A Painter of the Sacred Heart

Séraphine Louis, called  Séraphine de Senlis, 1864 - 1942

Fleurs dans un panier

c 1910

Gouache on paper

29 x 20 cm

Musée d'art et d'archéologie, Senlis

I have written on a number of occasions before about the great French artist Séraphine Louis (1864-1942)(also known as Séraphine de Senlis)

She was one of a group of painters whom the art critic Wilhelm Uhde (Ulrich Tukur) "discovered" in the 1920s

They were Séraphine Louis,  Louis Vivin, André Bauchant, and Camille Bombois

All self taught. Their work was described as  “Primitive” and “naïf ”  (but not naive)

In 1928 Uhde described them as Les peintres du Cœur sacré, ("The Painters of the Sacred Heart") which was the title of he exhibition of their works in Paris which he organised for them to great acclaim and sent them into great public knowledge and esteem

Sadly she became ill in later years and was committed to a psychiatric hospital in Villers-sous-Erquery

She died on 11th December 1942 aged 78 years and was buried in a paupers communal grave in Clermont

She was one of the 40,000 psychatric patients who died of starvation in the harsh and barbaric conditions of French psychiatric hospitals in  Vichy France ("L'extermination douce") during the occupation by the Germans

Her medical record states that she died of starvation and was reduced to cutting grass at night to eat as well as eating rubbish

This was a common occurrence in French psychiatric hospitals at this time, following on the ideas of the French Eugenicists including the Nobel Prize Winner, Alexis Carrel

The painting above  is an early work of Louis, before her discovery by Uhde

On the back of the painting there is a text: Consécration des familles chrétiennes au coeur de Jésus

She appears to have had a strong Christian faith although not perhaps mainstream

On 29th June 1943, Pope Pius XII published his Encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi which includes this passage written in the middle of the Second World War, only six months after the death of Louis and while the killing was still going on:

"94. For as the Apostle with good reason admonishes us: "Those that seem the more feeble members of the Body are more necessary; and those that we think the less honourable members of the Body, we surround with more abundant honour."[ I Cor., XII, 22-23]  

Conscious of the obligations of Our high office We deem it necessary to reiterate this grave statement today, when to Our profound grief We see at times the deformed, the insane, and those suffering from hereditary disease deprived of their lives, as though they were a useless burden to Society; and this procedure is hailed by some as a manifestation of human progress, and as something that is entirely in accordance with the common good.  

Yet who that is possessed of sound judgment does not recognize that this not only violates the natural and the divine law [Decree of the Holy Office, 2 Dec. 1940: A.A.S., 1940, p. 553] written in the heart of every man, but that it outrages the noblest instincts of humanity?  

The blood of these unfortunate victims who are all the dearer to our Redeemer because they are deserving of greater pity, "cries to God from the earth."[Gen., IV, 10.]"

Mystici Corporis Christi

Jules Breton 1827 - 1906

Bénédiction des blés en Artois

1857

Oil on canvas

130 x 320 cm

Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Arras, Arras

In the nineteenth century, despite or because of the drive from rural agriculture to urban industrialisation, there was a revival of the Doctrine of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ

Pictures show as these illustrated the close connection between rural areas and Catholicism especially in Brittany and Normandy, areas which had resisted the French Revolution at great cost

It was a popular Catholicism with very deep roots

In the towns and cities with greater change and movement, things proceeded at a different pace and in a different way

Metropolitans and intellectuals from an outside point of view could only look at such processions and try to explain them in anthropological terms

It was the view point of the scientist looking at specimens under a microscope

By its very nature there had to be separation between examiner and examinee and a certain attitude of mind of the examiner towards the examinee

In Mystici Corporis Christi (1943), Pope Pius XII  rejected absolutely a rationalistic or purely sociological understanding of the Church: simply a human organization with structures and activities. The Church is more: it is guided by the Holy Spirit

He also rejected an  exclusively mystical understanding of the Church because a mystical “Christ in us” union would deify its members and mean that the acts of Christians are simultaneously the acts of Christ

He emphasised the comparison of the Church as the "mystical body of Christ" was a metaphor, an important metaphor, but subject to limitations

This view came to be superseded by the image of the Church as "The People of God" in and during and after  the Second Vatican Council

Later came the concept of Church as "Communion"

The picture above really illustrates all three visions to a certain extent

There is also that most important element in the work - empathy - which is absent in a purely so called "scientific study"

Before his retirement in February 2013, Pope Benedict XVI talked about these three concepts: metaphors and visions of the Church, how they developed  and how they are all linked

"We know that the First Vatican Council was interrupted because of the Franco-Prussian War, and so it remained somewhat one-sided, incomplete, because the doctrine on the primacy – defined, thanks be to God, in that historical moment for the Church, and very necessary for the period that followed – was just a single element in a broader ecclesiology, already envisaged and prepared. 

