Foreword and Preface

Lille, March 22, 1891

Most Eminent Lord,

The blessed author of this book had his cradle in your diocese.

The editor belongs to your archiepiscopal city.

The commentator is deeply indebted to Your Eminence for the encouragement that, as a young student at the Roman College, he received nearly thirty years ago from the Auditor of the Rota for France.

How then could this "Treatise on Devotion to the Blessed Virgin" fail to claim your gracious patronage?

May Your Eminence deign to accept this tribute, together with that of my most humble and most respectful sentiments.

CANON JULES DIDIOT

(To His Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop of Rennes.)

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Rennes, April 30, 1891.

Dear Canon,

M. Cailliere, publisher in Rennes, duly delivered to me the letter you were kind enough to address to me through him, and I must rely on the sentiments you expressed in such obliging terms to hope that you will pardon the delay of this reply. My life defies description; my poor time is plundered on all sides, and cannot keep up with the relentless stream of obligations of every kind that leave me not a moment.

How eagerly, nonetheless, have I wished to congratulate and thank you for the new edition of Blessed Montfort's work on Devotion to the Blessed Virgin! Rev. Fr. Cartier must have told you, at the time, of my satisfaction upon learning that, amid so many other labors, you had consented to undertake this work.

A necessary work, and one for which no one was more qualified or authoritative: for, while it was highly desirable that public piety be enabled to nourish itself on the rich substance of this little book, it was indispensable that a master of doctrine should clarify and refine the thought of the Blessed. This is precisely what you yourself explain so well in a preface that I read with keen interest.

It is therefore not a question of "benevolence" on my part, but of gratitude for this publication, which will be to the honor of the Blessed Virgin, glorious for Blessed Montfort, and profitable to souls.

The volume, moreover, presents itself in the most pleasing manner to the eye; and the publisher, who gave me a very fine copy, deserves praise.

Please accept, dear Canon, together with my apologies and my thanks, the assurance of my most religious and affectionate devotion in Our Lord.

CH.-PH., Cardinal PLACE, Archbishop of Rennes.

(To Canon Jules Didiot, Lille.)

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Preface — I

Between the Council of Trent and the French Revolution, God gave our homeland three groups of saintly persons destined to glorify Him with splendor and to save a multitude of souls, against the desperate efforts of Protestantism, Jansenism, and philosophism to undermine His rights and to ruin His Church.

The first of these groups was principally formed by St. Francis de Sales, so French in soul and ministry, by Cardinal de Berulle and his successor Charles de Condren. The second was composed above all of St. Vincent de Paul, the founders of Saint-Sulpice, Olier and Tronson, the Oratorian Bourgoing, the zealous Bourdoise, and Baron de Renty. The third revolved around M. de Bernieres-Louvigny, the Venerable Eudes, and the pious Archdeacon Boudon: and Blessed Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, heir to their holy traditions, transmitted them, enriched and fruitful, to the men of faith and courage who sustained, throughout the eighteenth century, the ceaselessly undermined edifice of the Church of France.

The character of these three groups is not without differences. While the first acted especially upon the upper classes, to sanctify them first and then to employ them in relieving the spiritual and bodily miseries of the people; while the second acted preferably upon the clergy, both secular and religious, to form them well or to reform them; the last acted directly upon the people, in order to lead them too into the ways of asceticism and perfection.

Already St. Francis de Sales, St. Vincent de Paul, and Olier, with their rivals and collaborators, had made ample use of the powerful means of salvation that God has placed in devotion to Mary. Eudes and Boudon had greatly developed, the one the cult of the holy Heart of Mary, the other the practice of the holy slavery of Mary. But none of them equaled the zeal, the enthusiasm, the prodigious efforts, the marvelous successes of Montfort, in preaching the holy Rosary and the perfect consecration to Jesus through Mary. To find him rivals in this extraordinary apostolate, one must go forward to St. Alphonsus de Liguori, or go back to St. Dominic, St. Peter Damian, St. Anselm, and St. Bernard.

