A Daughter Of S. Dominic.
If she had been condemned to have her life written, and been given the choice of a name under which to appear before the world, this would probably have been the one she would have taken. But who could have persuaded the humble child of the grand S. Dominic that such a fate was in store for her, or induced her humility to accept it? Well, it matters little to her now whether men speak of her or for her, she is alike beyond the reach of their hollow praise and their jealous criticism. But to us it matters much. The teaching of such a life as Amélie Lautard's is too precious to be lost; it is a lesson to be sought out and hearkened to, for it is full of beauty, and light, and encouragement to those whom she has left behind.
Amélie was born at Marseilles on the 12th of April, 1807. Her father was a medical man, eminent in his profession, an honorable man, and a good Christian. She lost her mother at the age of seventeen. Early in life she met with an accident which injured her spine so seriously as to render her by degrees quite humpbacked; the progress of the deformity was slow and very gradual, but even when it had grown to its worst it never looked grotesque or repulsive, nor did it, strange to say, take away from the singular dignity of her appearance or from the grace of her movements. In person she was tall and dark, not handsome, though her features had so much charm and expression that most people considered her so. Her intelligence was of a very high order, and pre-eminently endowed with that delightful and untranslatable gift called esprit. From her earliest childhood she began to develop an angelic spirit of piety and a sensitiveness to the sufferings of [pg 659] others that is generally the outgrowth of maturer years. The sufferings of the poor claimed her pity especially, but not exclusively. The range of her sympathies was wide enough to embrace every kind and degree of sorrow that came within her knowledge. This characteristic of her charity, as rare as it is attractive, may be considered as the keynote of her life, and explains, humanly speaking, the extraordinary influence she exercised over all classes indiscriminately.
After her mother's death Amélie became the chief delight and interest of her father, and she repaid his tenderness by the most absolute devotion. Offers of marriage were not wanting for the accomplished and spirituelle young lady, but Amélie turned a deaf ear to them all; filial duty as much as filial love had wedded her to her father, and she declared her intention never to separate from him, or let any other love and duty come between those she had vowed unreservedly to him. It was probably at this period of her life that she bound herself exclusively to the service of God by a vow of perpetual virginity.
During many years Dr. Lautard's health was such as to require constant and unremitting care. Amélie nursed him with the tenderest affection, never allowing her devotions or her work amongst the poor to interfere with her first duty to him. He expired in her arms, blessing her and declaring that she had been the model of filial piety, the joy and solace of his widowhood. Amélie generously made the sacrifice of this one great affection to God, she drank the chalice with a broken heart, but with an unmurmuring spirit, and entered bravely on the new life that was before her. Hers was to be the mission of an apostle, and she must go forth to it unshackled by even the holiest and purest of natural ties. She had long been a member of the Third Order of S. Dominic, to whom from her childhood she had had a great devotion. To her previous vow of virginity she now added a vow of poverty, which, in the midst of abundance, she observed rigorously to the end of her life. Dr. Lautard, knowing her propensities, and suspecting rightly that, if her fortune were left completely in her own power, she would despoil herself of everything and leave herself without the means of subsistence, tied it up in annuities which could not be alienated. But while binding herself henceforth to the practice of the most rigid austerities, Amélie did not break off from her accustomed intercourse with her friends. She continued to receive them as hitherto in her father's house. Dr. Lautard used to say that hospitality was a virtue which it behooved Christians living in the world to exercise towards each other, and he imbued Amélie with the same idea. Mindful of his precepts and example, she went on inviting her friends, and enjoyed having them with her, and surrounding them with attentions and seeing them well and hospitably served; at table she endeavored to disguise her own abstinence under a semblance of eating, or would sometimes apologize on the plea of her health, which had always been extremely delicate, for not setting them a good example.
