Over the course of the 50 years between 1610 and and 1650 Vincent saw many royal events unfold.Vincentian historian Ed Udovic … Click Read more about Vincent’s Paris and recent tours…Vincentian historian Ed Udovic provides us with the bookends in his regular post for the de Paul University Library.

“Bernard Pujo opens his biography of Vincent de Paul with the events taking place in Paris on August 26, 1660. Just a month before his death, Vincent de Paul from his sickbed at Saint-Lazare would have heard the riotous celebrating on the rue Saint-Denis outside his window: the whole capital was welcoming Louis XIV and his new wife Marie Therese of Spain. France had ended its long war with Spain in 1659 with the Peace of the Pyrenees. The treaty terms included the engagement of the French king to his cousin, the Spanish Infanta. The couple married at St. Jean-de-Luz on the French/Spanish border on June 9, 1660. This work is a lavishly-illustrated commemorative volume published two years after the event in 1662.

In 1610, Vincent de Paul, newly-arrived in Paris, would have been present in the capital during the traumatic events of the assassination of Henry IV. Fifty years later he was present as the grandson of that King entered the city on a much happier note. In between, Vincent would have been the witness of many similar public royal events that were celebrated on the streets of Paris with great solemnity, spectacle, and expense. Because of his close connections to the monarchy, however, he was not a distant witness to many of these events but saw them from the perspective of an insider who was used to seeing the King, the Queen, and the Court, whether it was his visit to Louis XIII on his death bed, his membership on the Council of Conscience, his visit to Anne of Austria urging the dismissal of Cardinal Mazarin to secure the end of civil war, or his charming description of Louis XIV as a well-behaved infant walking in the palace garden with his nanny.

Vincent’s Paris was royal Paris.

From the monthly blog entry in a series describing holdings in Special Collections “St. Vincent’s Reading List,” describing contemporary works associated with the life and times of Vincent de Paul.

See also Vincentian Encyclopoedia entries..

• Comparative Chronology of Vincent’s Time
• Chronological Dictionary of Vincent’s Life

Rybolt, John E. In the Footsteps of Vincent de Paul, a Guide to Vincentian France, Chicago: De Paul University Press, 2007. (Scroll down to bottom of linked page)

• “Walk in the Footsteps of Vincent and Louise”: A Vincentian Heritage Tour of Paris and France
• In the steps of Vincent dePaul Chronicles of the DePaul University Faculty & Staff Vincentian Heritage Tour to France, Aug. 5-17, 2008
• Parish pilgimage Richboro Parish Pilgrimage to Paris 13-17 February 1997