More of St. Vincent's Paris

PARIS (Aug. 10)--Sunday was our free day to do with as we wished. It was a great day. Since I haven’t been able to get to sleep before 1:30 since we arrived in Paris, it felt great to sleep until 10 a.m. this morning.

Cathedrale Notre-Dame
I was so tired that I’m lucky I even woke up to meet DePaul colleagues Tom Judge, Sandra Morgenthaler, Fran Cunningham, Shirley Turner, Scott Kelley and Jim Janossy an hour later to head to Notre-Dame Cathedral of Paris to attend the international mass at 11:30. Remember how I was among those in my group who didn’t get in to Notre-Dame on our first day in Paris, so I was really thrilled to make it today. Mass was beautiful. Of course, the video doesn't do it justice, but you can check it out for yourself here:



After that, my colleague Sandra Morgenthaler and I circled around the entire cathedral once. It was packed with people from all over the globe and of all religions. For example, it was interesting to see a group of Muslim women all dressed in head-to-toe black posing for pictures in the cathedral. The place was so packed that I actually felt claustrophobic. Still it was totally worth it.

You may be wondering whether I will ever tire of visiting these cathedrals? I don’t think so. Each has been beautiful in its own way. I like different things about each one I’ve been to so far. I guess with Notre-Dame there certainly is beautiful artwork to admire. But I guess mostly it would have to be thinking about the rich history of the place. Not only is the architecture on each of these cathedrals impressive--Notre-Dame is known for its flying buttresses, after all. I just had to say buttresses in this blog at least once. Seriously though, this place has seen a lot of the great events in French history. My Michelin guidebook of France says that in 1430, the cathedral was where the coronation took place for the young Henry VI of England as the King of France. During the revolution, statues were destroyed and the place was declared a Temple of Reason, according to Michelin. The book says, “It was in a much-dilapidated building that Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself Emperor and the King of Rome was baptized.” So you sit listening to mass thinking about the major events like these and others—such as the marriages that have taken place there over hundreds of years. And you’re in awe of the place, and so is everyone else. That’s why it’s packed.

After soaking in Notre-Dame, Sandra and I decided to take a leisurely walk to our next destination, which was the Louvre. First we had lunch. More goat cheese. It was another tasty salad with warm goat cheese on toasted slices of white bread. It was about 1 p.m. by then, so we figured wine was completely acceptable. It proved to be another lovely meal. We capped it off with some rather disappointing Tiramisu and espresso. We started out saying the Tiramisu was interesting and different, but really it was not very good. It was like a cake. I’ve never had tiramisu like that before.

After lunch, we meandered through roadside flea market type stalls peddling postcards, prints, silky scarves emblazoned with “Paris” all over them, key chains of the Eiffel Tower—you know the usual classy souvenirs that you expect to see at souvenir stands like these.

Musee Du Louvre
Before we knew it, it was after 4 p.m., and we didn’t have a whole lot of time to visit the Louvre. So we raced there as fast as we could to see the Mona Lisa, figuring if you see nothing else there, that’s the one thing you have to see.

You wouldn’t believe how far away it is from the entrance. We made it, and we managed to check out some other paintings, too, before they started to kick us all out.

At this point, our feet were KILLING us because of all the walking we did and we were getting really hungry. So we stopped at this Italian/Greek/French café called Chez Alexandre near the Louvre, where we had pizzas. Sandra had wine, and I had beer. This was our first bad wine experience. It was bound to happen. My beer, called 1664, was OK, not great. Sandra appropriately dubbed it French Heineken after I gave her a sip.

Not yet tired of goat cheese, Sandra ordered it on her pizza, called the Mona Lisa. Mine was the Marguerite, with cheese, oregano and exactly two olives. We shared a dessert of (I know this is going to sound strange but…) baklava. Our friendly Turkish server recommended it, so we couldn’t refuse. It was creamy and melted in our mouths. We loved it, but it didn't quite do it for us and we finally figured out why: We had not had an ounce of chocolate all day. That was the first day that was the case since we arrived in Paris. So a short time later, we snacked on fancy French versions of Twix bars, and we felt better.

