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Encountering Mary
From La Salette to Medjugorje
By Sandra L. Zimdars-Swartz PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1991 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-07371-2
CHAPTER 1
Personal Experiences and Public Demands
LA SALETTE, LOURDES, AND FATIMA
The experiences that constitute apparitions and that attract attention to them are best expressed in stories. The more time one spends with the reports of such experiences, the more the sense and the importance of this axiom becomes clear. To represent apparition experiences, at least initially, in any other way than through the narratives in which the seers and devotees have themselves represented them would in all likelihood be to miss the symbolic contexts that have defined these experiences, and it is precisely these contexts that we want to discern and to understand.
There is, unfortunately, no systematic way to get at these symbolic contexts. The central narratives of an apparition, which seem to speak most directly of what the subjects have seen and heard and around which the devotional literature tends to be organized, are distillations, which in themselves may not cue us in to the symbols out of which these experiences have crystallized. When these narratives, however, are read in the light of other narratives, selected not because they are religiously edifying but because they tell us much that we would not otherwise know about these persons, the persons around them, and their general environment, the symbolic context in which a particular apparition experience has occurred may begin to emerge with some clarity. Generally speaking, this context has been one of suffering, suffering with which the subjects, through their special experiences, have begun to come to terms.
The goal of the chapters in this section will be to present, in a sequence of appropriate narratives, a glimpse into the experiences of the seers and first devotees of five important modern Marian apparitions, to trace the crystallization around these experiences of particular interpretations, and to show how certain interpretations (sometimes after intense competition with alternative ones) gave to each apparition a particular character and a particular place in modern Roman Catholic piety.
The choice of the first apparitions to be treated here calls for some explanation beyond that sketched in the introduction to this study. If by modern Marian apparitions we mean those of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and if the criterion for selecting apparitions from the first part of this period is understood as an apparition's enduring importance for piety and devotion in an international Roman Catholic framework, the obvious choices will be those that took place at the Rue du Bac, La Salette, Lourdes, and Fatima.
The first Marian apparition of the nineteenth century to receive widespread attention and to be formally recognized by Roman Catholic authorities was the apparition reported by Catherine Labouré in the convent of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul on the Rue du Bac in Paris, in July and November of 1830. The most important feature of this Rue du Bac apparition was the purported revelation of an image of the Virgin which Catherine said she was instructed to have struck into a religious medal, over which was to be written the prayer, "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee." This medal began to be minted in 1832 and quickly became very popular. While it is generally acknowledged that the great popularity of this "Miraculous Medal" helped prepare the way for Pope Pius IX's proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854, it would seem that it also contributed substantially to the Church's formal approval of the authenticity of Catherine's visions in 1836 and to Catherine's beatification in 1933 and canonization in 1947.
The Rue du Bac apparition was unlike all of the recognized apparitions to follow it in one very important respect. It took place in a cloistered religious environment, and the seer was not subjected to public scrutiny in the aftermath of her experiences. Indeed, it was not until many years later that the public even learned her name. The meaning which became attached to the Rue du Bac apparition was not, therefore, the malleable product of an interaction between the seer(s) and the public, as were the meanings which grew up around other modern Marian apparitions. It was, rather, a more quickly defined and static devotional artifact, not unlike the medal with which it was associated.
An examination of Catherine's experiences and of how this more or less fixed meaning became attached to them would require a very different approach than that which has been chosen for these chapters, and it would not contribute substantially to an understanding of the interaction of personal experience and public demands in the modern apparitions, which is one of the basic goals of this study. It makes sense, therefore, to exclude Rue du Bac from the sequence of apparitions here investigated.
La Salette: The Experience, the Miracles, and the Prophecies
The apparition at La Salette, high in the French Alps near Grenoble, where in 1846 two shepherd children reported a single meeting with a figure assumed to be the Virgin Mary, was the first Marian apparition of modern times outside of a cloistered religious environment to attract widespread attention and to be officially "recognized" by Roman Catholic authorities. While the sources needed for a critical study of the seers' experience are not as abundant here as in the case of the later public serial apparitions, there is sufficient material at least to sketch the seers' experience and some biographical contexts for it. There is also a fair amount of material about the early miracles and prophecies through which public attention began to be drawn to this experience and to the site where it occurred.