So we were left with a fragment. And one might say: as long as it remains a fragment, we tend towards a one-sided vision where the Church would be just the primacy. So all along, the intention was to complete the ecclesiology of Vatican I, at a date to be determined, for the sake of a complete ecclesiology. 

Here too the time seemed ripe because, after the First World War, the sense of the Church was reborn in a new way. As Romano Guardini said: "The Church is starting to reawaken in people’s souls", and a Protestant bishop spoke of the "era of the Church". 

Above all, there was a rediscovery of the concept that Vatican I had also envisaged, namely that of the Mystical Body of Christ. People were beginning to realize that the Church is not simply an organization, something structured, juridical, institutional – it is that too – but rather an organism, a living reality that penetrates my soul, in such a way that I myself, with my own believing soul, am a building block of the Church as such. 

In this sense, Pius XII wrote the Encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi as a step towards completing the ecclesiology of Vatican I. 

I would say that theological discussion in the 1930’s and 1940’s, even in the 1920’s, was entirely conducted under the heading Mystici Corporis. It was a discovery that brought so much joy at that time, and within this context emerged the formula: We are the Church, the Church is not a structure; we Christians, all together, we are all the living body of the Church. 

And naturally, this obtains in the sense that we, the true "we" of believers, together with the "I" of Christ, are the Church; every single one of us, not a particular "we", a single group that calls itself Church. No: this "we are Church" requires me to take my place within the great "we" of believers of all times and places. 

Therefore, the primary idea was to complete ecclesiology in a theological way, but also in a structural way, that is to say: besides the succession of Peter, and his unique function, to define more clearly also the function of the bishops, the corpus of bishops. And in order to do this, the word "collegiality" was adopted, a word that has been much discussed, sometimes acrimoniously, I would say, and also in somewhat exaggerated terms. 

But this word – maybe another could have been found, but this one worked – expressed the fact that the bishops collectively are the continuation of the Twelve, of the corpus of Apostles. We said: only one bishop, the Bishop of Rome, is the successor of a particular Apostle, namely Peter. All the others become successors of the Apostles by entering into the corpus that continues the corpus of the Apostles. Hence it is the corpus of bishops, the college, that is the continuation of the corpus of the Twelve, and thus it has its intrinsic necessity, its function, its rights and duties. 

To many this seemed like a power struggle, and maybe some were thinking of their power, but substantially it was not about power, but about the complementarity of the different elements and about the completeness of the corpus of the Church with the bishops, the successors of the Apostles, as structural elements; and each of them is a structural element of the Church within this great corpus. 

These, let us say, were the two basic elements – and in the meantime, in the quest for a complete theological vision of ecclesiology, a certain amount of criticism arose after the 1940’s, in the 1950’s, concerning the concept of the Body of Christ: the word "mystical" was thought to be too spiritual, too exclusive; the concept "People of God" then began to come into play. 

The Council rightly accepted this element, which in the Fathers is regarded as an expression of the continuity between the Old and the New Testaments. In the text of the New Testament, the phrase Laos tou Theou, corresponding to the Old Testament texts, means – with only two exceptions, I believe – the ancient People of God, the Jews, who among the world’s peoples, goim, are "the" People of God. 

The others, we pagans, are not per se God’s People: we become sons of Abraham and thus the People of God by entering into communion with Christ, the one seed of Abraham. 

By entering into communion with him, by being one with him, we too become God’s People. 

In a word: the concept of "the People of God" implies the continuity of the Testaments, continuity in God’s history with the world, with mankind, but it also implies the Christological element. Only through Christology do we become the People of God, and thus the two concepts are combined. 

The Council chose to elaborate a Trinitarian ecclesiology: People of God the Father, Body of Christ, Temple of the Holy Spirit. 

Yet only after the Council did an element come to light – which can also be found, albeit in a hidden way, in the Council itself – namely this: the link between People of God and Body of Christ is precisely communion with Christ in Eucharistic fellowship. This is where we become the Body of Christ: the relationship between People of God and Body of Christ creates a new reality – communion. 

After the Council it became clear, I would say, that the Council really discovered and pointed to this concept: communion as the central concept. I would say that, philologically, it is not yet fully developed in the Council, yet it is as a result of the Council that the concept of communion came more and more to be the expression of the Church’s essence, communion in its different dimensions: communion with the Trinitarian God – who is himself communion between Father, Son and Holy Spirit – sacramental communion, and concrete communion in the episcopate and in the life of the Church."