SATURDAY, JANUARY
THE W. IL. RECORD.
19, 1918.
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The Black Madonna of Paris By John Hannon.
It has been a comfort until almost submitted the infant community to a
a commonplace of the French corres-
pondence of our Catholic journals ever since the war began that Paris is now displaying quite freely that better self of hers which many of us knew was always there. Even the secular papers -the best of them-have published consoling cablegrams of the religious life of "la Ville-Lumiere" that would never have crossed the Atlantic floor at a fairly high fee per word if the vulgarly lime-lit myth of a perennially "gay Paree" were not wholesomely obscured by the stern truths of war. But there have always been good people in Paris, and very large numbers indeed of them. Only it was just as well to have eyes for them when one was there, and for tidings of them when one's holiday was over. Of French writers of great, and, as in Coppee's case, of consummate ability, whose books bore witness before the war to the existence and activities of the nobler of the two Parises, there has been no lack since the century began. Even that sombre genius, Joris Karl Huysmans, although he had to live away from the indubitably modern capital in the end, learnt to see the two cities side by aide, to discern realistically their "darkness and light, ebon and gold inlaid." Thus in a paper which he published the year of his .death, and which makes very timely reading this year, he juxtaposes, with his wonted power, the great department store, the Bon Marche of Paris, and-the shrine of the historic Black Madonna of Paris, with pebble-cast in the self -same Rue de Sevres! He finds that the convent of the Dames of St. Thomas of Villanova, protecting the sacred image (so critical in the student -life of St. Francis when Count de Sales) "gives all this and of the Rue de Sevres a physiog nomy of its own, like a pious nook in some good and faithful part of the provinces." "And yet," he continues, this quarter, of old so placid and, as it were deserted, has become a thronged and bustling mart! In measure as the Bon Marche, which I first knew as a tiny store, has grown, it has attracted hordes of customers, and now you have a jumbled roar of carriages and tramways, a breathless dispatching of parcels and of ladies, but if you cross the threshold of either of these two monasteries, all the hurly-burly vanishes. Paris the frivolous is no more; you are out in the country, miles away, and, what is still more remarkable, there are periods in the day when this special aspect and aroma of the province and the cloister brims over to the pavement and along the street, from the inside of the building." Thus the Sisters who guard the statue of 'Our Lady of Good Deliverance" conduct a dispensary where bread as well as medicine is distributed. and this naturally attracts a lamentable queue of the blind, the halt and the maimed, among tramps as well as the labouring poor. At the end of the writer's account of devotion to the statue it will be seen that he describes this admirable work of benevolences as Our Blessed Lady's activity in an intensely commercial thoroughfare. Here, however, is his interesting thumbnail sketch of the blessed routine of the Sisters them-
mitigated rule of his own Order. How true, by the by, is the claim of the Breton singer Bottreaux (now serving, they say, in the trenches), in his patriotic and provincial song, "Chez Nous!" that charitable women, "Samaritanesses" he calls them, are especially abundant in Brittany: On trouvera des Samaritaines, Chez nous " I
The nineteenth century Little Sisters of the Poor spring at once, of course, into the memory, but the seventeenth century enclosed Breton nuns of Our Lady of Good Deliverance are not to be forgotten. From Lamballe, in St. Anne's "delectable duchy" they spread all over France, where they serve hospitals, dispensaries, orphanages, and also conduct elementary day -schools. On lines parallel with those of the latter Petites Soeurs they are servants of the poor. Their rule is express on the point, in fact. It is there laid down, in the second chapter, article 6 ana 4: "Charity for the poor is the end and, as it were, the soul of our institution. . . . Our great study must be to overcome repugnances and delicacy: let us never manifest, so far as is possible, the least sign of any horror of the most revolting sores. . . . There must be amongst us a sweet and holy rivalry, vying with one another in serving those sick persons from whom there is most to endure, whether on the score of ill temper, or of the nature of the disease." These injunctions are summed up in a symbolic ceremony, which leaves no mistake upon the matter whatever. When novices are admitted to profession, a destitute woman from among the dispensary patients embraces them and places the espousal -ring on the finger of each, saying, "Remember, dear sister, that thou are now a serwant -maiden of the poor." The Convent in the Rue de Sevres is the mother-house of the Congregation. "If you push," writes Huysmans, ' at the front half-gate, which is always left ajar, you find yourself in a paved coyered court, and, to right of the glazed lodge tenanted by the tourieres-the lay portresses and errand-women-you enter a corridor flanking the street, wnich leads to the vestibule of a chapel, adorned with statues of St. Michael, St. Genevieve, and --St. Expedit! Serried lines of votive candles burn before these images, and the walls are inlaid wish ex-vcno inscriptions and offerings to the mighty Archangel, which is natural, and to St. Expedit, which is less so. As to the patroness of Paris, in this particular quarter there is not even one inscription to her. Although writing, in the main, about Our Lady of Good Deliverance, M. IIuysmans cannot miss an opportunity of saying a word in the role of candid friend. "The new devotion to St. Expedit," he says, truly enough, "is based upon a pun, for he is invoked on account of his name, that he may obtain people favours expeditiously." That was before the Holy See took severe measures in Naples against the unauthorised devotion, and had a c,,,; iv new statue there removed from the Cathedral. But, a dozen years ago, the corridor and vestibule in the Rue de Sevres were the Paris headquarters of this freak of pietism, a devotion of derivation, conducted not manypaces ant from a historical shrineof Our important in the biography of a imporan t t Saint. A Strange Chapel and a Statue. The chapel itse:f has little, if any, architectural beauty, having been built by en obscure architect at an t.,..,.s anguished period (18291. "The sanctuary is of inconceivable ugliness, made worse by the use of g.ass prisms, such as are nowadays employed only in the adornment of provincial concert and assembly halls; it has also an ignoble gas chandelier, set swaying like a flower -pot on the end of an iron stem. It would be beneath notice, architecturally or otherwise, did it not possess, above the high altar, in a crescent -shaped baldachino, one of the most venerated Madonnas in Paris, Our Lady of Good Deliverance, the Black Virgin." The history of this statue-which is not black, but of dark coloured stone, mainly blue and cheeringly devotional -is curious. Its origin and earliest da'es are now unknown, but it is freely mentioned as already famous quite early in the sixteenth century by chroniclers of the Church of S. Stephen