François-Melanie Mathieu, or Melanie Calvat, was the older of the two seers of La Salette. She was born on 7 November 1831; her parents were Pierre Calvat (Mathieu) and Julie Bernaud, and she was the fourth of their ten children. Her father, reportedly, had no regular employment and worked variously as a day laborer, sawyer, and mason to support his large family. Little is known about Melanie's early life, except that before her tenth birthday she had been sent out to work for the farmers of the region, and for the next four years she lived at her parents' home only during the winter. It was said that by the time of the apparition in the fall of 1846, when she was only fourteen, she was already a seasoned shepherdess. Her employer at that time, Baptiste Pra, described her as extremely lazy, disobedient, and sullen, saying that she would not respond when spoken to and would often hide in the fields near the house all night. Melanie could not read, spoke only the dialect of the region, and understood French only imperfectly.
Just what kind of relationship the young Melanie had with her family is difficult to establish, but it would seem that it was not particularly good. In her autobiographies she said that when she was very young she had been rejected by her mother, told that she was no longer a member of the family, and locked out of the house for days at a time. In these times of isolation, she said, she was kept company by her heavenly brother, Jesus. Melanie is given to hyperbole in her writings, and this must be taken into account when reading her description of mistreatment at the hands of her mother. It is clear, however, that as a child she was rejected and probably emotionally isolated, and as an adult her relationships with family members remained troubled and painful.
Pierre-Maximin Giraud was born on 26 or 27 August 1835, the fourth child of a wheelwright. His mother had died when he was just eighteen months old, and his father had remarried four months later. As Maximin was growing up, his father was reportedly absent from the family for long periods of time, either working or relaxing in the local tavern, and Maximin was, again according to report, made the object of family scorn and abused by his stepmother. Like Melanie, Maximin could not read, and his father said that he had been able to teach him a few prayers only with a great deal of difficulty. He was described as a reckless child, an innocent without malice but also without foresight. In September 1846, Maximin had been indentured to Pierre Selme, a farmer at La Salette, to watch his cattle in the place of his regular shepherd, who had fallen ill.
Although they lived in the same region, Maximin and Melanie did not know each other and did not meet until one or two evenings before the experience that made them famous. It was on a Saturday morning, 19 September 1846, that Melanie and Maximin led their cattle up the slope of Mount Planteau, some distance above the village of La Salette. Each had four cattle, and Maximin also brought his dog and his father's goat. When they returned that evening, Melanie went, as expected, to her employer's barns to return her cattle to the stable. Selme, however, who had been working in a field near where Maximin had been pasturing the cattle (so that he could keep an eye on his novice shepherd) had noticed something unusual about the boy's routine that day. He had not returned to the pasture as he was supposed to do after taking the cattle up the ravine for a drink, and when Selme saw Maximin that evening, he asked him about this. The boy, he recalled, said something like, "Then you don't know what happened!" and told him that he and Melanie had seen a beautiful lady who had entertained them with conversation for a long time. Selme then took Maximin over to see Mélanie's employer, Pra, and in the presence of the two farmers Maximin repeated his story and Mélanie confirmed it.
What had happened, according to the account which the children gave to their employers and to some other people as well during the next few days, took place a couple of hours after they had taken the cattle to drink at the "beasts' spring," which was up a small ravine on the southern slope of the mountain. They said that they had gone there after the Angelus had sounded, and while their cows rested they ate their lunch of bread and dry cheese and then went for a drink to the "people's spring" a little farther up the ravine. Three other shepherds joined them there for a few minutes before returning to their animals farther down the mountain. Mélanie and Maximin then returned to their own animals and settled down on the grass for a nap. They slept for about an hour, when Mélanie awoke, and seeing that their cattle were gone, she woke Maximin and they climbed to the top of a small knoll from which they could see their animals. When they returned to the spot where they had left their knapsacks, however, Mélanie saw a bright light, and when she called Maximin's attention to it, he came to her side and saw it too.
In several lengthy interviews about five months later with the Abbé François Lagier, a native of the region and curé of Saint-Pierre-de-Cherennes, Mélanie described in some detail what happened next. She said that the light whirled a bit and seemed to turn on itself, rising to the height of a person. She began to make out an oval face and hands inside the light, but she couldn't see anything very clearly. She said she cried out, "Oh, my God!" and dropped her shepherd's stick, which prompted Maximin to say that they should both keep their sticks in hand. He said that he would give the figure "a good whack" if it tried to do anything to them.
