The reading
How it began
Vincent dies in 1660. The body, later transferred, does not survive as a sleeping figure; the bones are vested in a silver mask and hands, as many baroque founders are. The heart, given to the Daughters of Charity, has been reported intact and is still shown with the care given to a first-class relic of a founder.
The day itself
The greater sign is institutional. The Congregation of the Mission and the Daughters of Charity are what “incorrupt” looks like when it is a work, not a corpse: still walking, still in the street.
What was kept
Go to the Chapel of the Lazarists on the Rue de Sèvres and you are not looking at a sleeping face. The silver mask, the silver hands, and the vestments are a baroque reliquary fitted to bones. The heart is a separate relic, long kept by the Daughters of Charity and still shown as a first-class relic of the founder. Vincent died at the motherhouse in Paris on 27 September 1660. The body was moved more than once. What the congregation has always insisted on, in its own guides, is the distinction: an effigy is honest metal over bone; it is not a claim that the flesh of 1660 is the face in the chapel. The work that outlasted the flesh is on the street: the Congregation of the Mission, the Daughters, the Tuesday conferences of ladies who funded the galley prisoners and the foundlings. Clement XII canonized him in 1737. Leo XIII named him patron of all works of charity in 1885.
Reading
How to read The Heart of St. Vincent de Paul
Not every saint is Bernadette in a glass box. Some are a heart in a reliquary and a congregation that will not go home. Vincent would have preferred the second. The Church keeps both.
Church status
How this sign has been received
Church-approved
Canonized 1737; patron of all works of charity. The relics are canonically recognized. The silver effigy is honest art, not a claim of a whole intact body.
Sources
- Congregation of the Mission, Paris
- Abelly, Life of Vincent de Paul
For the classroom
The Heart of St. Vincent de Paul (Died 1660; relics in Paris, Chapel of the Vincentians, Rue de Sèvres, Paris). Grade in this encyclopedia: Church-approved. The apostle of charity. His bones rest in a silver effigy above the altar; his heart is kept apart, long described as unusually preserved. Pilgrims come for the man who invented the parish poor as a vocation.