Doctrinally, he proceeds from M. de Bernieres, M. Boudon, and M. Tronson: their ideas, their sentiments, often their very formulas, are found on his lips or from his pen, but with a force, a depth, and a clarity a hundred times greater. This is because the mysterious coal of Isaiah, the one that makes saints and prophets, has set his heart ablaze and inflamed his tongue. He cannot, without transports of piety, trust, and filial love, speak or write of his Mother in heaven, of his crucified Jesus. Just as in his famous calvaries, especially that of Pontchateau in the diocese of Nantes, he needed rosaries of colossal dimensions, rosaries of firs and cypresses, planted in circular avenues three or four hundred feet long, with enormous beads supported by columns or suspended from the walls of a chapel, so too in his sermons and writings to the glory of Mary, the grand, the immense, almost the strange, all unite to fulfill this wish he so often repeated:

Would that I had a voice of thunder, To sing in every place That the happiest on earth Are those who serve Her best!

II

This general appreciation of the works of Blessed Montfort applies particularly to his Treatise on Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, the most celebrated of all his writings, though it has not been published for a very long time, and the most considerable, though it does not exceed the proportions of a small devotional book. But beneath this modest format, what elevation and breadth, what vigor of thought and what charm of feeling!

Louis-Marie, we cannot doubt, composed it in the last years of his short life. He was born on January 31, 1673; he was ordained a priest on June 5, 1700, and he was to die on April 28, 1716, after a long series of missions. Now, speaking in this Treatise of the true servant of Mary, and noting how rare such a one was: "It is so that he may no longer be so rare," he says, "that I have put pen to paper to write down what I have taught publicly and privately in my missions, for many years." This language supposes that he had been giving missions for a great many years already, perhaps fourteen or fifteen, and that he was nearing the end of his apostolic career.

The first of his biographers, the Sulpician Grandet, whose work appeared as early as 1724, reports that he "composed in three days a book on the advantages of the slavery" of devout Christians toward Mary. The Treatise on Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, if it is not the work formally designated in these words of Grandet, does not seem to have cost its author much more time. The visible rapidity of its composition is sufficiently explained by the fact that it simply reproduced the oral and daily teaching of many years. This in turn explains certain imperfections of style, which we have been very careful not to remedy, and a few errors in proper names or quotations, as well as some slight omissions of words, which we were easily able to correct. These oversights, far from diminishing the value of the work, rather have the merit of showing us, in all its spontaneity, the energetic and gentle, ardent and simple, eloquent and plain soul of the incomparable missionary.

He did not even take the trouble or find the time to give his book a title. The autograph, as it is described in an official act of the Roman Court dated May 7-12, 1853, begins quite simply thus: "It is through the Blessed Virgin Mary that Jesus Christ came into the world." Here and there, a few subtitles indicating the main ideas have enabled us to outline more clearly than had ever been done before the plan of the book, to sharpen its divisions, and to improve its table of contents.

After an introduction in which the Blessed shows the correlation between the reign of Jesus Christ and that of the Blessed Virgin, he treats, in a first part, of general devotion to Mary, its excellence, its necessity, and its different forms, good and bad; then, in a second part, of the best of these forms, which is the perfect consecration to Jesus through Mary, the motives that should lead the faithful to it, the prophetic example found in the biblical history of Rebecca and Jacob, the admirable effects that may be expected from it, the exterior and interior practices connected with it, and particularly Holy Communion received in the spirit of this excellent devotion. In the course of the work, mention is made of a consecration of oneself to Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Wisdom, through the hands of Mary, and we reproduce it in an appendix.

Montfort's handwriting is ordinarily very legible and cannot have presented many difficulties to the first editor.

However, some archaic letter forms, spelling often different from our own, and punctuation that, while regular, was sometimes insufficient to bring out the author's thought distinctly, caused a few evident copying errors from which we have freed the text.