Some rigid persons, unable to reconcile this frank and genial sociability with the crucifying life of penance and prayer and unremitting service of the poor and the sick which Amélie led, ventured to remonstrate with her on the subject. She replied with unruffled humility that it was a pleasure to her to continue to cultivate the friendships contracted for her and bequeathed to her by her [pg 660] father, and that she felt satisfied there was nothing wrong in her doing so, and that it did neither her nor them any harm; on the contrary, hospitality was often a means to her of doing good; a worldly man or woman who would fly from her if she approached them with a sermon, accepted an invitation to dinner without fear or arrière-pensée, thus enabling her to bring them under desirable influences in a way that awoke no suspicion and roused no antagonism, and often led to the most salutary results; a friendly dinner was, moreover, not unfrequently an opportunity of bringing people together and reconciling those who were at variance; in fact, Amélie pleaded so convincingly the cause of Christian hospitality as it was practised in the Rue Grignan, that the critics withdrew thoroughly converted and rather ashamed of their censoriousness. This thirst for doing good was, moreover, so unobtrusive and so free from anything like an assumption of superiority, that it was impossible to resent it; the tact and simplicity that accompanied all her efforts to benefit others prevented their ever being looked upon as indiscreet or meddling. She had a way of rousing your sympathies in a charitable scheme, or your indignation against some act of injustice or cruelty, and drawing you into assisting in the one or redressing the other without your suspecting that she had laid a trap for you; never preaching, never dictating, she had that rare grace, whose absence so often foils the most praiseworthy intentions, of doing good without being disagreeable. Her conversation was so sympathetic, and, owing to her mind being so abundantly stored by reading under her father's direction, could be, when the opportunity occurred, so brilliant, that the most distinguished men delighted in it, and flocked to the Rue Grignan, counting it a privilege to be invited to its unpretending hospitalities. Amongst the many illustrious men who admired Amélie's esprit and virtues and who courted her co-operation in their apostolic labors, one of the most prominent was the Père Lacordaire. The history of their first work in common deserves special record, not only because of its being associated with “the cowled orator of France,” but because it is peculiarly identified with the history of Provence, that land so dear to us all as the birthplace and cradle of the devotion to S. Joseph. “Beautiful Provence! It rose up in the west from your delightful land like the cloud of delicate almond blossoms that seems to float and shine between heaven and earth over your fields in spring. It rose from a confraternity in the white city of Avignon, and was cradled by the swift Rhone, that river of martyr-memories, that runs by Lyons, Orange, Vienne, and Arles, and flows into the same sea that laves the shores of Palestine. The land which the contemplative Magdalen had consecrated by her hermit life, and where the songs of Martha's school of virgins had been heard praising God, and where Lazarus had worn a mitre instead of a grave-cloth, it was there that he who was so marvellously Mary and Martha combined first received the glory of his devotion.” We all know the passage by heart, but we quote it not so much for its sweetness as because it so appropriately introduces the story of the work in question, viz., the restoration of the pilgrimage of Ste. Baume, a pilgrimage once so celebrated throughout Christendom, but of late years fallen into neglect and almost total oblivion. Tradition tells us the story of its origin, its growth, its glories, and [pg 661] its decay. Its origin dates from a little bark that eighteen centuries ago came floating down the sunny waters of the Nile and rode into the blue Mediterranean, freighted with a legacy from Palestine to France, bearing in its frail embrace none other than the family who had their dwelling on the shores of the Lake of Galilee, and whose names have come down to us with the halo of that simple and unrivalled title, “Friends of Jesus of Nazareth.” Villagers and the simple folk of the place welcomed the exiles more kindly, let us hope, than Bethlehem had welcomed the Virgin Mother and reputed father of their Friend some five-and-thirty years before; at any rate, Lazarus and his sisters remained in Provence. The people gathered round the dead man whom Jesus had wept over and raised to life, and hearkened to his teaching; he planted the cross upon their soil, and sowed the seeds of the Gospel in their hearts, and in return they thanked him as the Jews had thanked his Master, by putting him to