| Linking the past, to the present, for the future

August 29, 2023 · 11:32 am

Mother Seton and the Augustinians

One of the communities of priests that influenced the development of the Catholic Church in the colonial United States was the Order of St. Augustine, or Augustinians. Working and living in the same time period and parts of the country as Mother Seton, it was natural that their paths should cross. Although the Daughters archive does not explicitly talk about Augustinian business, figures and events from their early history in the United States are peppered throughout the records within the collection.

The Augustinians were founded in the 1200s in Italy with a charism based upon the rule of St. Augustine of Hippo. The order arrived in the United States in 1796 with the Irish Fathers John Carr and Matthew Rosseter. Matthew Hurley, also an Irishman by birth, was the first to join the American community, and after the deaths of Rosseter and Carr in 1812 and 1820, he was the only Augustinian in the country.

Father Matthew Hurley, O.S.A., as painted by Thomas Sully in 1813

Elizabeth met Father Hurley in 1805 during her years in New York City, after she had converted to Catholicism but before she founded her community, when Hurley was at St. Peter’s Church. Although there are only three surviving drafts of letters from Mother Seton to Hurley and two from Hurley to Mother Seton, mentions of him in her correspondence are numerous, as Hurley very much fulfilled the role of spiritual advisor early in her time as a Catholic. It was Hurley who gave Elizabeth the confirmation name Mary and performed the honor of receiving her sister-in-law Cecilia and daughter Anna Maria into the Church.

Hurley to Mother Seton, 1806, after the conversion of Cecilia Seton

In 1807, Father Hurley was recalled in ill health to Philadelphia by Father Carr, where he went on to become pastor at St. Augustine Church. There, he formed part of a Catholic circle that remained in contact with Mother Seton, including Mathew Carey, who published the first American English-language Catholic Bible; Matthias O’Conway, a translator and early donor to the community; his daughter Cecilia, who was the first to join Mother Seton’s community; and Rachel Montgomery. Montgomery formed the lay board of St. Joseph’s orphan asylum, who, along with Hurley, urged Mother Seton to send Sisters for the first time out from their spiritual home in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Sister Rose White led the band of Sisters to St. Joseph’s in 1814 and would later become Mother Seton’s successor as leader of the community.

Despite his influence, no letters received by Hurley from Mother Seton survive. Indirectly, the community records provide the reason for this in the accounts of Sister Mary Gonzaga Grace and the Philadelphia Know-Nothing riots of 1844. Here, anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant mobs sacked churches, burning most of the Augustinian library, including Mother Seton’s letters.

Among the other Augustinian effects on Mother Seton and the community include some of the Augustinian spiritual tradition. Likely at the recommendation of Father Hurley, the Archives is still in possession of Elizabeth’s copy of The Sufferings of Our Lord Jesus Christ, a spiritual work of Father Thomas of Jesus, member of the Order of the Hermits of St. Augustine.

Even with the loss of Mother Seton’s letters to the early Augustinians, tragic as it may be, the materials in the collection document the spiritual growth and development of Mother Seton. Even if she ultimately based her community on the tradition of Saints Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, she built upon the traditions that surrounded her and the inherited tradition of (at that time) 1,800 years of spiritual growth and development. The Augustinians today operate three provinces in the United States, as well as one university, Villanova, in Philadelphia.

1 Comment

Filed under Elizabeth Ann Seton

Tagged as Know-Nothing Riots, Order of St. Augustine, Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

June 9, 2023 · 9:35 am

The Lumière of St. Louise

Typically, in these posts, we try to focus on materials held here at the local Provincial Archives. For this post, however, we would like to focus on a piece of global news of the Daughters and the archival world.

Saint Louise de Marillac portrait, held in the Provincial Archives in Emmitsburg

One of the foundational documents of the history and spirituality of the Daughters of Charity is the Lumière of Saint Louise de Marillac, the co-founder of the community alongside Saint Vincent de Paul. In 1623, on the Feast of Pentecost, Louise found herself in a deep melancholy, with her husband seriously ill, an uncertain future for herself, and a crisis of faith at hand. In a moment of prayer, she had a vision of the pathway of her life. She saw herself when she “would be in a position to make vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and that I would be in a small community where others would do the same.” She added, “I was also assured that I should remain at peace concerning my director; that God would give me one whom He seemed to show me.” She felt assurance that “it was God who was teaching me these things…I should not doubt the rest.”

It took a decade for the work of her vision to come to pass. She did find a spiritual director in Saint Vincent, and, in 1633, they together founded the “Little Company” of the Daughters of Charity. Saint Louise carried the folded message that she wrote to herself on Pentecost until her death.