As for modifying it to make it clearer and more agreeable, or to spare in certain readers a sensitivity less intelligent than demanding, we could not consent to that. If in two or three places a change was necessary for more serious reasons, we have indicated this in the notes. The simplicity, the roughness, even the rusticity of expression, especially when it comes to depicting the miseries and vices of man, are manifestly intentional on Montfort's part. His book is perhaps not meant to be read aloud in public; but, as we present it, it seems to us always fit for private reading, and with complete edification. Neither the Holy Scriptures nor the Fathers of the Church have carried too far the softening so willingly demanded by the sinner and by sin: Montfort remembered this.

And how could he not have remembered it, he who never ceased to fill his soul and nourish his speech with the divine energies of the Bible and of Catholic Tradition? Not only does he have a multitude of passages and expressions borrowed from these sacred sources; but he has truly drawn from them the whole substance of his thought and his style, so that it would be almost impossible for us to point out in detail all the allusions he makes to them. Besides, our work is not one of erudition but of edification. We have therefore contented ourselves with translating in notes the Latin quotations he had not translated himself. As for references and cross-references, we have left standing those he thought fit to indicate; but we have not added others, not wishing to be more meticulous than he; our ecclesiastical readers will have no trouble filling this small gap, if they wish and if it is one.

III

After the death of the Blessed, the doctrine of his precious manuscript was very faithfully preached by his successors, until the impious and bloody revolution to which their preaching of nearly a century opposed, one may say, that heroic Vendean army which would have saved our Christian institutions if it had never been anything but purely and simply Christian.

But while the doctrine had been maintained, the apostle had been pursued even into his tomb by the hatred and ridicule of Jansenism and philosophism; and his writing on Devotion to the Blessed Virgin had remained in the shadow of a modest library at Saint-Laurent-sur-Sevre, unable to reach the broad daylight of publicity. The Revolution, which caused it to be buried, with others, in a poor farmhouse in the Vendee, did not however scatter its loose leaves: it came back complete and still in order, but unknown and unrecognized, into the hands of its rightful possessors; and for some forty years more it resumed its obscure place amid a heap of "mutilated books."

Were not these one hundred and twenty-six years of persecution against the author and the book predicted in the book itself, at the end of the first part, in these terms? "I foresee many raging beasts that come in fury to tear apart this little writing and the one whom the Holy Spirit used to write it; or at least to wrap it in the silence of a chest so that it may not appear; they will even attack and persecute those, men and women alike, who read it and put it into practice. But no matter! So much the better! This prospect encourages me and gives me hope for great success, that is, a great squadron of brave and valiant soldiers of Jesus and of Mary, of both sexes, to combat the world, the devil, and corrupt nature, in the perilous times that are coming more than ever. Qui legit, intelligat. Qui potest capere, capiat." These two texts of Scripture: "Let him who reads, understand! Let him who can comprehend, comprehend!" have precisely a prophetic character that is unmistakable; and we cannot personally doubt that the Blessed, having first affirmed that he obeyed the grace of the Holy Spirit in composing "this little writing," had foreknowledge of the vicissitudes through which it was to pass.

Be that as it may, in 1842, when already the "century of Mary," several times foreseen as imminent by Montfort, was advancing toward the glorious date of December 8, 1854, on which the Immaculate Conception of Mary was to be dogmatically defined; when also, by virtue of an apostolic commission, the process of reviewing the writings of Louis-Marie Grignion was about to begin before the episcopal tribunal of Lucon, a missionary of Saint-Laurent was leafing through, in preparation for a sermon, the manuscript so long "wrapped in the silence of a chest"; and suddenly he recognized it and had it recognized, by his superior and by a number of witnesses, as the autograph work of the venerable founder of the Company of Mary; the episcopal court of Lucon immediately authenticated it as such, transmitted it to Rome in that same year; and Rome, in its decree of 1853, received it as absolutely authentic.