death. Lazarus opened the first page of the martyrology of France. Martha on her side withdrew to Avignon, where, on the ruins of a pagan temple situated on the Rocher des Doms, she built a Christian church, and dwelt there in the midst of a school of virgins, teaching the Gospel. She died at an advanced age, venerated as a saint, and renowned as much for her sublime gift of eloquence and her bountiful hospitality as for the austere sanctity of her life. We are not told how far, if at all, Magdalen shared the apostleship of her brother in Marseilles; the only trace of her that remains in that city is an altar in the vaults of the Abbey of S. Victor. These vaults are like catacombs, and the most ancient monument of Christian faith that Marseilles possesses. The legend says that Magdalen, immediately on landing on the shores of Provence, took up her abode upon the rocky heights of Ste. Baume and lived there for thirty years, her life divided between agony and ecstasy, between tears that had never ceased to flow since that day when at Simon's house she broke the alabaster vase over the feet of Jesus, and heard from his lips those words that have been the strength and the hope of sinners ever since: much had been forgiven her because she had loved much, and kept long vigils that were but a continuation of her faithful watch under the cross and at the door of the sepulchre. It seems strange, when we think of it, that she should have left the country where Jesus had lived and died, the home at Magdala that he had hallowed so often by his presence, and whose friendly hospitality had often been a rest and a comfort to him in his weary journeys round Jerusalem; that she should, above all, have torn herself from the companionship, or at least the neighborhood, of his Mother and the disciple whom he loved; for surely the one remaining solace of her purified passionate heart must have been to speak of her brother's Friend and her own dear Saviour with those who had known and loved him best, to revisit the places he had frequented, the site of his miracles and his sufferings, and that hill of solemn and stupendous memories where she and they had stood together in a common agony of woe, hushing their breaths to catch the last throb of his sacred heart. But perhaps this voluntary exile from those beloved associations was the last sacrifice, the crowning act of renunciation, that Jesus asked of her before he bade her farewell? Perhaps he expressed a wish that she and Lazarus should be in a humble way to the West [pg 662] what Mary and S. John were to be to the East, and that they should forsake the land and the friends of their youth and go forth bearing the good news of his Gospel to France? He had raised her once to the rank of an apostle that morning after the resurrection, when he gave her a message to the disciples and bade her go and tell them and Peter that he was risen, and before ascending to his Father he may have told her once more to go and be the harbinger of his resurrection to disciples who knew him not and were yet dwelling in darkness. We shall one day know, please God, what her motive was, but meantime we may reverently conjecture that there was some such understanding between Our Lord and Magdalen which induced her to leave the country that was so full of the fragrance of his divine humanity, and where his Immaculate Mother still lingered in childless desolation. Magdalen came to Provence, and withdrew to a wild and barren spot, upon a mountain called, in memory no doubt of her first interview with Jesus, Ste. Baume; it rises above a valley that runs towards the Alps from the busy city of Marseilles. Here she dwelt in solitude, communing only with her Saviour, and shut away from cruel men who had crucified him. Many and beautiful are the legends grouped by the simple piety of the inhabitants around the lonely watcher of Ste. Baume; they tell you still in reverent and awestricken tones how seven times a day the saint was rapt into ecstasy, and carried from her cave in the mountain side to the summit of the mountain, and held there suspended between heaven and earth by angels, but seeing more of heaven than of earth, and hearing the music of the angelic choirs. The peasants show you, even in these unmystical days of ours, the precise spot of an abrupt sally of the mountain where the angels used to come every day at their appointed hours to commune with the penitent and lift her off the earth. For thirty years she lived here in penance and expectation, then the term of her exile closed, the day came when she was to be set free from the bondage of the flesh, and admitted once and for ever into the presence of her risen Lord. Perhaps Jesus himself whispered the glad tidings to her in prayer; or perhaps it was only the angels who were charged with the message; but anyhow, tradition tells us—and who dreams of doubting it?