One of the most important virtues of St. Vincent, and consequently of all Vincentians, is simplicity.
In different parts of his life, St. Vincent said: “Simplicity is a virtue I love most, the one to which in all my actions I pay most heed.”
“For myself I don’t know, but God gives me such a great esteem for simplicity that I call it my gospel. I have a particular devotion and consolation in saying things as they are.”
“Let us go in simplicity where merciful Providence leads us, content to see the stone on which we should step without wanting to discover all at once and completely the windings of the road.”
Vincent lived simplicity throughout his life: in thought, in action, and in his very person, in contrast to the sophistication of kings, queens, nobles, and Parisian high society of his time. He lived a contrasting existence. His simplicity was a silent but prophetic indictment of their superfluous and scandalous lives.
When ruling powers want to subjugate people, they colonize bodies. They brand them, segregate them, red-tag them, and deny their existence.
But by their mere existence, bodies are also acts of resistance. The great novelist George Orwell writes about the power of bodies as defiance: “Every movement of his body is an unconscious protest. Every desire, every dream, no matter how intimate or personal, is a plot or a conspiracy.” (1984).
In the now-classic study of French aristocratic life, The Court Society, Norbert Elias (1897–1990) argues that the cultivation of outward appearances is crucial to the reproduction of court life. If you want to show your power, flaunt it, embellish it, display it with force and might. Etiquette, for instance, is not just a matter of ceremony; it is both a symbol and an instrument of power.
“If power exists,” Elias writes, “but is not visible in the appearance of the ruler, the people will not believe. They must see in order to believe.”
Rank existed in its everyday outward representation. Specific etiquette marked the status and position of an individual courtier. This position, granted by the monarch, had to be defended on two fronts. “An elaborate cultivation of outward appearances as an instrument of social differentiation,” Elias writes, “the display of rank through outward form, is characteristic not only of the houses but of the whole shaping of court life.”
One needed to demonstrate subservience to those higher on the monarchical ladder and a sense of superiority to those below. Those above had to be appeased in order to continue showering their favors, and those below had to be kept in their proper places so as not to disrupt the structure’s functioning.
This status had to be defended at all times through the careful cultivation of one’s etiquette: manner of dressing, speaking, walking, and so on. “To exist in the luster of aloofness and prestige, that is, to exist as a court person, is, for a court person, an end in itself.”
This stance is replicated daily in other spheres of power, in politics, schools, churches, and hospitals. The “distance” and “aloofness” are consciously created and performed to emphasize power over people.
Let us reflect on the life of St. Vincent de Paul. He often found himself in this courtly environment. Was this courtly status his major concern? Not at all. A famous encounter with Mazarin illustrates the point.
Cardinal Mazarin considered Monsieur Vincent a threat to his political ambitions.
One day, Vincent arrived wearing a frayed girdle. Mazarin seized the opportunity to mock him: “Look how Monsieur Vincent comes dressed to Court and what a beautiful girdle he wears.”
By putting him down on matters of courtly etiquette, the cardinal may have hoped to placate his own political insecurities. Vincent, however, was content to appear at court in clean but simple attire, or, to use the words of Abelly, with “his good manners which were both simple and humble.” He remained silent and did not respond to the cardinal’s ridicule.
Traditional interpretations see in this incident a sign of Vincent’s humility and detachment. But I propose another reading, one rooted in the dynamics of systemic power.
Beyond an act of individual virtue, Vincent’s nonconventional courtly etiquette functioned as an act of resistance to a dominant system that reproduced itself through courtly bodies.
In other words, Vincent’s embodied habitus, to use Pierre Bourdieu’s famous sociological category, did not share in the aristocratic habitus, nor did it seek to entrench itself there.
Unlike Mazarin’s, it was not preoccupied with conforming to the discipline of courtly bodies. Its self-assured presence, perhaps unwittingly, posed a threat to those competing for space within that highly contested world, particularly the court of Le Roi Soleil.
Vincent’s presence became a form of embodied dissent against the highly charged contest of power. If one prefers a more religious language, his simplicity stood as a silent but prophetic condemnation of the power-hungry and position-conscious environment around him, especially when such ambitions came at the expense of hungry millions who bore the weight of elite excess.
Pope Francis once said: “Live simply so that others may simply live.”
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.
