Les Eloges et les Vies des Reynes, des Princesses et des Dames Illustres en Piete, en Courage & en Doctrine, Qui Ont Fleury de Nostre Temps, & du Temps de Nos Peres, by Hilarion de Coste. Paris: Sebastien Cramoisy et Gabriel Cramoisy, 1647.
Call Number: SpC.305.489621 C839e1647
One of the most notable features of Vincent de Paul’s life and ministry was the key role played by women. This in turn was one of the signal characteristics of the Catholic reform movement in seventeenth-century France. The contemporary French Church and French society carefully carved out a prominent, if carefully circumscribed, role for women that creatively pushed gender role boundaries while preserving intact accepted views of the inherent gender differences that posited the inferiority of women to men.
Hilarion (Olivier) de Coste (1595-1661) was a member of the mendicant Order of Minims founded by Saint Francois de Paola in the fifteenth century. De Coste knew Vincent de Paul, who in 1621 had been honored with an affiliation to the order by its general superior.1
A second edition of the text was published in 1647. Coste was a “patient and careful scholar” and although his sketches follow moralistic and didactic conventions they “also yield up interesting and documented details on his subjects lives…and also give useful insights into the values and mores of the time.”2
Most importantly, from the perspective of Vincentian studies, this work includes an invaluable portrait of Monsieur Vincent’s collaborator: Marguerite Silly de Gondi, the wife of Philippe-Emmanuel de Gondi. This sketch includes an anecdote contributed by Vincent de Paul himself.3 It has been translated with annotation by John Rybolt, C.M. and Barbara Diefendorf.
1Louis Abelly, Life of the Venerable Servant of God: Vincent de Paul, (New York: New City Press, 1987), 2:385.
2Rybolt, John E. C.M., Ph.D. and Diefendorf, Barbara B. (2000) Madame de Gondi: A Contemporary Seventeenth-Century Life, Vincentian Heritage Journal: Vol. 21: Iss. 1, Article 1.
3Ibid., 27.
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St. Vincent’s Reading List is recurring blog series exploring texts known to have been read and recommended by St. Vincent de Paul, those which can be presumed to have been read by him, and important works published during his lifetime (1581-1660). All materials discussed are held by DePaul’s Special Collections and Archives. The entire series may be viewed here.