Waiting for the check is a long process in restaurants and cafes throughout France. They don’t give you the bill unless you ask for it. So you should allow at least a half hour for that. As we waited to settle up, we were planning our way back to the hotel via Metro.

A helpful Parisian couple at the table next to us suggested we take a different train line because the line we wanted to take was shut down due to the discovery of a suspicious package. I thought I would take the opportunity to ask them if they know of St. Vincent. Before I left for Paris, my supervisor Carol Sadtler, who had been on this trip before, said that everyone in Paris knows of St. Vincent. I said everyone? She said yes, everyone. So that’s why I thought that if I had some time, I would put the question to the man (or woman) on the street.

In the following video, I didn’t get the woman’s first name, but she said her last name was Vincent. Cool coincidence, huh? The very knowledgeable young man is Gabriel Du Bois, a political science student at Sciences-Po in Paris. He has published a book, “La Saga capetienne,” which actually references St. Vincent. Here’s what he had to say:

I guess Carol’s right—so far.

PARIS (Aug. 9)—We were introduced to some additional Vincentian sites in Paris today. Among them were the original site of Saint Lazare, the churches of St. Laurent and Ste. Marguerite, and the Museum of Public Assistance. I recently mentioned (see Aug. 7 blog entry) that the Rev. John Rybolt, C.M., showed us the site of the original Vincentian motherhouse, which today is a firehouse. That same day, I also wrote about the current location of the motherhouse, which is on Rue de Sevres.

In the time in between, St. Lazare, located on Rue du Faub.G. St. Denis, served as the motherhouse until the Revolution. That’s the site we visited this morning. At the time, the Daughters of Charity motherhouse was located directly across the street, which made for easy communication between the Vincentians and the sisters.

On a sign in between the two sites is a likeness of St. Vincent that made us feel as though we were on DePaul’s Lincoln Park campus (if we weren’t surrounded by Parisian shops and cafes).



After that, we toured St. Laurent, which contains a plaque that says this was St. Vincent’s parish church. His close associate Saint Louise de Marillac (1591-1660) was at one point buried there, but her remains were removed in 1965. It is unclear where they are today. With St. Vincent, Saint Louise co-founded the Daughters of Charity.

Our next church, Ste. Marguerite, is significant for its historic and artistic reasons. It contains an impressive collection of paintings of St. Vincent. An original by Jean-Baptiste Feret, which was done for St. Vincent’s canonization, shows him praying for people on the battlefield. Another by Jean Restout depicts our saint greeting several noble women. Yet another is of St. Vincent preaching to old people at a hospice. That one is by Frere Jean Andre.

The church also possesses a statue of St. Vincent holding a baby that inspired an entire genre of compassionate “Vincent and baby” paintings and artwork. In some of the depictions, it seems that St. Vincent and his people felt that the more babies he appears with, the better. His work in helping orphans in the streets of Paris is well known. So maybe the Vincent and baby art provided a way to bring attention, and as a result, financial support to help him feed, clothe and tend to his foundlings. High-resolution digital images of most, if not all, of the artwork I describe here and countless others can be found at depaul.edu. To get to them, you have to click on libraries and then on special collections or archives—something like that. I’ll post the specifics as soon as I get it.

Our last stop of the day was at the Museum of Public Assistance, which I think is also known as Hotel Sully. The architectural style of the museum is very similar to the current Vincentian motherhouse on Rue de Sevres. At one point, the museum was a house, and St. Vincent would have to call on wealthy people who lived in these types of houses to seek their support to help his foundlings. In the actual museum that is part of the compound is the Musee Carnavalet, which had many works that depicted what Paris was like in the time of St. Vincent de Paul (1581-1660).