Q&A: Precisely what is Saint Louis de Montfort talking about when he writes in his True Devotion (114) at “raging beasts who will come in fury to tear to pieces with their diabolical teeth this little book and the one the Holy Spirit made use of to write it or they will cause it at leant to lie hidden in the darkness and silence of a chest and so prevent it from seeing the light of day”?
Father J. Patrick Gaffney, SMM
These words have usually been understood as a prophecy of the fate of the manuscript of the True Devotion. It was written at La Rochelle in 1712. For safekeeping, it is presumed that it was put into a trunk and hidden in a field during the “Terror” of the French Revolution (1793) when northwestern France was invaded by the “Blues,” the soldiers of the revolution. When it was accidentally re-discovered in 1842, it was, as Montfort foretold, torn with some pages missing at the beginning and the end of the manuscript. TD 114 is beautifully symbolized in marble trough the well-known, magnificent statue of Montfort in St. Peter’s in Rome which depicts the saint as stomping on a devil who is tearing the manuscript of the True Devotion with his diabolical teeth.
However, Montfort never intended his words to be a foretelling of what would happen to his manuscript during the French Revolution. Rather, TD 114 indicates that he did not intend to publish his True Devotion immediately for he knew it would stir up strong opposition from the Jansenists, the “raging beasts” who would try to destroy both him and his writing (“tear to pieces . . . this little book and . . . the one who wrote it”); at the very least, because of their fury, he would have to hide it in a chest postponing its circulation.
Why did Saint Louis foresee such a diabolical reaction by the Jansenists to his writing? Without going into the complicated history of this heresy, it can be said that Jansenists fostered an inflexibly rigorist spirituality, overburdening the faithful with the thought of eternal damnation. Their spirituality drew, in some part, on the earlier, abstract writings of Cardinal de Bérulle, the founder of the French School of Spirituality. Both the French School, from which Saint Louis draws the strongest trait of his spirituality, and Jansenists are under the broad umbrella of Angustinianism which denotes (among other things) a pessimistic attitude concerning human nature so corrupted by original sin.
True Devotion
It would have been impossible for Montfort to publish his manuscript immediately after he wrote it.
There are aspects of Jansenists piety which, if they could be disentangled from their basic errors on grace and human freedom, affirmed real values: simplicity at worship, more popular participation in religious functions, love of Scripture and the Fathers of the Church, an austere Christian life, a sense of sin and need for forgiveness. Nonetheless, the tenderness of God, the infinitely forgiving love of Jesus, the tender, maternal care of Mary – and also at its later stage, a firm allegiance to the Magisterium of the Church – are all absent.
The Jansenists could not tolerate Saint Louis de Montfort’s exaltation of the grandeur of man through grace; his insistence that scrupulosity, fear of God and over concern were severe obstacles in our path to Jesus; most tender of persons; his stress on unflinching adherence to the teachings of the Holy Father; his loving kindness in the confessional, etc. Montfort’s True Devotion would be, as he well knew, opposed by these Jansenist “doctors among Catholics” (TD 64).
It would have been impossible for Montfort to publish his manuscript immediately after he wrote it. The very year of its final editing, 1712, the Bishop of La Rochelle together with the neighboring diocese of Lucon, had just published for the third time, a pastoral instruction against Jansensim. Saint Louis de Montfort apparently had to hide his manuscript in a chest which was placed in the hands of the Bishop of La Rochelle. Was the precious manuscript given to Father Mulot, Montfort’s successor? Was it then with some other writings hidden in a field during the reign of terror and months (years?) later returned to the Mother House of the Montfort Missionaries? One thing is certain: God’s Providence attentively guarded the Spirit-filled manuscript until times were ready for its publication.