—that Magdalen knew by divine inspiration when the hour of her death was at hand, and that she was filled with a great longing to receive the body and blood of her Redeemer before entering his presence as her Judge. S. Maximin, who had been the companion of Lazarus and shared his labors and his pilgrimage, dwelt in the narrow plain which forms the base of the three adjoining mountains, Ste. Baume, St. Aurelian, and Ste. Victoire—Ste. Victoire under whose shadow Marius fought and defeated the Teutons and the Cimbrians. The dying penitent was unable to traverse herself the distance that separated her own wild solitude from the hermitage of S. Maximin, so the kindly angels came and performed a last office of love for the friend of their King, and bore her across the hills and the floods and the valleys to the oratory of the saint: he too had been warned, and was ready waiting for her. He heard her confession, pronounced again the words of pardon that had been spoken first to her contrite soul by Jesus himself, and gave her the holy communion. Then she died, and S. Maximin laid her in an alabaster tomb that stood ready prepared for [pg 663] her in his oratory. The piety of the faithful surrounded the tomb with enthusiastic reverence and devotion; pilgrims flocked from all parts of the world to venerate the remains of the queen of penitents, and to visit the grotto where she had lived and the oratory where she died. Cassian, the monk, who was himself a native of Marseilles, after graduating in the school of the Egyptian anchorites, returned to his native city, and raised the Abbey of S. Victor over the crypt where Lazarus slept. Ste. Baume and St. Maximin soon drew him with irresistible attraction; he founded two noble monasteries there, and he and his monks kept vigilant guard for a thousand years, from the IVth to the XIIIth century, over the ground where Magdalen had wept, and over the tomb where she rested. At the beginning of the VIIIth century, the Saracens invaded the fair land of Provence, and for nearly three hundred years it was a prey to their devastating fury. During this long period of invasion, the Cassianites, terrified lest the precious remains of Magdalen should be discovered by the enemy and desecrated, thought best to remove them from the place where they were known to be to one of greater secrecy and safety. They took the body, therefore, out of its famous alabaster tomb and laid it in the tomb of S. Sidonius, having previously translated elsewhere the relics of the holy bishop. With a view to future verification, the monks placed on the coffin an inscription testifying to the two translations, and narrating the manner of their accomplishment and the circumstances which led to it. The entrance to the crypt itself was then walled up with plaster, and overlaid further with a quantity of rubbish. But six centuries were to roll over the arid heights of St. Maximin before the entrance was to be broken open and the written testimony of the Cassianites invoked. When the wars of the Saracens were over, and men began to breathe in peace, and turn their thoughts once more to the worship of God and the veneration of his saints, the fact of the translation of the body of Magdalen from its original resting-place to the sarcophagus of S. Sidonius had faded from their recollection; it was only repeated in a vague sort of way that the illustrious penitent had been removed to a place of safety, which was supposed to be at a distance; some local coincidences pointed to the Abbey of Vezelay as the spot which had been privileged to receive and shelter her. By degrees this belief took root in the public mind, and the stream of pilgrims began to flow once more and with renewed enthusiasm towards the venerable old Abbey of Burgundy; crusaders met there to invoke before starting for the defence of the Holy Sepulchre the protection of her whom the evangelists had handed down to us as the heroine of the Sepulchre; kings and prelates, warriors and poets, sinners and saints, flocked to the supposed tomb of Magdalen, “till,” in the words of a chronicler of the time, “it seemed as if all France were running to Vezelay.” God is slow to tell his secrets. It was not until the close of the XIIIth century that the illusion, which had evoked so much piety and so many manifestations of faith from Christendom, was dispelled, and the truth revealed. This is how it happened. We will translate from the Père Lacordaire, whose Sainte Marie Madeleine has supplied us almost exclusively with the foregoing details:
“S. Louis had a nephew born of his brother, Charles of Anjou, King of Sicily, and Count of Provence. This nephew, who was likewise called [pg 664] Charles, and who on the death of his father became king of Sicily and the county of Provence, under the title of Charles II., had for S. Magdalen a tenderness which he inherited from his race, and which, though common to all the chivalry of France, attained in him the highest degree of ardor and sincerity. While he was still Prince of Salerno, God inspired him with a great desire to solve the mystery which for six centuries had hung over the grave of her whom he loved for the sake of Jesus Christ. He set out therefore to St. Maximin without any display, and accompanied only by a few gentlemen of his suite, and having interrogated the monks and the elders of the place, he caused the trenches of the old basilica of Cassian to be opened. On the 9th of December, 1279, after many efforts which up to that time had been fruitless, he stript himself of his chlamyde, took a pickaxe, and began to dig vigorously into the ground with the rest of the workmen. Presently they struck upon a tombstone. It was that of S. Sidonius, to the right of the crypt. The prince ordered the slab to be raised, and it was no sooner done than the perfume which exhaled from it announced to the beholders that the grace of God was nigh. He bent down for a moment, then caused the sepulchre to be closed, sealed it with his seal, and at once convoked the bishops of Provence to assist at the public recognition of the relics. Nine days later, on the 18th of December, in the presence of the archbishops of Arles and of Aix, and of many other prelates and gentlemen, the prince broke the seals which he had prefixed to the sarcophagus. The sarcophagus was opened, and the hand of the prince, in removing the dust which covered the bones, encountered something which, as soon as he touched it, broke with age in his fingers. It was a piece of cork from which fell a leaf of parchment covered with writing that was still legible. It bore what follows: ‘L'an de la Nativitè du Seigneur 710, le sixième jour du mois de Décembre, sous le règne d'Eudes, très pieux Roi des français, au temps des ravages de la perfide nation des Sarrasins, le corps de la très chère et venerable Marie Madeleine a été très secrètement et pendant la nuit transféré de son sépulchre d'albâtre dans celui-ci, qui est de marbre et d'où l'on a retiré le corps de Sidoine, afin qu'il y soit plus caché et à l'abri de la dite perfide nation.’[223] A deed setting forth this inscription and the manner of its discovery was drawn up by the prince, the archbishops, and bishops present, and Charles in great joy, after placing his seals again upon the tomb, summoned for the fifth of May of the following year an assembly of prelates, counts, barons, knights, and magistrates of Provence and the neighboring counties to assist at the solemn translation of the relics which he had been instrumental in raising from the obscurity of a long series of ages.”
The news of the event was hailed with a shout of joy by all Christendom; kings and prelates vied with each other in doing honor to the new-found treasure; gold and precious stones poured in in quantities to adorn the shrine which was destined to replace the alabaster tomb of S. Maximin. “When the appointed day arrived,” [pg 665] continues the Père Lacordaire, “the Prince of Salerno, in the presence of a vast and illustrious assembly, opened for the third time the monument which he had sealed, and of which the seals were certified to be intact. The skull of the saint was whole except for the lower jaw-bone, which was wanting;[224] the tongue subsisted, dried up, but adhering to the palate; the limbs presented only bones stripped of the flesh; but a sweet perfume exhaled from the remains that were now restored to light and to the piety of souls.... The fact had already been made known of a sign altogether divine having been seen upon the forehead of Magdalen. This was a particle of soft, transparent flesh on the left temple, to the right, consequently, of the spectator; all those who beheld it, inspired at the same moment by a unanimous act of faith, cried out that it was there, on that very spot, that Jesus must have touched Magdalen when he said to her after the resurrection, Noli me tangere! There was no proof of the fact, but what else could they think who beheld on that brow so palpable a trace of life which had triumphantly resisted thirteen centuries of the grave? Chance has no meaning for the Christian; and when he beholds Nature superseded in her laws, he ascends instinctively to the Supreme Cause—the Cause that never acts without a motive, and whose motives reveal themselves to hearts that do not reject the light.... Five centuries after this first translation, the noli me tangere, as that instinct of faith had irrevocably named it, subsisted still in the same place and with the same characters; the fact was authenticated by a deputation of the Cour des Comptes of Aix. It was not until the year 1780, on the eve of an epoch that was to spare no memory and no relic, that the miraculous particle detached itself from the skull; and even then the medical men who were called in by the highest authority in the county certified that the noli me tangere had adhered to the forehead by the force of a vital principle which had survived there.”