intercession for women with child and prisoners. Somewhat later, in 1578, St. Francis de Sales, then a student in Paris, obtained from Our Lady of Good Deliverance his great deliverance from the temptation of despair. Here is Alban Ilutler's spirited story, in which he perhaps calls the statue a "picture" as being small and coloured: 'His chief resort during his stay in Paris was to some churches, that especially of St. Stephen des Grez, as being one of the most retired. Here he made a vow of perpetual chastity, putting himsel: under the special patronage of the Blessed Virgin. God, to purify his heart, permitted a thick darkness insensibly to overspread his mind, and a spiritual dryness and melancholy to overwhelm him. He seemed, from a perfect tranquility and peace of mind, to be almost brought to the brink of despair. Seized with the greatest terrors, he passed nights and days in tears and lamentations, and suffered more than can be conceived by those who have not felt the severity of such interior conflicts. The bitterness of his grief threw him into a deep jaundice; he could neither eat, drink, nor sleep. "At last Francis, being at prayer in the same church of St. Stephen, cast his eyes on a picture of Our Lady: this awaking his confidence in her intercession, he prostrated himself on the ground, and, unworthy to address the Father of all consolation, begged that she would be his advocate, and procure him the grace to love God with his whole heart. That very moment he found himself eased of his grief, as of a heavy weight taken off his heart, and his former peace and tranquility restored, which he ever after enjoyed."
Another illustrious canonised client
of Our Lady of Good Deliverance in the Church of St. Stephen was the great St. Vincent of Paul, who is mentinned in his life as "spending long
hourr'at her feet."
"In Days of Old." On the first of May (and also on the 24th of August) a solemn procession used to start from St. Stephens and wend to some parochial church in the city. They did such things well in those days, and the details are happily very full and pleasant. Banners and lighted torches were carried in abundance; there was "a fine image of Notre -Dame, surrounded by sunbeams and angels," a tall cross "with a shaft of well -worked silver;" images of "Monsieur Saint Peter, of Saint Sebastian, fastened to a tree, having over his head an angel crownlog him," and these hallowed things were borne "each one upon a litter draped with hangings of white, red, green, and yellow damask, on the shoulders of two young men, garbed in albs of fine cloth, well pleated, and walking barefoot." "And in the front of these went the beadles, one wearing a full, fine violet gown, the other one of white and blue cloth, while the third wore one of blue and buff, and all wore fresh flowers in
their hats."
One feels sure that Charles Dickens, in the benigner years of friendship with
the Catholic painter, Charleson Stanfield, would have enjoyed knowing that the dignified "Mounseers" who followed Mr. Bumble's dignified proles-
"Samaritanesses."end ThomasLady, mostprocession selves:-
"The Convent of the Ladies of bt. of Villanova invades Paris every morning at about ten o'clock. To the works of vanity of the mighty mercantile stores, its neighbours, it opposes the Works of Mercy. A swarm of sickly, ragged folk flows up to be engulfed within its gates, and the Sisters dress cuts, reduce swellings without operation, bandage sores with abundant fresh linen, etc., then their luckless patients, more at their case, all file past an office window resembling a pay -box, where the cashier is a nun, yet paler then the altar -breads she is trimming and the bleached wax candles stored around her. She, instead of receiving an offering, gives one. and distributes to each a dole of bread." The Sisters, in fact, have for patron an Augustinian monk of the fifteenth century who became Archbishop of Valence, and was surnamed "the Almoner" on account of the love he -i-t,ed for beggars and the ailing among the hardworking poor. By devo,ing their lives, accordingly, to the casual sick poor and never failing mendicants of the streets of a modern capital they are following his example. Their congregation w,s founded in 16130 at Lambal:e in Brittany by Peres Chamoiseau and Ange Leproux, the latter a prior of Augustinians, who
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de Gres (or "des Grez" or "des Grecs" -"of the Greeks," that is), then situate in the banlieue, whither the populac,: of varis was wont to betake itself in pilgrimage, and invoke Our Lady's
sion in Stuart times, wore flowers in their hats on May Day! But the reverclergy, more power to them, wore flowers in theirs too ,and even went one better, for they rounded up the "in goodly numbers, wearing copes of velvet and cloth of gold" and not only was each garlanded around his headgear, but "carried a nosegay in his hand" as well! That was the beatiful hey -day of the Black Madonna of Paris. At the Revolu. tion, when the Church of St. Stephen was looted, the statue w's bought privily from the municipal officials by a pious lady, the Countess de Carignan Saint -Maurice, and by her hidden in safety. Arrested as a suspect a few days later, Mme. de Carignan was confined in the Convent of the Oiseau in the Rue de Sevres. which had been converted into a lock-up. There she formed a close friendship with the nuns of St. Thomas of Villanova, who, with their Superior -General, Mother Walsh de Valois, were her fellow-prisoners. They made novenas together to Our Lady of Good Deliverance, and the Committee of Public Safety forgot all about them. They were set at large on October 4th, 1794, and Mme. de Carignan made a present of the statue to her prison friends. Some veal, rolled by. Mother Walsh of Valois died, and it was another Superior, Mother Sebire, who demolished the ancient convent chapel and erected the present bnfld. ing, which M. Huysmans does not like.
