234 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



MIRACLES IN FRENCH CANADA. 



BY EDWARD FARKER. 



r~TlHE village of Beaupre*, on the north shore of the St. Law- 

 J- rence, twenty-one miles east of Quebec, is famous as the 

 chief seat in America of the cult of Saint Anne, mother of the 

 Virgin Mary. About 1620 a Breton crew, struck by a tempest 

 off the lower end of the Isle of Orleans, vowed a sanctuary to her 

 if she would rescue them, and on being driven ashore at Beaupre*, 

 then known as Petit Cap, built her a log chapel. A large wooden 

 church was afterward put up, and in it Laval, first Bishop of New 

 France, whose spiritual empire was so vast that it has since been 

 divided into seventy dioceses, deposited a piece of a finger bone 

 of Saint Anne.* In 1686 a stone church was erected and remains 

 to this day. A much more splendid edifice was completed in 1889, 

 at a cost of half a million dollars. In 1876 Pius IX " was pleased," 

 writes one of the Redemptorist Fathers in charge, " to declare 

 Saint Anne patroness of the Province of Quebec, without preju- 

 dice to the title of Saint Joseph, the patron of all Canada." The 

 present Pope has bestowed honors and privileges upon the new 

 church, which has received more relics of the saint, including a 

 fragment of rock from her house in Jerusalem, " from the room, 

 indeed, wherein took place the mysteries of the Immaculate Con- 

 ception." 



In the grandeur of its buildings and decorations, and in the 

 elaborate machinery employed to fire devotion and attract pil- 

 grims, the shrine is now second to none, except perhaps those of 

 Lourdes and La Salette. A railroad has been built from Quebec, 

 and steamboats make connection with the Intercolonial, Quebec 

 Central, Grand Trunk, and Canadian Pacific. Huge boarding 

 houses and hotels offer accommodation to visitors, who can also 

 obtain rooms in the convent of the Gray Nuns. A miracle-work- 

 ing spring has been discovered, and the water is sold in bottles at 

 a depository in the church. The Redemptorists issue a monthly 



* The Manual issued by the Redemptorists says Saint Anne was buried near Jerusalem, 

 but her body was subsequently laid in the Church of the Sepulchre of Our Lady, in the 

 Valley of Jehoshaphat. " One day a mysterious bark was seen to approach the shores of 

 France. It had neither sail nor rudder, but God was its pilot. Never had the ocean borne 

 a greater treasure. In this bark were Saint Lazarus with his two pious sisters, Saint Mary 

 Magdalen and Saint Martha, together with several other saintly women. They were fleeing 

 from Palestine with a number of priceless relics, the most precious among which was the 

 hallowed body of Saint Anne. This treasure was placed in the hands of Saint Auspicius, 

 the first Bishop of Apt." It was buried " to protect it from sacrilegious hands, and the 

 place where it had been secreted was wholly forgotten " till, Charlemagne being at Apt one 

 Easter day, " a miracle led to the discovery of the place." 



