The thirteenth century was without a doubt the golden age in the history of the Order of Friars-Preachers. Great men in the Order were so numerous that you could not possibly tick them off on your fingers as you might the eminent names in any other sphere or age. You might just as well try to sort out the leaves that strew the brooks of Vallombrosa, or count the waves in the sea or the stars in the sky. Perhaps that is why so many great names are so little remembered. Memory breaks down under its burden. The thickly-clustered constellation creates one luminous blaze and the single stars are lost in the glare.

Perhaps you have never heard of John of Vercelli precisely because his brilliance has been—no, not eclipsed, but absorbed in the steady glow of his shining contemporaries. Who, then, you may well ask, was this Dominican star?

The Blessed Father John of Vercelli was the sixth Master General of the Order. Both time and place of his birth are doubtful, and, indeed, very little is known of his early years. But we know that he died at Montpellier in 1283, and we gather, therefore, that, even if he ever set eyes on St. Dominic, it must have been unreflecting baby eyes or the solemn eyes of very eariy boyhood. Anyhow, if he had never met St. Dominic in person, he early came under the spell of Dominic’s sons, and was caught up in the stupendous movement Dominic had started. We know for certain that, before he became a Friar, John taught Canon Law in the University of Paris. Now, no man at any university in the Middle Ages could by any possibility help seeing and hearing Friars-Preachers.

A French Portrait

Mlle. Marie and Mlle. Jeanne de Grandet were the last of a distinguished family of the Midi. I have often visited their little town, and I knew them and their ancient dwelling well. It was approached by way of a cobbled street, running close to the foot of the citadel.

It was a charming place, rambling round a courtyard spaced and shaded with bay-trees and oleanders. To the world its aspect was grave and reticent; but giving on the paved and formal garden were galleries flecked with sun between the twisted branches of vine and wisteria, and purple to the spring and autumn skies. Old grey roofs were set with dormer-windows, from which you might watch the changes of light and colour on Pyrenean snows, or the flag flapping against the blue on the top of the Château Fort.

Within, the house was dark. People of the Midi fear the sun, knowing him in his might; and so, at high noon of brightest midsummer, the house was full of mystery and shade. Such light as filtered through the shuttered windows fell faintly in the sombre rooms, lay still on the panelled walls, the aged tapestries, the ancestral furniture. Perhaps, after all, it was airless. One felt at first a little breathless, restrained, enclosed, as in a narrow valley among high mountains where the air is still and no flower stirs in the grass. But slowly the restraint became safety; the lack of movement, rest; the noiselessness, peace. Slowly there was distilled of ancient perfumes, of forgotten airs, the meditative voice of the race and family, enunciating eternal and Catholic verities to the grave and tranquil measure of the great French grandfather clock.

In the general hunt for centenaries, which is surely one of the fashions of the day, it may seem somewhat trivial to claim to be the first in the field in announcing the discovery of a centenary that no one else, to my knowledge, has so far noticed, or at any rate taken the trouble to put on record. By a happy chance, when reading the Life of Père Marie-Theodore Ratisbonne, I noticed that the Venerable Father had received the sacrament of baptism in the year 1827, on September the 12th, the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary. It was actually only ‘the supplying of the ceremonies’ that took place on this day, because Theodore Ratisbonne had, by virtue of an unusual dispensation granted by the Bishop of Strasbourg, been privately baptised in the previous April, on Holy Saturday, by Mademoiselle Humann, the wonderful woman whom others besides Ratisbonne could claim as the human instrument God had used to work their conversion.

Now the fact that the son of a wealthy Jew was baptised in Strasbourg in 1827 may seem at first sight scarcely a matter for comment a hundred years afterwards. Yet actually that one act, seen in its multiplied effects, must undoubtedly strike us as having been the beginning of a movement, certainly as extensive in its range and influence as that associated with the name of Newman. The baptism of 1827 was followed fourteen years later by the still more remarkable and romantic conversion of Ratisbonne’s younger brother Alphonse.

In chapel proud or lowly,

High tapers burning dim,

The fervent folk of morning Bow down and wait for Him.

Faithful He comes nor tarries,

Punctual at a phrase,

Swift on the mystic summons That bids Him live, and slays.

Without a stir His presence,

No glory gilds the sky;

Only the few perceiving That Jesus passes by.

Silent is Priest and Victim,

The Slayer and the Slain;

Never a whispered greeting,

He lives and dies again.

May God Who dies at morning,

Though bloodless now His doom,

Find every heart a garden That keeps for Him a tomb.

Edwin Essex, O.P.