But he makes haste to say, in a won d,erful passage of descriptive and imaginative writing, that the piety of the
faithful around the shrine makes one blind to the defects of its present home. 'Our Lady's blessing makes of this unlovely place a charming village chapel. Those who are there do pray with such good heart! And the very costume of the nuns, so full of rural memories of the firse Breton of their Order, adds much to the illusion that one is far from Paris, in some homely country church, attended chiefly by kindly peasant women and their men folk" He speaks of the, so to say, domestic tenderness which the holy old statue appears visibly to radiate and which makes Our Lady of Good Deliverance a sister of the Black Madonnas of Moulin, Dijon, Bourg, Liesse, Rocamadour, and Chartres. "Besides, when you are kneeling before Our Lady of Good Deliverance, you feel the utter need of trying to be come a little child again, and of praying to her more with your beads than with a prayer -book. Looking wholly a dweller in God's open countryside, she is so much besought by good women of candid speech that she is best used to artless prayers-to the simplest of supplications. "Such petitions create around her, in any case, a soothing, snug, homelike atmosphere which makes this chapel exquisite. In the morning it is crammed with people, and the deep silence of the Masses at the high and side altars is broken only by the tinkling of the bells, and the crowing of cocks in the poultry -yards without. The sanctuary itself is nearly empty, but the whole choir of nuns, separated by a grille from the seats left available for the public, is fully attended. One sees only their backs, and a swaying field of white cornettes which ripple up and down at the Doxology. The regularity of these spotless flowers is broken here and there by dusky cabbage-like growths-the bonnets worn by the novices, while in the rows where the lay -sisters have their places one sees enormous linen helmets, shaped very like the cork belts used at sea, covering the whole of the face, and tailing into long fichus behind which fall in a point to the waist. "The day goes on, until at nightfall, after the Stations of the Cross, the doors are closed, and the Blessed Virgin of Good Deliverance rests from toil, to begin again first thing next morning, untiringly the importunate, eternal dear Beggar -Mother! (l'eternelle Quemandeuse) to ask new blessings for new souls. 'Tis an endless chain we compel her to draw; 'tis a shame when we think what a trouble we are to her! With the exception of the nuns, who more readily succeed in forgetting themselves, how many of us entreating her come for Her sake, and take no thought for their 2ersonal interests? But life has become so hard, so drag gingly slow of endurance, that all seem at the very last ounce of strength and, before even greeting her, plunge head long into their entreaties, the moment they draw nigh, to be healed of illhealth, to be furnished with needed money, to be protected in adversity. It is a lamentable litany of yearnings that is poured forth with the Rosarybeads; it is a way of the individual cross that each kneeler presents to her; and in the presence of all this un-
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conscious egoism, she ends by smiling sweetly, and vouchsafing to enact Veronica's part, and to wipe the streaming faces of those children whom she accepted so gladly on Calvary." In his final sentences the author gives a last vivid glimpse of the notably twofold life of the "gayest of all capitals which is working more and more on the side of the angels" since the pre -
sent war began: "At such work as this (impetration), is she occupied, the Black Madonna of Paris, and it needs very little reflection to understand why she has chosen as her abode the Convent of the Ladies of St. Thomas of Villanova. It is because, when honoured under the invocation 'Our Lady of Good Deliverance,' the Blessed Virgin finds these servants of the poor a help to her. What she cannot well do herself, quite literally and actually, they do; she delegates to them the material tasks that are not for her heavenly hands. Thus by their intermediary she is enabled to relieve wayfarers who knock at her door without asking to see her at all, sick people of the toiling masses, without faith and without a penny, and roaming utterly destitute vaerants." Our Lady of Good Deliverance pray for rrattce, and sue uursetves.