Scarcely had it been recovered when a pious director of the major seminary of Lucon, M. Auguste Grillard, later a missionary of Saint-Laurent and employed in the beatification process, published this most interesting manuscript, with an approbation from the Bishop of Lucon dated December 18, 1842. The extremely delicate conscience of the editor; the care he took, in his preface, to justify "certain expressions," "certain turns of phrase that could not have been changed without harming the proper character of this treatise"; and finally the comparison we have carefully made of his edition with the subsequent ones, fully guarantee its accuracy, except perhaps on those very rare and very unimportant points of which we spoke above.

It is this original text, submitted in autograph to the judgment of the Holy See and approved by it, that we ourselves have faithfully followed; not only because it exactly renders the thought of the Blessed, necessarily veiled, sometimes even altered, by the corrections made on every page if not every paragraph of the most recent editions; but principally because it is the only one whose orthodoxy the pontifical authority has verified and then sanctioned.

IV

The order to collect Montfort's writings had been given by the Sacred Congregation of Rites as early as 1841. More than one admirer of the holy apostle of the slavery of Jesus in Mary dreaded the appearance of his doctrine before the tribunal of the Church. The examination was indeed very serious, even laborious. The theologians charged with it showed opposition to certain passages; and the Congregation ordered, in 1851, that their reports be communicated to the postulators of the cause so that they might respond. These responses did not appear decisive, and in 1852 the Congregation directed that the question be submitted to a theologian more skilled than the first; his censure obliged the postulators to more thorough studies which, this time, resulted in the victory established by the decree of approbation dated May 7-12, 1853.

The principal difficulties certainly arose from the fact that the Venerable Louis-Marie seemed to believe in a second coming of the Redeemer through the intermediary of Mary; and from the fact that he presented himself as the prophet of a devotion at once new and ancient, without which the complete reign of Jesus Christ could not be established here below, nor the holiness of the Church fully develop. He also appeared to exaggerate the role of Mary, making of her an indispensable mediatrix, and wanting to make of us slaves chained to her dominion, contrary to the decrees of the Church which, at the end of the seventeenth century, had proscribed the confraternities formed with a view to this slavery, and their books, their symbols, and their practices. To these capital objections were added others less important, drawn from passages with a somewhat Jansenist or Quietist appearance.

The Apostolic See nevertheless declared that Montfort's works contained nothing that should interrupt his beatification process, nothing therefore opposed to faith, morals, or the authority of the Church; and on the day marked by Providence, November 21, 1886, a decree of beatification solemnly glorified the great servant of Mary and Mary herself in him.

However, the difficulties raised by the theologians of the Congregation of Rites could still embarrass some readers, and perhaps foster, in certain poorly enlightened and unsteady minds, some slight deviations of doctrine or practice. Moreover, pontifical decrees of beatification, and even of canonization, never define that the teachings and examples of a blessed or a saint are the most conformable of all to the direction of the Holy See. Even after these decrees, it is permissible and praiseworthy to seek to draw still closer to the ideal of truth and goodness.

This is why grave and pious personages have earnestly asked us to add notes or commentaries to the Treatise on Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. We would have thought ourselves lacking in gratitude toward Mary, in piety toward Louis-Marie de Montfort, in zeal for souls, in deference to the clergy, had we refused this task. We have therefore attempted to elucidate, in a sort of continuous commentary to be found at the end of this volume, everything obscure or extraordinary in the doctrine and language of our Blessed. There we explain and justify what needs to be; there we establish the author's true thought on several delicate points; there also we propose, with respectful frankness, the few modifications thanks to which his system of devotion would be entirely, we believe, in the pure spirit of the Roman Church and of holy theology.

Blessed Louis-Marie, who had not given his work a title, called it simply a treatise, a little writing. What would he call it today? We think that out of modesty, reserve, and above all obedience to the Apostolic See, he would simply entitle it Treatise on Devotion to the Blessed Virgin: and this is the title we adopt for this new edition, laying it with admiration and love upon his glorious tomb, at the feet of his queen and his mother, MARY.

Faculty of Theology of Lille, February 2, 1891.

DR. JULES DIDIOT.