MGR F. Trochu published in 1954 Ste Bernadette Soubiraus, now translated and ‘adapted’ by Fr J. Joyce, s.j. (Longmans; 25s.): omission of notes and references has reduced the book from 585 pages to 400 and it will doubtless be the definitive ‘life’ of St Bernadette in English. Yet I feel that a History of Lourdes is still required. Lest I seem over-critical, and at the risk of being over-personal, may I say that already at school I was spell-bound by ‘Lourdes’—in spite of books. Lasserre’s book was clearly a ‘literary’ work by an enthusiast, not an historian: two persons sent me Zola’s Lourdes, no less clearly rationalist, though I could not then know of its deliberate mendacity. I went to make a novena at Lourdes and sought for every trace of Bernadette and Abbé Peyramale. I returned, and remained, ever more beholden to our Lady of Lourdes, but not till, long afterwards, I read Fr Cros’s three big volumes, did I feel that my ‘devotion’ had historically irreproachable foundations. A ‘history’ must not seek, or be afraid, to ‘shock’.

Instinctively I turned to page 40 in the translation: Bernadette on her way to collect wood passed an old woman who was ‘doing some washing’. I knew that Bernadette had said des boyaux. I turned to Trochu: the translation was quite faithful; but the French relegates the boyaux to a coy footnote. ‘La Pigouno’ ‘did not hide’ that what she was washing was—would ‘offal’ offend the delicate ears of England, or even America? Again, when the children returned after the first Apparition, Toinette says (page 46) that she will go to sell the bones they had collected, so ‘the mother hurriedly began to tidy Toinette’s unruly curls’ (recoiffers les boucles folks de T.).

This day has been made holy for us by the day who made all days; the day about whom there is a song in the psalm, ‘Sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord all the earth. Sing to the Lord and bless his name, rightly declare day from day his salvation’ (Ps. xcv, i). Who can this day from day be, if not the Son from the Father, light from light? But that day who begot the day that would be born of the virgin this day, that day has no dawning, has no dusk. The day I mean is God the Father. Jesus after all would not be day from day, unless the Father Were also day. What is day anyhow? Simply light; but now not material light for material eyes, which is shared by men and beasts, but light which shines on angels, light which our hearts are now being scrubbed and polished for a sight of. This night is soon over which we are now living in, in which the lamps of scripture have been lit for us, and soon what another psalm sings of will be here, ‘In the morning I will stand before you and gaze upon you’ (Ps. v, 5).

And so that day which is the Word of God, who shines on the angels, who shines in that mother country we are exiles from, that day clothed himself in flesh and was born of the virgin Mary.

That the first biography of the Belgian missionary priest who devoted his life to the lepers at Molokai should be written by a Scots freethinker, a grandson of the manse, is curious. That it should be the cause of a controversy which made Father Damien’s name known throughout the world, and which may yet make it even better known and venerated, is an indication of the often seemingly round-about way in which God chooses that his will be done on earth. No two men with less in common and with less possible mutual sympathy than Father Damien and Robert Louis Stevenson could easily be imagined. The one a Belgian peasant who only just managed to qualify academically for ordination, and who took the ceremony of being covered with a funeral pall at his profession so seriously and so literally that he promptly volunteered to be exiled to a living death in the leper colony at Molokai: the other a brilliant young Scots writer whose one object in life appeared to be to achieve a reputation as a wit and conversationalist. Their paths never crossed even. But Stevenson landed at Molokai a month after Damien’s death, and was possessed shortly afterwards by a religious determination to defend Damien’s reputation. The story is well known but what is not generally realized is that: (1) Stevenson had little time for missionaries in general, either Catholic or Protestant (he was associated in South Sea politics with the anti-missionary faction); and (2) his first impressions of Damien (based on what observers in Molokai told him) were not too favourable —it was only after reaching Australia some weeks later that he became a fervent admirer of Damien.

The centenary of the apparitions at Lourdes has inevitably inspired a new literature which ranges from critical editions of the written sources to popular ballads. The variety of emphasis and the levels of taste revealed in these books reflect the universality of Lourdes itself—its capacity to engage the serious attention of the scholar as well as the uncritical affection of the simple believer.

Most important of the centenary publications is Lourdes: Dossier des Documents Authentiques, edited by Abbé Laurentin (Lethielleux). Four volumes are projected, of which two have already appeared (Vol. I: Au temps des seize premieres apparitions; 1,200 francs; Vol. II: Dix-Septième Apparition, Epidémie des Visionnaires, Gnoses et Faux Miracles, La Bataille Administrative, Fermeture de la Grotte: 1,500 francs). It is a matter for gratitude that a theologian such as M. Laurentin should undertake the necessary task of inspecting the sources of Lourdes. As he explains in his introduction, the apparitions at Lourdes are not a major subject for theological study, but they have an important place in the life of the Church, ‘if only because of the number of people they affect, and because of the fruits they produce as well as the dangers they present’. For that reason ‘God’s designs in this matter should be exactly established and stripped of exaggerations’.

The need, therefore, was to establish the authenticity of the record on which the story of Lourdes depends. M. Laurentin describes his task as comparable to a detective story, and indeed many of the relevant documents are in fact police reports made at the time of the apparitions. In the course of a century a mass of documents had accumulated in archives of all sorts (and, as M. Laurentin remarks drily, ‘France is a country where everything is kept’).