Mélanie said that while neither she nor Maximin could make out what sort of person was in the light, they could see an oval face, hands, arms, and elbows, and while they couldn't see the rest of the figure, it seemed to be seated. Suddenly, then, it stood up and folded its arms across its breast. Mélanie said it looked like a woman because of the hands and face, but the manner of dress left them puzzled. The woman then came toward them, walking as if she were following the brook, and she began to speak, saying, "Come near, my children, don't be afraid! I am here to tell you great news."
On the day after the apparition, in an interview with the two employers and another man of the area, Melanie reported in some detail the conversation she and Maximin had had with the woman, this account being substantially the same as those which both children gave in later interviews. She said that the woman began to speak to them in French, issuing a warning that if her people would not submit, she would no longer be able to restrain the heavy hand of her son:
For a long time I have suffered for you; if I do not want my son to abandon you, I am forced to pray to him myself without ceasing. You pay no heed. However much you would do, you could never recompense the pain I have taken for you.
I have given you six days for work; I have reserved the seventh day for myself and no one will grant it to me. It is this which weighs down the hand of my son. Those who drive the carts cannot swear without introducing the name of my son. It is these two things which weigh down the hand of my son.
If the harvest is spoiled, it is your fault. I warned you last year about the potatoes, but you have not heeded it. On the contrary, when you found the potatoes had spoiled you swore and you introduced the name of my son. They will continue this year so that by Christmas there will be none left.
At this point, Melanie said, she was confused by the French word for potatoes (pommes-de-terre). She was about to ask Maximin what it meant when the woman said, "You do not understand, my children; I will say it in a different way," and she began then to speak in the local dialect.
If you have wheat, it is not good to sow it. All that you will sow, the beasts will eat, and that which remains the beasts will not dare to eat. In the upcoming year it will fall into dust.
A great famine will come. Before the famine comes, the children under seven years of age will be seized by trembling and they will die in the hands of those who hold them.
The others will do their penance in the famine. The walnuts will be worm-eaten and the grapes will rot. If they are converted, the stones and rocks will become heaps of wheat, and the potatoes will sow themselves in the fields (in the year that comes). In the summer only some old women go to Mass on Sunday and the rest work, and in winter the boys only want to go to Mass to mock religion. No one observes Lent; they go to the meat market like dogs.
Then, Melanie said, the woman asked them if they said their prayers well. When they replied, "Not very well, Madame," she reportedly told them that they must pray in the evening and in the morning and must at least say an "Our Father" and a "Hail Mary," if they could not do better. The woman then asked them if they had seen spoiled wheat, and Maximin replied that he had not. The woman reminded him, however, that he had once seen some when he had gone to Coin with his father. Melanie said that the woman then described that incident, and Maximin said that now he could remember it. The woman then said twice, in French, "Now, my children, make this known to my people."
Mélanie said that the woman then turned and crossed the brook and walked up the knoll and that she and Maximin followed her. When the woman reached the top of the knoll, she rose into the air and began to disappear, her head first, and then her arms and her feet. The two children then returned to pick up their knapsacks and locate their cattle.
In her interviews with Lagier early in 1847, Melanie recounted her conversation with Maximin after the woman had risen into the air and mentioned several ideas they had had at the time about who the woman was. Melanie said that she and Maximin had thought that perhaps the woman's rising into the air meant that she was a great saint. She also told Lagier that when the woman had spoken about her son, she had thought that perhaps the woman had a husband who wanted to kill her son and that she had mentioned this then to Maximin: "If I hadn't seen her rise up into the air, I would have believed that it was some woman whose husband wanted to kill their children." She also recalled that when Maximin had seen the woman weeping and had heard her say that the arm of her son was "so strong and heavy that she could no longer restrain it," Maximin had thought of a woman "whose son had beaten her and then left her." She said that Maximin had told her later that he had thought about telling the woman to be quiet and not to cry because they would help her, but that he had not said anything because the woman kept talking. Maximin, in his one interview with Lagier, said only that he thought the woman could have been someone from the nearby town of Valjouffrey.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Encountering Mary by Sandra L. Zimdars-Swartz. Copyright © 1991 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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