The 400^th Anniversary of this Pentecost has just passed. The folded note of Saint Louise had survived for centuries in the Archive of the Vincentian Fathers, Saint Vincent’s priestly community. As a magnanimous gesture and a symbol of the fraternal ties between the Vincentians and the Daughters of Charity, the Vincentians repatriated the Lumière back to the Daughters of Charity. It will live and be preserved in their Mother House at the Rue du Bac in Paris as one of the great historical and spiritual treasures of the Community’s charism!

Father Tomaz Mavric and Sister Francois Petit, Superior and Superioress of the Daughters of Charity, with Sister Francois holding the Lumiere

Although the Provincial Archives does not hold any primary sources of Saint Louise, we can provide a wide array of resources on Louise’s spirituality and the way it is interpreted and lived today through the Community that she founded. These include scholarship related to Louise and many works named after her, including St. Louise de Marillac School in Arabi, Louisiana; St. Louise de Marillac School in St. Louis; St. Louise de Marillac Hospital in Buffalo, New York; and the Association Louise de Marillac lay organization.

Historic Bible Collections

The Daughters of Charity Provincial Archives contains 12 historic Bibles published before 1900, each of them a Catholic Latin Vulgate or an approved translation of a Catholic Bible. These Bibles offer a picture of the evolving theology of the Catholic Church throughout the 19^th century based upon the unchanging foundation of the Word, a depiction of the physical ways in which the Word was made manifest, and, often, a window into the owners of these Bibles and the ways Biblical marginalia can assist with research.

In this post, we would like to highlight some particularly impressive pieces from historic Bible collections!

1790 Carey Bible

A Carey Bible is one of the rarest printed Bibles. Published by the Catholic Matthew Carey out of Philadelphia, it was an English version based off of the Douay-Rheims Bible. Most notably, it was the first English Catholic Bible printed in the United States. Although this was not a Catholic Bible owned by Mother Seton – her personal Carey Bibles are located at Notre Dame and Vincennes, Indiana – this was the edition of the Bible that Mother Seton used. Matthew Carey published other Bibles under the Carey name in subsequent years, but, due to its historical nature and limited initial publication, plus the fact that many surviving versions have association with prominent and historically important people, they often sell for high values at auction. Although copies in private hands are difficult to calculate, it is almost certain that fewer than 50 remain extant today.

This Bible came to the archives via Sister Joan Marie Hoyt, who discovered it during her years as a librarian and archivist at various institutions operated by the Daughters. It is far from pristine condition but does contain a few interesting notes. The first is a signature on the cover page, whose name we have not been able to conclusively identify (any help anybody?). The second is a copying of a few select verses onto the flyleaf, or the last, blank, loose page of the book. It is interesting to note that these verses all relate to the subject of temperance from alcohol.

1805 New Testament – The Washhouse Bible

Monetarily, this is worth much less than the Carey Bible, although also a Matthew Carey publication. This is an English New Testament from 1805, with plain board covers. The entire piece shows evidence of water damage and warping. Faded on the cover is the word “Seminary.” On the front endpapers are the words “for the use of the Wash house.” Between these two clues, we can place the use of the book at Mount St. Mary’s College in Emmitsburg, just down the road from the nascent community of Mother Seton, where the early Sisters had responsibilities for the Sulpician priests of the school. The Sisters themselves did not do the washing but oversaw the enslaved women there who did. This book was likely read by a lector to the enslaved women there, providing a rare surviving physical artifactual document to the labor of the enslaved. It also served, however, as a record of the deaths of early Sisters and laypeople, including Alice Brennan, “children, boarders, widows, and other unknown persons who lived in Saint Joseph’s Valley in the early years of the Sisters of Charity.”

1851

This Latin Vulgate Bible is notable for what it contains in addition to the text – various bits of plant matter throughout (which have now been sleeved to prevent damage to the pages) and a hand-drawn image of the Miraculous Medal, a sacred community symbol of the Daughters of Charity’s devotion to Saint Catherine Labouré and the Blessed Mother.

1870 Providence Hospital Bible

This is another Bible that contains inserted plant matter, but also begins to see the use of included illustrations. This was not something new in religious life or even in Bibles, but that does not take away from their beauty and impressive nature. This Bible came from the library of Providence Hospital in Washington, D.C., where it records a number of births, deaths, and signatures, including Miss Annie Farrell; William Tierney; and Archbishop John McCloskey of New York.

1880 Bible Gallery

The use of images to tell Bible stories is an old one, evident in the stained glass of Medieval European Gothic churches. This provided a way to communicate stories, theology, and values at a time when society did not have a high rate of literacy. Although this is not technically a Bible, we included it here for the sheer magnitude of the images, all created by French artist, Gustave Doré.