Was Constance Mistaken for the Blessed Virgin at La Salette?
La Salette is a mountain near Grenoble in France. There on September 19th, 1846,
the Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ who is God in Catholic dogma, allegedly
appeared to Melanie Mathieu and Maximin Giraud when they were tending cows. This
apparition was given the approval of the Church in 1851 (page 111, The Thunder
of Justice).
In the interesting booklet, The Exaltation of the Virgin Mary, by Rev S.G.
Poyntz, M.A., B.D. we read, “Clergy of nearby dioceses stated that the vision
was an imposture by a lunatic named Constance Lamerliere, who had purchased the
alleged dress in which the Virgin appeared. The followers of La Salette argued
that this was simply the story of a jealous party who were annoyed because their
own shrines were doing bad business due to the decrease in pilgrims. This story
persisted so much that the said Constance Lamerliere took the matter to a Court
of Justice.
The Court decided the case against her and threw out the appeal. This vision
must be pronounced a fake and a scandal” (page 25). So the civil court decided
that the apparition was indeed a hoax and that this woman had indeed pretended
to be the apparition. We should believe it rather than the Church court which
declared that Mary had appeared. There were more witnesses to the evidence for
fraud than witnesses to the vision. And the Church court was prejudiced for
there was no real evidence that the visionaries saw Mary apart from a good guess
as to her identity and the light surrounding the Lady. Fantasy and excitement
can pollute the memory and add in exaggerated elements later. Moreover, the lies
and fanaticism and the occasional insanity and hallucinations of Melanie are
against the Church judgement that the visions were authentic.
Constance Lamerliere was born of rich parents in Grenoble. We must remember that
nobody is likely to point the finger at the member of a wealthy and powerful
family without reason. They had the money and power to cover up or retaliate.
Why was she accused of pretending to be Mary when other people would have made
safer choices?
She was the mistress of novices at the New Convent de la Providence which she
joined in 1822. She was described as having a powerful imagination and was fond
of mystical practices such as trying to hear the voice of God and experience
miracles. She had a penchant for shrines of Jesus and Mary and wanted them
established everywhere in the convent. She was an outstanding communicator and
soon infected the novices with her fanaticism. The superior Madame Chantal took
action to counteract this. She was put under surveillance and she hated this so
much that she took rest from her labours. She became a recluse who never left
her cell except to go to Church. One day she left the convent without permission
and anybody knowing that she had gone. She went to several churches and told the
priests that if they requested money in her name they would get it for improving
their Churches. Of course any priest who took her seriously got nothing. At
Marseilles, she tried to set up a congregation of religious devoted to the Holy
Family. This lady was certainly capable of doing what she was accused of at La
Salette.
The Catholic objection to the apparition being Constance Lamerliere is that this
lady was in her fifties and heavy. The witnesses said the vision was slim and
tall and didn't look that old.
But with pale makeup she would have looked younger and she was wearing robes
that could have made her look slimmer. Light reflecting from bright clothes will
also make a person look younger. However The Sceptical Occultist indicates that
the lady wasn’t very youthful when Melanie said she was a mad mother who would
kill her children.
She was short and fat and in her fifties and didn't seem to one to get easily
mistaken for the beautiful Virgin Mary. But people have mistaken all kinds of
things for ghosts and apparitions.
After the vision, Maximin said, “Perhaps it is a great saint”. After they had
claimed to have listened to the Lady saying she was the mother of Christ! They
did not know who she was at all! They were not even sure if she was a saint!
This surely suggests that there was a lot of exaggeration in their original
story though they stuck to the public version of it and that Our Lady of La
Salette was possibly some nut in fancy dress. Nobody denies that after the
apparition the children did embellish their story but it is the original story
that the Church believes.
The children came down the hill and Melanie said she was sure the Lady was a mad
woman who would kill her children but she was less sure because she rose up into
the air.
Melanie said, "If I hadn't seen her rise up into the air, I would have believed
that it was some woman whose husband wanted to kill their children" (page 31,
Encountering Mary).
A diocesan priest wrote two books against the apparition. The priest was in
trouble with the Church and reconciled with it. He produced a third book against
the apparition. It was called La Salette devant le pape.
This book claimed that a manically religious lady from St Marcellin, Constance
Lamerliere, was dressed the way the children described the Virgin. She had
stopped where the children reported seeing Mary for she was on her way to the
shrine of Our Lady of LeLaus. She walked into mist as she left them and nuns at
a convent had seen her dressed as the children were to describe the Virgin. The
whole thing had been mistaken identity.
He went to the trouble of giving names and dates to support his theory.
Witnesses subsequently appeared claiming that Constance was at St Marcellin at
the time of the apparition. That was seventy-five miles away. Supporters of the
Church would say that!
The man he claimed who drove her coach was named as Fortin. But Fortin was not
employed at the time of the apparition as a coachman on that route. It would be
three years later before that would happen. Was this a case of mistaken
identity? Was Fortin a casual worker?
Encountering Mary, page 34, tells us that Maximin was prone to mistaking
ordinary people for visions. "About three or four weeks after the apparition,
Maximin and three or four other boys reportedly went to the mountain...they saw
a woman in the distance dressed in black whom they thought must be one of the
Sisters of Providence from Corps. When he returned to Corps, however, Maximin
found that none of the sisters had been on the mountain that day, and this led
him to conclude that he had seen no ordinary person but someone from 'the other
world', perhaps his deceased mother".
None of the objections really prove that Constance Lamerliere was innocent.
The apparition could have been none other than poor mad Sister Constance
Lamerliere in fancy dress!
http://books.google.ie/books?id=2LM8AAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
Encountering Mary, Sandra Zimdars-Swartz, Avon, New York, 1991