The piety of Charles of Anjou raised a stately temple to the penitent of Bethany on the site of the oratory of S. Maximin. Boniface VIII., who had beheld with his own eyes the miraculous presence of the noli me tangere, endowed the basilica munificently, and authorized the king to transfer the custody of the relics from the Order of Cassianites, who had formerly held it, to that of the Sons of S. Dominic, since become renowned through the world under the name of Frères prêcheurs. A great number of popes visited the shrine, and every king of France held it a duty and a privilege to come to S. Maximin and Ste. Baume, and invoke the aid and protection of the saint; up to Louis XIV., hardly a sovereign neglected this public tribute of respect and devotion to her; but with the Grand Monarque the procession of royal pilgrims came to an end. The red tide of revolution arose, and waged war against men's faith, and destroyed its most touching manifestations and its noblest monuments. It broke, however, harmless, at the foot of S. Maximin. Not a stone of the grand old pile was touched, not an altar profaned, not even a picture stolen from the mouldy and unguarded walls; the most precious part of its treasure, the relics of Magdalen, which had been carefully concealed, were found intact, and duly authenticated [pg 666] as before. Ste. Baume was less fortunate; the storm that respected the tomb showed no mercy to the grotto which had witnessed Magdalen's ecstatic communings with her Lord; the hospital, the convent, and the church adjoining it were completely destroyed; nothing remained but a barren rock and a portion of the neighboring forest. In 1822, a partial restoration was effected; the vast and massive monastery was replaced by a temporary building of the lightest and cheapest materials, little better than a lath and plaster shed, to keep the monks under cover; the grotto itself, once so sumptuously adorned by the piety of pilgrims, was left in a state of nakedness and neglect, its costly lamps once abundantly fed with aromatic oils were gone, their lights extinguished, like the faith that had kindled them. The church was rebuilt in the same superficial style as the convent, and solemnly reconsecrated in the presence of forty thousand souls assembled in the forest and down in the plain. But the material temple, great or small, is more easily rebuilt than the spiritual one; the temple of stone was raised up again, but where was the temple of the spirit which had animated it? Where was the architect who would rebuild this, who would collect the scattered fragments, and breathe upon the dead bones, and make them live, and bind them as of yore into a body of devout and simple-hearted worshippers? Many, remembering the bygone glories of Ste. Baume, wished that a prophet would arise and work this wonder in Provence. Perhaps the wish took the form of a prayer in some loving hearts, and so brought about its accomplishment. The valiant-hearted son of S. Dominic, the Père Lacordaire, was to be the prophet of their desires. He rose up and upbraided the people of Provence for their ingratitude to the memory of their illustrious patroness, and for their decayed faith, and exhorted them to stir up the dead embers of a devotion that had formerly been the edification and joy of Christendom to repair and beautify the deserted grotto of Mary Magdalen, and rekindle its lamps, and restore the pilgrimage of Ste. Baume in its ancient fervor. The work was one that appealed strongly to the sympathies of the Marseillese; but this was not enough to ensure its success. In order to make the sympathy effectual, the Père Lacordaire needed a helpmate who would go about amongst the people and put their good-will into a practical form for him—some one who would second his exertions by docile and zealous and intelligent co-operation. He looked around him, and his choice fell upon Amélie. He knew her, and thought she was of all others the person best suited to his purpose. It was no easy or pleasant task the setting on foot of a movement such as this; the preliminaries were sure to be full of difficulties, often of the sort that make self-love wince and smart; there was plenty of ridicule in store, a goodly harvest of sneers and snubs to be garnered at the outset, rude opposition to be endured from those who had no faith at all, and chilling indifference from those who looked upon anything like a return to the forms and symbols of the middle ages as poetic enthusiasm not practicable in the XIXth century. It was just the kind of work to put the daughter of S. Dominic to. She did not disappoint the Père Lacordaire; but responded as promptly to the call as his own fiery spirit could have wished. It was in Amélie's house that the eloquent Dominican inaugurated the œuvre [pg 667] of S. Baume, and told the story of the great penitent's life and death. From the salon in the Rue Grignan the burning words of the orator went forth to all Provence and stirred many hearts. A committee was soon formed for raising the necessary funds towards the restoration of the grotto as a preliminary to the reopening of the pilgrimage. The Père Lacordaire, as if the more prominently to record the services Amélie had rendered in the work so far, and to associate her name with its progress, desired that the meetings should be held at her house; and so they were, and continued to be regularly until she left Marseilles for Rome. She lived to see their joint labors crowned with success; the grotto assumed gradually something of its ancient beauty; an inn was built on the plain at the foot of the mountain for the accommodation of travellers who came from a distance, pilgrims were once more seen toiling in great numbers up the steep paths of the forest leading to the grotto, and filling the glade with the sound of canticles, and the feast of S. Magdalen, the 22d of July, was again celebrated with something of the pomp and fervor of olden times.