“While in residence with the Vincentians in Paris, doing research for my dissertation in European History, I was introduced to Père Claude Lautissier, C.M., the archivist. (With European archivists, the more you get to know them, the more items they will trust you with.) It took months of conversations and frequent visits to the Archives at the motherhouse before one day, a new room was unlocked. The “Crown Jewels,” if you will. These were the letters of Vincent de Paul in his own handwriting. The first time Fr. Lautissier let me see the letters, he also brought out a long, thin piece of paper that was pressed between two panes of clear glass to preserve it. He said to me, “This, dear Brian, is what you have been looking for.” It was the treatise of Vincent de Paul against the Jansenists, simply titled, “Sur la Grâce,” or “On Grace.” It was exactly what I had been searching for the whole time in Paris. Père Lautissier handed it to me and I wept. Here was, a very human touch of Vincent de Paul. Handwritten on scraps of paper, a beautiful treatise against a heresy that was destroying French religion and society in the 17th century.“
Fr. Brian Boosel
Professor of history