Friday, September 18, 2009

Eucharistic Adoration and Père Augustin-Marie du Très Saint Sacrement

Amid some recent controversy over Eucharistic Adoration, Pentimento recalls Father Hermann Cohen, a.k.a. Père Augustin-Marie du Très Saint Sacrement, a Carmelite priest of Jewish descent. Venerable Augustin-Marie promulgated Adoration of Our Lord's Real Presence in France during the late nineteenth century.

Pentimento offers a fascinating article about Hermann Cohen's life, from his days as a pianist in the company of Liszt to his dramatic conversion to Christianity. The following is an excerpt:
In May, 1847, Prince Moscowa asked Hermann to substitute as choral director for a service at the church of S. Valère (now demolished). At the close of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, (le Salut), when the priest raised the monstrance in blessing Hermann experienced a deep motion, sweet and powerful. Overwhelmed, he felt like the Prodigal Son, totally unworthy and in need to return home. Liszt had once given him a bible when they were in Geneva. In it the Master had inscribed, "Blessed are the pure of heart." Hermann knew he did not qualify.

The same phenomenon occurred the following week and, even when he was off to Germany for a concert at Ems, Hermann burst into a flood of tears as he attended services in a little country church. Hermann had never known any priest except the Abbé Lamennais and was apprehensive about approaching one. A series of positive experiences, however, eventually led him to Father Theodore Ratisbonne, also a Jew, who would become his confidant and confessor.

At his baptism on August 28, 1847, Hermann experienced what he called an "apparition" of Christ, Mary, and the saints in a "brilliant light" and an "ecstasy of love." By November of that year he had already resolved to become a priest. Before he could undertake this whirlwind venture, however, it was necessary to wipe out the considerable gambling debts he had acquired. It took him two years of teaching at the Collège Stanislas and private lessons with young ladies who were not at all happy at his turn from the world. During this time he lived in modest quarters and spent hours in prayer with young men who shared his enthusiasm. Once during this period he chanced to meet George Sand who formerly had lavished such affection on him. She turned away in disgust, "Get lost! You’re nothing but a vile monk."

By 1848, he managed to pay off his debts. One final concert at the Saint Cecilia Hall bade his adieu to the world and helped square his accounts. He had had to practice from morning to night to prepare for it. According to one eyewitness, the concert was and "immense success" and the hall filled with "thunderous applause." Hermann wrote that in earlier days he would have been in the streets with a gun during the Revolution of 1848. Instead he was at his favorite devotion, spending the night in adoration before the exposed Blessed Sacrament. This popular devotion was in great part pioneered by Hermann. Today visitors to the Basilica du Sacré Coeur in Paris will note that the Sacrament is continually exposed. Liszt himself wrote to Hermann’s first biographer, Abbé Sylvain, in 1882, that Hermann’s was a "life of burning and ecstatic perpetual adoration of the Bread of Angels."

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8 comments:

Pentimento said...

Elena, has Fr. Hermann been declared Venerable at this point? The last I knew was that his cause had been opened, but had stalled for political reasons. I would love to know more if you know more -- I have a strong devotion to him.

elena maria vidal said...

Yes, Pentimento, he is a Venerable now. Thank you for your wonderful article.

Pentimento said...

Fantastic news! When did this happen? (You may know that I have a chapter about him in my dissertation, submitted this year.)

elena maria vidal said...

I don't know but he has been a Venerable as long as I have known about him, since the late eighties. I think he was declared Venerable around the turn of the last century, but I can't find the exact date.

Pentimento said...

Interesting -- I've done an extensive amount of research on him in the few sources available (one in English, two or three in French), and never saw him designated as such. There's a Carmelite monastery in France that is in charge of his cause -- I've been in contact with them, and their materials also don't call him Venerable. Which doesn't mean he's not. I hope I can find out more.

elena maria vidal said...

I don't know; the nuns that I knew always called him "Venerable" but that does not necessarily mean that he is officially. Let me know what you find; there is not much on the internet, except your article.

Pentimento said...

I will, Elena. Also, I want to make sure it's clear that the online article is not by me, but by Richard Cross, the former priest I blogged about. His article first appeared in the Journal of the American Liszt Society in 1994. Besides my dissertation (2009), it's the only scholarly source on Fr. Hermann in English.

Did you ever come across any of Fr. Hermann's music in the Carmelite monastery?

elena maria vidal said...

Oh, yes, thank you for the clarification of the authorship~ I should have said the article you linked to on your blog! Oh, no, I never came across his music where I was. They were in the process of reintroducing the Gregorian chant but in the meantime we had a lot of Lucien Deiss and the St. Louis Jesuits.