3-053-786 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Convent and Garden of the Apparition, Paray-le-Monial, [France], 1873. Engraving of a photograph by Mr. George Verney and published by Mr. Arthur Ackerman, showing '...the convent at the right hand; but the old parish church, with its central octagon tower and spire, and its two western towers, appears in the middle, rising above the houses of the little town...The convent, belonging to a branch of the Carmelite order called the Sisters of the Visitation, received Marguerite Marie Alacoque, the daughter of a provincial lawyer, in 1671; and she is believed to have become the medium of a special divine communication in 1675. She died in 1690, and was declared, in 1824, by a Papal decree, to be a sacred person in the esteem of the Roman Catholic Church. Her waxen effigy, within which the actual skeleton of her body is preserved, lies enshrined in the chapel, adorned with jewels and gold'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.