma, and moulds them in a severe and uniform discipline, she cannot hope for any other fate, than that her bosom should be rent with interminable heresies and divisions. The existence of the Séminaires, and the order of S. Sulpice, is a reform in the Roman Church. Are we never to reform? Not by introducing novelties, but by recurring to ancient practices. The continual encroachment of the world upon the Church rendered it necessary to promote Seminaries as places of spiritual retreat for candidates for Holy Orders ”

“ Sulpice was to these hollow combinations which would fain pass muster as scientific. St. Sulpice has a knowledge at first hand of what Christianity is; the Polytechnic School has not. But I repeat, there could be no two opinions as to the uprightness of M. Gratry, who was a very taking and highminded man.
I was sorry to part company with him; but there was no help for it. I had left the first seminary in the world for one in every respect inferior to it. ”

“ The general effect of the church, by its enormous size alone, is exceedingly grand; but, being entirely of stone, it is cold and colourless. An Italian edifice wants Italian materials, which is the reason that the Brompton Oratory is so highly satisfactory, and perhaps the most magnificent example of Italian architecture on this side of the Alps. The details of glass, furniture, pulpit, &c., in S. Sulpice are utterly uninteresting, with the exception of the mural paintings by Delacroix in the chapel of the Holy Angels, which are splendid examples of the great artist's work. ”

“ At Prairie du Rocher is a little, dark-looking, ancient Catholic church, dedicated to St. Sulpice, formerly "Chapel of Ease" to Fort Chartres, but at present it has no resident priest. The population of the village is about two hundred. Its site is low, and, buried as it is in such enormous [Pg 73] vegetation, the spot must be unhealthy: yet, year after year, and generation after generation, have its present inhabitants continued to dwell where death almost inevitable must have awaited an 182 American. ”

“ Sulpice, and even there was remarkable for the delicate vein of sarcasm, nice discrimination, and keen penetration, for which he afterward became so distinguished in life. At the age of twenty-six he was appointed agent-general for the clergy, and in that capacity his administrative talents were so remarkable that they procured for him the situation of Bishop of Autun, which he held in 1789, when the revolution broke out. So remarkable had his talents become at this period that Mirabeau, in his secret correspondence with Berlin, pointed him out as one of the most eminent men of the age. ”

“ Lazare the undertaking had grown and prospered. A college of the same kind had been lately founded by M. Olier, the zealous curé of St. Sulpice; and these two institutions, the first of the famous seminaries which were later to spread all over France, were powerful for the reform of the clergy. One hundred and fifty years later the Mission Priests of St. ”

“ During the lifetime of the founder a few of the Sulpicians were despatched to Canada, where they established themselves at Montreal, and laboured zealously for the conversion of the natives. Like St. Vincent, the founder of the Sulpicians worked incessantly against Jansenism, and impressed upon his followers the duty of prompt obedience to the bishops and to the Pope, lessons which they seem never to have forgotten. The Sulpicians according to their constitution are a community of secular priests bound by no special religious vows. ”