PAUL, VINCENT DE, one of the most eminent saints of the modern Catholic church, was lava of humble parentage at Ranquines, in the diocese of Dax, in the year 1576. The indications of ability which he exhibited led to his being sent to school at Toulouse. He became an ecclesiastical student, and was admitted to priest's orders in 1600. On a voyage which he was making from Marseilles to Narbonne his ship was captured by corsairs, and he with his companions sold into slavery at Tunis. where he passed throagh the hands of three different masters. The last of these, who was a renegade Savoyard, yielded to the exhortations of Vincent, resolved to return to the Christian faith, and, with Vincent, made his escape from Barbary. They landed in France in f607. Having gone thence to Rome, he was intrusted with an important mission to the French court in 1603, and continued for some time to reside in Paris as the almoner of Marguerite de Valois. The accident of his becoming preceptor of the children of M. de Goody, the commandant of the galleys at Marseilles, led to his being appointed almoner-general of the galleys in 1619. It was at this time that the well known incident occurred of his offering himself, and being accepted, in the place of one of the convicts, whom he found overwhelmed with grief and despair at having been obliged to leave his wife and family in extreme destitution. Meanwhile he had laid the foundation of what eventually grew into the great and influential congregation of priests of the missions, an association of priests who devote themselves to the work of assisting the parochial clergy by preaching and confessions periodically in those districts to which they may be invited by the local pastors. The rules of this congregation were finally approved by Urban VIII. in 1632; and in the following year the fathers estab lished themselves in the so-called priory of St. Lazare, in Paris, whence their name of
Lazarists is derived. From this date his life was devoted to the organization of works of charity and benevolence. To him Paris owes the establishment of the foundling hospital, and the first systematic efforts for the preservation of the lives, and the due education of a class theretofore neglected or left to the operation of chance charity. The pious sisterhood of charity is an emanation of the same spirit, and Vincent was intrusted by St. Francis of Sales with the direction of the newly-founded order of sisters of the visitation. The queen, Anne of Austria, warmly rewarded his exertions, and Louis XIII. chose him as his spiritual assistant in his last illness. He was placed by the' queen-regent at the head of the conseil de conscience, the council chiefly charged with the direction of the crown in ecclesiastical affairs; and the period of his presidency was foug looked back to as the golden era of impartial and honest distribution of ecclesiastical patronage in France. Vincent was not, in any sense of the word, a scholar, but his preaching, which (like that of the fathers of his congregation of Lazarists) was of the most simple kind, was singularly affecting and impressive. Ile left nothing behind him but the Rules or Constitutions of the Congregration of the _Mission. 1658; Conferences on these constitutions, 4to; and a considerable number of letters, chiefly addressed to the priests of the mission, or to other friends, on spiritual subjects. He died at the advanced age of 85, at St. Lazare, Sept. 27, 1660, and was canonized by Clement *X1I. in 1737. His festival is bald on July 19, the day of his canonization.