Princes and thousands of Paris poor bury St. Vincent de Paul at Saint-Lazare

PARIS, September 28, 1660 AD — Saint Vincent de Paul was buried this afternoon in the middle of the chancel of the church of Saint-Lazare, the old leper house outside the walls of Paris where he had lived for twenty-eight years. A crowd of every rank followed his coffin.

St. Vincent died yesterday, Monday, at about four in the morning, sitting in an armchair, in his eighty-fifth year. He founded a company of priests, the Congregation of the Mission, and in 1633 AD, with Saint Louise de Marillac, the Sisters of Charity.

Saint-Lazare stands on the road from Paris to Saint-Denis. It was built as a hospital for lepers and became a rich priory of canons of Saint Victor. By the time the priory was offered to St. Vincent, there were no lepers left and only eight canons lived there.

The prior, Adrien Le Bon, offered St. Vincent the whole property, and St. Vincent turned it down for more than a year. St. Vincent told the prior: “It is true, sir, your proposal frightens me; it is so far beyond us, that I dare not think of it. We are poor priests, who live in a simple way, with no other object before us but the service of poor country-people.” He took possession on January 8, 1632 AD. From here his priests went out to seven hundred missions in twenty-six dioceses.

Since his death the body had lain in state, first in the house and then in the church, while six clerics recited the office of the dead beside it day and night. His heart was kept separately, in a silver case given by the Duchess d’Aiguillon. She was one of the most devoted of the Ladies of Charity, the women St. Vincent gathered in 1634 AD to nurse the sick poor at the Hôtel-Dieu, the city’s hospital. His priests and the Sisters wept around him, and the poor of the city pushed past one another to kiss St. Vincent’s hands and feet.

This afternoon the procession formed. The Priests of the Mission went first, led by Father René Alméras, who would succeed St. Vincent at their head. Behind them walked the Sisters of Charity under Sister Marguerite Chétif. She had been made their Mother-General last month, as St. Louise de Marillac had asked before her death in March. Then came the princes, among them the Prince of Conti, the King’s cousin; the Papal Nuncio; the bishops; the presiding judges and the magistrates; and the ladies of Paris. The priests of the Tuesday Conferences, the weekly meetings for clergy St. Vincent began at Saint-Lazare in 1633 AD, walked together. Bossuet, the Archdeacon of Metz, walked among them and could not hold back his tears. Last came the poor of Paris, in their thousands.

The body, closed in a lead coffin, was laid in the middle of the chancel. His priests marked the place with a stone carved with a Latin epitaph. In English it reads: “Here lies that venerable man, Vincent de Paul, priest, founder or institutor and first general superior of the Congregation of the Mission, as also of the Sisters of Charity. He died on the 27th of September 1660, in the eighty-fifth year of his age.”

The grave was opened for the first time in 1712 AD; air had got in and done some damage to the body. After St. Vincent was declared a saint in 1737 AD, his remains were moved into a coffin of silver and gold above the high altar of the chapel of Saint-Lazare.

In the summer of 1789 AD Saint-Lazare was still feeding two hundred poor people a day, and word went round Paris that its granaries were full. At two o’clock one July morning, the week the Bastille fell, a mob of about two hundred broke open the doors. St. Vincent’s two portraits, the straw mattress he died on, the candlestick from his room and his walking-stick were lost. The mob left the chapel alone, and the coffin above the altar was not touched.

In August 1792 AD government agents came for every object of gold and silver in the chapel, his silver-gilt coffin among them. The priests asked permission to take the skeleton out of it and put it in a wooden case, and they were allowed to. M. Clairet, the notary of Saint-Lazare, hid the bones in his house and gave them back to the priests in 1795 AD. From 1815 AD they lay under an altar in the chapel of the Sisters of Charity in the Rue du Bac.

By 1830 AD the priests had left the ruins of Saint-Lazare for a new house in the Rue de Sèvres. On Sunday, April 25, 1830 AD, the Papal Nuncio, Monsignor Lambruschini, sang High Mass at Notre-Dame before twelve bishops. At two in the afternoon an immense procession carried the relics through the streets of Paris to the priests’ new chapel.

On the Saint-Denis road, the buildings of Saint-Lazare have been demolished. A stretch of wall survives, and the Hôpital Saint-Lazare now stands on the site. St. Vincent’s relics lie in a silver reliquary above the main altar of the chapel in the Rue de Sèvres, with wax over the face and hands.