Although the topic may not be of great interest to readers, I believe it is important because it reveals the Saint’s vision and openness to new insights into the conception of the human being and his way of understanding the world, as well as the phenomena that surround it.

What did Vincent de Paul think of the new scientific discoveries, how can we place him culturally, in the backward environment of the countryside, marked by ignorance, or in the reactionary environment of those who distrust everything that is new? It is necessary to read his writings to discover his thinking. He never mentioned a scientific subject “ex professo”, but when it came up he was happy to explain it. In fact, his early university education, his prolonged contact with the Sorbonne University and his acquaintance with the literary and scientific gatherings of Queen Margot’s palace, where he served as an almoner for some years and where the most illustrious scientists and writers of the time passed through, must have kept him in touch with the books and discoveries of the time.

One of the most debated issues of his time was astronomy. Some analyzed astral phenomena superstitiously, while others, more daring, ridiculed the new discoveries. In 1654, at the age of 74, he received two letters from a confrere in Krakow, in which he confessed his fear for the harm that a future solar eclipse might bring him. In his first reply, Father Vincent limited himself to telling him «que estos signos extraordinarios no son señal segura de algún mal acontecimiento», but, realizing that it was a subject that worried the confrere and the community, he replied to the second, in which he mixed irony, pedagogy and scientific information: «Our astrologers here assure the peoplke that there is nothing to fdear from the eclipse. I have seen Monsieur Cassandieux(1), one of the most learned and experienced men of our day; he scoffs at all that has given people cause for alarm, and gives very pertinent arguments for doing so. Among others, he says that a solar eclipse is inevitable every six months, either in our hemisphere or in the other, because of the conjunction of the sun and the moon on the ecliptic, and that, if the eclipse were as disastrous as you point out to me because of the harmful effects with which we are being threatened, we would see more often famine, plague, and the other calamities of God on earth. In addition, he says that, if deprivation of the light of the sun, due to the interposition of the moon between the sun and us, produced this bad effect because of the suspension of the benign influences of the sun on the earth, the result would be that privation of the light of the same sun during the night would produce more harmful effects because this privation is of longer duration, and the mass of the earth is about one-third thicker than that of the moon. It would follow that this nocturnal eclipse’ would be more dangerous than the one that occurred on August 12. He concludes from this-and rightly so-that there is nothing to fear from this eclipse. I do think that the experts in astrology are disturbed much by it, and even less those who are instructed in the school of Jesus Christ, who know that the wise men dominabitur astris» (2).

Moreover, facing the magical conception of the world that was dominant at the time and the belief in demonic possession as an attempt to explain what was not understood, Father Vincent de Paul adopted an attitude that was the opposite of that of his time. In fact, when faced with a young woman whom everyone said was possessed, Father Vincent saw only a question of a melancholic temperament. In the letter he wrote to the young girl’s parents, we do not know what to admire more: his fine insight, which led him to see further than others, or his great respect for their opinion: «Three or four months ago, I received an order from the ecclesiastical judge in Paris to visit your daughter. The Comte de Maure had asked permission to have her exorcised, according to the advice given him by several persons of deep piety. They feared that the good child was being tormented by some evil possession or obsession. The reason they had for believing this was the aversion the good child had for the things of God. It had reached such a point that she had not prayed at all for three years, from the time of her childhood when she was living in VilIe-I’Eveque with Mademoiselle de Longueville, and for about two years she had been kept locked up in a room at Port-Royal without hearing Holy Mass. Therefore, that was why those good souls held that opinion and the reason why I had the happiness of visiting her. She immediately expressed her state to me with good judgment and candor, for she has a good, solid mind, far beyond that of the majority of young women, but a little melancholic. It was my opinion at once that it was just that melancholy depression tormenting her. Nevertheless, the respect I owed to those who held the opinion that there was some evil obsession caused me to submit my judgment to theirs. Therefore, when I was making my report to the ecclesiastical judge, I told him that I thought there was no objection to M. Charpentier’s – he is a priest of renowned holiness in this city – performing a few cautious exorcisms, gently and without calling the evil spirit out, by prayer rather than by cursing» (3).

The exorcist priest fell ill and was unable to perform his work. The young woman who was said to be “possessed” also fell ill. Her life was in danger. Father Vincent was called in. He had a conversation with her. The sick woman went to confession and asked to receive the Eucharist on her own initiative, without any outside pressure. And in the same letter, Fr. Vincent de Paul continues: «since she was cured, she found herself completely freed from it so that she asked to go to confession to me again and to receive Holy Communion which she had not done during her illness. She performed these actions with freedom of spirit as any other person would have done».

The rest of the letter to Duke De Atri, the young woman’s father, tells how he tried to dissuade her from entering religious life because of her mental condition. He did not succeed; there was pressure from the family and Fr. Vincent speaks of the danger this fine girl is in. Throughout the letter, Fr. Vincent does not hide his disbelief about the possession: «It is difficult for me to speak to you about this matter, but I thought I was obliged to do so in conscience … since your daughter’s salvation is in danger».

It can be seen that Vincent de Paul is very receptive to the gradual change from a cultural universe marked by the marvelous to another universe marked by the rational search for phenomena, based on experience. An expression he often repeated: “This is my experience.”

Fr. José Alves, CM

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(1) Canon Pierre Gassendi, the famous astronomer and author of numerous works, was born in Champtereier, new Digne (Alpes.de-Haute -Provence ), on January 22, 1592, and died in Paris on October 24, 1655. He was a skillful experimentalist and a careful observer who verified the discoveries of other scientists and coordinated facts which had already been accumulated, but he made no important discoveries of his own.

(2) CCD:VI182-183.

(3) CCD:I:459-460.