Introduction To The Devout Life

Sketch of the Life of St. Francis of Sales

FRANCIS OF SALES was the eldest son of Francis, Count of Sales, the head of an ancient and noble family, seated at the Chateau of Sales, near Annecy, in Savoy; he was born at the family seat, Aug. 21, 1567. His mother, Frances of Sionas, a woman of exemplary holiness, took the greatest pains to bring up her son in innocence and the knowledge and love of God. She often repeated to him those words of Queen Blanche to her son St. Louis, “I had rather see you dead than hear that you had committed one mortal sin “- words which he quotes in the Devout Life. Her prayers and pains were abundantly rewarded; for the boy grew up of a sweet and good disposition, handsome in person, of great intelligence, and from his earliest years upwards remarkable for his purity of life and earnest devotion. He was educated at the neighbouring College of Annecy till twelve years of age, and was then sent to the University of Paris, where his principal teacher was the celebrated Maldonatus; at eighteen he went, for the special study of law, to Padua, where he was the favourite pupil of the famous Guy Pan- cirola; at twenty he finished his university career with a considerable reputation, and travelled for some time.

His father had great hopes of the future of so promising a son; and by the time of his return home, had obtained for him of his Sovereign, the Duke of Savoy, the important post of Counsellor of the Parliament of Chambery, and had also arranged a marriage for him with a young lady whose beauty, rank, fortune, and good- ness, made her a most desirable match.

Francis had, however, resolved upon entering the service of God in the ministry of the Church, and his father, with some natural disappointment and hesitation, consented to give up to God the son who, he had fondly hoped, would worthily support the family honours and be a guardian to a numerous family of brothers and sisters.

The Count desired that Francis should still accept the office which had been obtained for him, which was quite compatible, according to the custom of the times, with his clerical character, but he resolutely refused, desiring to give himself entirely to the proper work of the ministry. His cousin, Louis of Sales, Canon of Annecy, had, however, in the meantime, obtained for him the Provostship of the Church of Annecy, in which the Episcopal see was then fixed, since the Calvinists had driven the Bishops out of Geneva. This office, with some difficulty, the young deacon was induced to accept.

The Bishop immediately employed him in preach- ing; he showed great zeal in the work, and his ability, and the fervour of his preaching stirred up the Catholics and made many conversions from among the Calvinists, who were numerous in the diocese.

In 1594, Duke Charles Emmanuel of Savoy re- covered the sovereignty of the Duchy of Chablais and other districts about the Lake of Geneva, of which the Canton of Berne had dispossessed his family sixty years before. The Duke was desirous that steps should be taken to recover the inhabitants to the Catholic Church, and commended the work to the Bishop. Francis volunteered for this duty, which, owing to the bigoted fierceness of the peo-: ple, was one of personal danger, and his cousin, Canon Louis, accompanied him. reached the frontier of the district they dismissed When they their horses and servants, and the two entered upon their mission in apostolic simplicity, as well. as with apostolic zeal. For four years he laboured with great diligence, amidst violent opposition and in frequent danger, and with little success; but then his labours began to bear fruit, which rapidly increased until 40,000 or 50,000 of the people, it is said, were converted; and at length, in 1598, the Catholic religion was publicly rein-: stated throughout the district. The Calvinists ascribed principally to his meekness the wonderful conversions which he made among them. He had several conferences with Theodore Beza; and his.

biographers claim that Francis had good hopes of winning that great light of the Reformed re- ligion back to the Catholic pale, which death, however, frustrated. The wisdom and success with which he had accomplished this great work made him famous beyond the bounds of his own country.

The Bishop of Geneva now sought to have Francis appointed as his coadjutor in the see. On his nomination, he went to Rome to ask for the papal benediction, and was received with great distinction.

