Letter signed by Saint Vincent de Paul, addressed to Father Firmin Get, Superior of the Priests of the Mission in Marseille, the text except the signature written in Paris by his secretary and twice dated 27 December 1658. Two pages in black ink on a folded bifolium, with the manuscript address on the verso of the bifolium, a dry seal impressed under paper, and usual folds. 

In this exceptionally rare letter, Saint Vincent de Paul fights to save the Christian captives of Tunis, having himself been captured and held as a slave in that very city for two years. 

The letter, recently cited in Vincentian scholarship, is an essential document for understanding the saint's intricate manoeuvres as he arranged to exchange "Turkish" slaves held in Marseille for Christian slaves in North Africa. Through influential figures of the Parisian aristocracy, he obtained funds to support the hospital for galley convicts in Marseille, ran by his correspondent Firmin Get.

“Solid, efficient, with the capacity for hard work that Vincent so prizes, Father Get now dominates the whole of Vincent de Paul's correspondence with his figures and his letters. For it is he who conveys to Barbary, by way of the sailors and merchants who link the two shores of the Mediterranean, the money received from the Mission's bankers in Marseille” (Marie-Joëlle Guillaume).

Father Firmin Get, a native of Picardy, entered the Congregation of the Mission on 6 January 1641 and took charge of the Marseille house in 1654. Get was Vincent de Paul's second most important correspondent: according to the great Vincentian scholar Coste, no fewer than one hundred and fifty letters addressed to him are recorded. It makes him, together with Vincent's patron and friend Madame de Marillac, his “most favoured” epistolary interlocutor.

Apart from the merchants and craftsmen who had settled there or who called there for trade, the greater part of the Christian population of Tunis and of the two other Ottoman regencies of the Barbary Coast consisted of slaves. The slave trade flourished at the time: “if Vincent knew it well, it is because he was himself an article of import,” as Paul Lapie observes in the Revue Tunisienne. Vincent de Paul was indeed captured and spent two years in Tunis. Very little is known about it, as Vincent de Paul almost never imparted anything on “the most picturesque, even most romantic episode” of his life (Victor Giraud), so much so that it has even been doubted whether he was ever a captive at all. In that same year, 1658, he tried to retrieve and burn the few letters he had written on the subject. Yet this experience undoubtedly had a profound influence on his work.  The saint never ceased to show constant concern for these missions, faced with violence and constant problems of ransoming Christian slaves.

At the time this letter was written, “the situation in Barbary is a web of suffering,” as Marie-Joëlle Guillaume emphasises. Father Jean Barreau, consul in Algiers, was repeatedly thrown into the bey's jails and subjected to the worst tortures. The authorities expected payments promised in exchange for the release of captives, while Vincent de Paul waited desperately for a French fleet to be dispatched to settle the matter once and for all. 

“Monsieur,
The grace of O[ur] L[ord] be with you forever!
May God be glorified for the results of your mission and for your safe return! If the troubles persist, it will be well for you not to go far away.
I am glad that the Turks from Tunis are in your hospital, awaiting the order and opportunity to be sent back. This will then give you the means of writing to our dear confreres in Barbary and perhaps to give them some help. See if that can be done safely. I think you are right in saying that sending things by the Spanish Mercedarian Fathers is very uncertain." (translation De Paul University Library)

Vincent de Paul's missionaries had begun working for the material and spiritual welfare of Christian slaves in Tunis in 1645, and in Algiers in 1646. The Congregation took charge of both consulates through the generosity of one of its principal benefactors, Marie de Vignerod de Combalet, Duchesse d'Aiguillon, niece of the late Cardinal Richelieu. As Forrestal and Roșu point out: “ Although de Paul and the missionaries that he sent to the region did not articulate the reasons for their congregation’s presence there in these terms, in practice they stepped in to minister to slaves, to prevent their assimilation to North African and Islamic culture, and to repatriate any who were French Catholics.” (Slavery on the Frontier: The Report of a French Missionary on Mid-Seventeenth-Century Tunis).

After numerous fundraising campaigns, collections in Parisian parishes and gifts from the aristocracy, the situation called for drastic measures, here the sending back of Tunisian galley slaves whom he had persuaded the French Crown to give up:  

“This example [the present letter] clearly shows that Vincent de Paul understood the political manoeuvres of the French court. In this he could rely on his long-standing confidante, the Duchesse d'Aiguillon, and on her influence. It is evident that he used a network of influential women to bring pressure to bear on the court; in this instance, besides the Duchesse d'Aiguillon, it was the wife of Admiral Vendôme. Within this network he regularly found support for his religiously motivated projects. Moreover, he clearly had a thorough grasp of the Mediterranean logic of slavery, as well as of the slave trade. He knew what value the Muslim slaves in Marseille represented and how to make use of it.” (Daniel Steinke, Vinzenz von Paul (1581-1660) und die Praxis der Sklaverei im Mittelmeerraum, 2019).

After this exchange of the “Turks of Tunis,” intended to release funds for the North African missions or to secure the freedom of captives, Vincent de Paul turns to the thorny question of the galley convicts. The task had occupied him since 1618, when he discovered with horror their appalling living conditions. Here he obtains from the mother of the Procureur Général Nicolas Fouquet, the means to support his hospital for galley convicts. He also mentions in connection with the transfer the name of the Duc de Richelieu, General of the Galleys, Armand de Vignerot. The letter also names leading figures of the mission: Philippe Le Vacher, brother of the martyr Jean Le Vacher; Antoine Parisy; and Benjamin Huguier, priest of the Mission in Marseille, who visited the galley convicts stationed in Toulon. 

"In my last letter to M. Le Vacher, I included a note from Madame Fouquet stating that the Administrators of the hospital for the captives may take two thousand livres to continue assistance to the patients, and they should draw a bill of exchange on M. Bruand who is with the Attorney General. I will send the letter from the Administrators to the Duc de Richelieu for the new election.
We do not yet have the results of the consultation from the Sorbonne on the case you sent us. I will have someone request them at the first opportunity.
I have nothing to tell M. Le Vacher, except that I received his letter.
I am glad M. Huguier has returned to Toulon and M. Parisy to Marseilles.
I am writing to you in haste because I received your packet just at the time my letters had to be sent to the post.
I am, in O[ur] L[ord],
Monsieur,

Your most humble servant,
Vincent Depaul,
i.s.C.M" (idem). 

A precious and moving source showcasing the unremitting efforts of Vincent, who followed in the footsteps of Christ and took on “the condition of a slave”, then, through his labours, restored freedom to more than twelve hundred souls, according to Louis Abelly. 

A fortnight before his death, it was to the very same Firmin Get that he wrote and sent funds to for the galley convicts: “To the very end, he thinks of everything and of everyone; he lets go of none of the reins that Providence has placed in his hands. A good soldier of Christ, he dies, quite literally, in the breach.” (Giraud). 

Provenance: this manuscript formed part of an ensemble of autograph letters addressed to the Marseille congregation, of which Firmin Get was superior, recovered by the superior at the time of the Revolution. Inherited by the Hains family, most of the originals subsequently passed through the hands of the great autograph dealer Charavay in the late nineteenth century.

Bibliography: Lettres de S. Vincent de Paul, Pillet et Dumoulin, 1880, vol. IV, pp. 254-255, no. 1777; Coste (ed.)., Saint Vincent de Paul. Correspondance, Entretiens, Documents, vol. VII, p. 420, no. 2762. Facsimile available at DePaul University Library.