Fig. 278.—St. Vincent de Paul.—Reduced Fac-simile of a Drawing by Edelmet (Seventeenth Century).
Obregon and Jean de Dieu were both contemporaries of Philippe de Néri, founder of the Order of the Oratory, a learned Florentine, animated as much by the spirit of charity as by his fondness for religious teaching. The beneficent institutions of St. Philip were perhaps but the intelligent application upon a larger scale of the schemes of moral reform so wisely conceived by St. Catherine of Sienna, St. Francis the Roman, and St. Juliana. At about the same period, a Frenchman, less celebrated than Philippe de Néri, but whose memory is cherished by his compatriots in Provence, Antoine Yvan, inspired by the example of the Somasques, the Crucifers, and the Scholopians (regular clerks whose office it was to care for the orphans, the sick, and the poor), endeavoured to collect in one institution, under the title of “Order of the Religious Clerks of Mercy,” a staff entrusted with the task of relieving these three classes of misery (1576–1653). And, lastly, there appeared in France that great benefactor of suffering humanity, St. Vincent de Paul, who, having taken orders in 1600, commenced his apostleship just at the close of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period, bequeathing to modern generations the admirable practice of Christian charity, organized, regulated, and disseminated with wondrous forethought amongst all grades of society in the Catholic world.
PILGRIMAGES.
The first Pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Rome.—The Worship of the Martyrs.—Pilgrims’ Hospitals.—Images of the Virgin Mary.—Relics brought from the East by the Crusaders.—Celebrated Pilgrimages of Early Days.—The Roman Basilicas.—St. Nicholas de Bari.—Notre-Dame de Tersatz.—St. Jacques de Compostella.—Notre-Dame du Puy, de Liesse, de Chartres, de Rocamadour.—Pilgrimages in France, Germany, Poland, Russia, and Switzerland.
The first of the Christian pilgrimages were those made to the tomb of Christ, when the apostles, the disciples, the mother of sorrow (mater dolorosa), a few saintly women, and soon, no doubt, many of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, paid their pious visits to the sepulchre which the resurrection had robbed of its prey. Afterwards, when the Gospel became known throughout the countries near Judæa, St. Paul set the example of making a pilgrimage to the holy places—an example which was followed by millions of the faithful in later ages.
Fig. 279.—St. Denis carrying his Head to his place of burial: according to the old legend, he is supported by two angels, and followed by a Christian lady, St. Catulla, who is going to put him in his shroud. In the scene above, the body of the martyr is being prepared for burial.—After a Miniature in the “Vie de Monseigneur Sainct Denis,” Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century (National Library, Paris).