In 1599, a war which Savoy had waged with France, terminated in the cession of the Bailiwick of Gex to the French monarchy, and St. Francis was sent by the Duke to arrange with Henry IV. for the interests of the Catholic religion in the ceded territory. He was received with the highest re- spect at the French Court. His sermons made a great impression, and here too he made some illustrious converts from among the Huguenots. The impression we have already gathered as to the cause of his power over opponents is confirmed by the saying of Cardinal Perron, who was a famous controversialist: “I can confute the Calvinists,” he said, “but to persuade and convert them you must carry them to the coadjutor of Geneva.” The King tried in vain to induce him, by the offer of the first vacant bishopric, to settle in France. On a subsequent occasion he offered to nominate him for the Cardinalate, an honour which he also declined. While returning home he heard of the death of the Bishop of Geneva, and his own con- sequent succession to the see. He at once retired to the Chateau of Sales, and prepared himself, by a twenty days’ retreat, for his consecration. His sub- sequent life and labours, as represented by his bio- graphers, were those of an ideal bishop. “In his house every thing was done as regularly as in a monastery. They rose, they attended prayer, they went to Divine Service, they sat down to meals, they took recreation, they retired, at fixed hours. His table was frugal, he dressed in woollen only, abstain- ing from silk and costly attire. The furniture and arrangement of his house, though dignified, were perfectly plain. He rose every day at four o’clock, and observed an exact economy of time. Every day he said mass; he said office on his knees. He fasted every Friday and Saturday. On Sun- days and festivals he attended the Cathedral. He was always present at the feasts of devotion kept in any of the churches of the town. Every year he made a retreat of ten days. The alms he gave were wonderful, considering the limited means of his see. In his diocese he set himself to reform morals, he ordered his clergy to catechize on Sun- days and holidays throughout the year, and on every day during Lent. He inquired strictly into the real fitness of candidates for ordination; he reformed several monasteries; established machi- nery for the higher branches of a liberal education at the Cathedral city. He diligently visited his diocese, going on foot to the remote villages among the mountains, and taking delight in preaching to the poor.”

He was famous not only as an Evangelist and as a Bishop but also as a Director of Souls. The gen- tleness and sweetness of his character attracted penitents to pour their sins and sorrows into his ear; his purity and love and zeal inspired them with holy resolutions of amendment; and his works prove that he possessed great skill as well as ten- derness and zeal in dealing with the soul.

In 1610 he founded the Congregation of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin, Madame de Chantal being the first Mother. He had observed that many women desired to live a religious live who were prevented by advanced years or bodily in- firmity or weakness of constitution from encounter- ing the austerities of other religious orders. He founded this congregation to receive such persons, and the principles on which he founded it are specially interesting in the present revival among us of the Religious Life. His design was to unite the comtemplative and active elements of the Religious Life in proportions so nicely adjusted that they might aid one another. In place of outward aus- terities, of which aged and infirm people were in- capable, he inculcated the practice of interior morti- fications. The dress was of the same fashion as people wore in the world, only black in colour and without ornament. The sisters were to go about visiting the sick. The houses were to be endowed, but individual poverty carefully observed. The or- der was to have no general; but the individual houses were to be under the government of the bishop of the diocese in which they were situated. After- wards the Saint was led to remodel his congrega- tion into a cloistered order with a habit and rule, retaining the other principles of his original plan. The order spread into various countries, and be- came numerous and famous, so that at the date of his canonization in 1645, after it had been estab- lished only forty-five years, it numbered 130 houses. He died in 1622, at the age of fifty-six, in the twentieth year of his episcopacy.

St. Francis wrote a book on the Love of God, Sermons, Letters, Preparation for the Mass, and Instructions to Confessors, but his best known work is the Introduction to the Devout Life. He himself relates in the Preface what was the origin of the work. That he thought it but a slight pcr- formance is only another illustration of the truth that what a man does best he often does easiest, and does not appreciate its value because it has cost him no effort. But it, at once, obtained a wide circulation, and has ever since been held in the highest esteem. It may, perhaps, be put on a level with the Imitation of Christ, and the Spiritual Combat.

In adapting a new translation of it to the use of members of the English Church, the Editor has laid down for himself the principle of making as few omissions and alterations as possible. He has Life of St. Francis of Sales

sometimes, perhaps, in pursuing this principle, gone to the very edge of what is permissible in the English Church, and beyond what he himself would recommend; but it seemed desirable rather to leave it to the discretion of the reader to make some reservation in accepting a passage here and there than to leave him continually in doubt whether he had or had not before him the authen- tic work of the great Author. It is suprising how few omissions and alterations it has been found necessary, on this principle, to make. Two whole chapters have been omitted, one for doctrinal rea- sons, the other because it relates to subjects which it seems undesirable to retain in a work intended for indiscriminate circulation, and a few other passages are also omitted, in which the reader is desired to invoke the Saints, or to seek the inter- cession of the Blessed Virgin. The alterations are chiefly the substitution of the term Holy Com- munion or Holy Eucharist for that of Mass where- ever it occurs.