The Chaminade Legacy, Volume 2
Monograph Series - Document 53
Volume Two - Notes for Conferences and Sermons, Part One
487 pgs.
The next three volumes (2, 3, and 4) of The Chaminade Legacy gather together Father Chaminade's notes for conferences and sermons. In his own words to the police of Bordeaux.
These eight notebooks contain very incomplete notes, and some extracts or partial extracts of other works. There is little order or connection among them . . . he jotted down his thoughts on loose sheets of paper. When he thought he had sufficiently grasped his subject, he stopped writing. The majority of these writings were never revised. All of these loose sheets were gathered together by his secretary a few months ago; two of the notebooks are not even yet covered.
The same observation may be made for Father Chaminade's other small notebooks. He never wrote out a speech or a conference, only notes to focus his ideas. Most of the time, he did not even record his final thought. . . .
An earlier edition of these notes, as the Notes d'Instruction, was published at Fribourg between 1963 and 1967 in 13 mimeographed volumes. With few exceptions, these notes are usually autographs. They may be dated between 1800 and 1809, and almost all were intended for lay people. They are published in the order of the classification in the General Archives (AGMAR) of the Society of Mary in Rome.It may be asked what profit we may draw from reading these notes for conferences and sermons. A person interested in theology and the history of theology can find here a living insight into what the Church was teaching during the first quarter of the 19th century, right after the French Revolution.
