St. Vincent is famous for his anti-intellectualist discourses. He is fond of debasing his own intellectual capacities, and tried to persuade others that he had little education. He called himself a “poor scholar of the fourth class”.
Yet he himself had a bachelor’s degree in theology from the University of Toulouse, a license in expounding Book of Sentences of Peter Lombard, and a master’s or licentiate in Canon Law from the University of Paris. These are no mean feat in the academic world of his times. Not many priests and lay people have achieved these degrees. But he was very quiet about these studies during his lifetime. His confreres only found these documents of his scholarly training on his table after his death.
Vincent first studied in a small provincial school in Dax for three years between ages 12–15. Here, he was both a student and a tutor. There was a school master, Monsieur de Comet, who made him a companion and guide to other boys in a boarding school and, if they needed some help, he tutored them in Latin. For this task, he got some salary to help him get by with his own personal needs. In today’s language, Vincent was a working student.
At this early age, Monsieur de Comet already saw the great academic potential in the young man. Vincent himself felt that he was called to the priesthood. So he applied for theological studies in the University of Toulouse. This would entail a good sum of money so his father — the farmer — sold a yoke of oxen to pay for his son’s expenses. Sadly, while studying there, Vincent lost his father in 1598 who in his last will said that the family should do all they can to make him continue his studies.
But Vincent did not want to bother his family. When his resources were exhausted, he accepted to work in a small boarding school for boys in Buzet which is around 30 kilometers from Toulouse. Vincent taught them himself. Coste, one of his famous biographers, wrote: “He proved such an excellent teacher and that the fame of his ability spread.” Even parents from far away sent their children to him to be taught. The Academy became successful. He moved it to Toulouse so that he can also attend in theological classes, and the parents still sent their children where he was.
With his own efforts to support his own studies and his intellectual capacity, step by step, he was ordained a deacon in December 11, 1598 and sometime after, was ordained to the priesthood by a blind old bishop on September 23, 1600 at Chateau l’Évêque “in the oratory of the bishop’s country house”. Vincent’s first Mass held in Buzet, in the village where he first taught, “in a chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, on a mountain and in the depths of a wood.”
Vincent can be everything else except being a “poor scholar of the fourth class”. He did not write many books nor leave us with deep metaphysical reflections. His conferences were down to earth and very practical. But without his great human and intellectual capacities, we cannot explain the genius which he displayed in organizing charitable work, in the formation of priests and religious, in the Tuesday conferences, in guiding the politicians of his time, in forming lay people towards the poor and service of the church.
This is the description of St. Vincent by Louis Abelly, his first biographer:
“He had a great mind, well-balanced, circumspect, capable of great things and not easily surprised. He did not enter lightly on the study of affairs but when he devoted himself seriously to them, he penetrated them to their very marrow. He went into all their details, great and small, foresaw objections and results. Nevertheless, out of fear of self-deception, he did not immediately decide, if not compelled to do so, and he settled nothing until he had balanced the arguments for and against, and was most willing to consult again with others. When he had to give his opinion, he developed the topic with such order and clarity as to astonish the most expert.”
Yet our question remains: why is St. Vincent quiet about his academic achievements and wanted to debase his intellectual capacities?
The first way to look at it is through the lens of Vincent’s humility. Vincent did not want to brag about his intellectual capacities. He did not wish his accomplishments to be highlighted. He wanted to be quiet about them, following the spirit of John the Baptist: “He must increase and I must decrease.”
The second way to see it is through the lens of the binaries of medieval spirituality. St. Vincent was only faithful to the spirit of many spiritual leaders of his times. Following St. Paul, one can sense the binary opposition between human knowledge and gospel values: “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Cor 8:1). Through this lens, what is most important is the gospel not our human capacities.
In the Common Rules of the Congregation of the Mission, St. Vincent tells the missionaries to follow Christ’s teachings “which will never let us down, while worldly wisdom always will.” Even his biographers follow this binary direction. Pierre Coste writes about Vincent: “The glory of a saint does not lie in his university degrees, but in the nobility of his character and the splendor of his virtues.”
But the third way to look at this direction of Vincentian spirituality — and one which is important to me — is to understand St. Vincent’s action as a prophetic which goes against the spirit of his times. We can read it as deconstructing the dominance of intellect over action, the predominance of abstract contemplation over grounded practice, the prominence of prayer over praxis for the poor.
He once told his missionaries: “If you have to leave prayer to go to a patient, go ahead, and in that way you’ll leave God in prayer and find Him with that sick person.” Crucial to this active mystical practice is to be able to see God in the poor.
“You are serving Jesus Christ in the person of the poor. And that is as true as that we are here. A Sister will go ten times a day to visit the sick, and ten times a day she will find God there… Go to visit a chain gang, you will find God there. Look after those little children, you will find God there… You go into poor homes, but you find God there.”
Beyond the binaries, Vincentian spirituality believes that contemplation is also found in action, thinking is present in praxis, mysticism is located in service. For God, who is love or “charity,” is encountered in all.
That is why we call St. Vincent the “mystic of action”.
Father Daniel Franklin Pilario, C.M., is the President of Adamson University in Manila. He is a theologian, professor, and pastor of an urban poor community on the outskirts of the Philippine capital. He is also the Vincentian Chair for Social Justice at St. John’s University in New York.
