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Updated: May 21, 2025
Again: there was at Paris a young priest, about twenty-eight years of age, Jean Jacques Olier, afterwards widely known as founder of the Seminary of St. Sulpice. Judged by his engraved portrait, his countenance, though marked both with energy and intellect, was anything but prepossessing. Every lineament proclaims the priest. Yet the Abbe Olier has high titles to esteem.
Jean-Jacques Olier, member of a family which supplied the state with many trusty servitors, was the contemporary of, and a fellow-worker with, Vincent de Paul, Bérulle, Adrien de Bourdoise, Père Eudes, and Charles de Gondren, founders of congregations for the reform of ecclesiastical education, who played a prominent part in the preparatory reforms of the seventeenth century.
Joseph Calasanctius, Gerson, Bellarmin, Bossuet, Fenelon, M. Olier, etc., believed they could never better employ their time and talents than in consecrating them to the education of the young.
Sulpice, M. de Bretonvilliers, who had succeeded the venerable M. Olier, did not approve of the conduct of the Abbé Fénelon, for he wrote later to the Sulpicians of Montreal: "I exhort you to profit by the example of M. de Fénelon. Concerning himself too much with secular affairs and with what did not affect him, he has ruined his own cause and compromised the friends whom he wished to serve.
Quebec had a seminary, a hospital, and a convent, before it possessed a population. The foundation of Montreal was still more exclusively religious. The accounts of the Jesuits had inflamed pious souls with a noble emulation; a Montreal association was formed, under the direction of M. Olier, founder of St. Sulpice.
"Monsieur," exclaimed Olier, "I know your design, and I go to commend it to God at the holy altar." And he went at once to say mass in the chapel. Dauversiere received the communion at his hands; and then they walked for three hours in the park, discussing their plans.
Incense is the Divinity of the Son, and our prayers which rise up like vapours in the presence of the Most High, as the Psalmist says. Myrrh is repentance, the sufferings of Jesus, His death, the martyrs, and also, according to Monsieur Olier, the type of the Virgin who heals the souls of sinners as myrrh cauterizes the festering of wounds; balm is another word for virtue.
Madame de Bullion, a rich and very charitable woman, had agreed to aid Olier and Dauversiere by endowing a hospital in the colony, and Jeanne Mance offered her services as nurse and housekeeper. A leader was needed, a man of soldierly training and pious life; and in Paul de Chomedy, Sieur de Maisonneuve, a veteran of the wars in Holland, the ideal man was found.
While yet at the Collège des Bons Enfants, he had realized how great was the need of a special training for young men destined for the priesthood and had founded a small seminary. After the move to St. Lazare the undertaking had grown and prospered. A college of the same kind had been lately founded by M. Olier, the zealous curé of St.
They were of one mind, in respect both to objects and means; and when they parted, Olier gave Dauversiere a hundred louis, saying, "This is to begin the work of God."
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