The effect of de Sales's extraordinary activity at this time betrays itself in the pages-long letters of his which have survived. He had promised, for example, to write an annual letter of spiritual advice to Benigne Fremont, Jeanne's father. In the letter of October 7, 1604, in which he fulfils his promise, he writes towards the end: "This, Monsieur, is surely enough, if not more than enough for this year, which is passing and running away before our eyes, and in two months we shall see how fleeting and vain it is, just as we realise the vanity of the past years that are now gone." A tired sentiment for a man of 37, even though a saint. And two days later, he begins a letter to the Abbesse du Puits-d'Orbe with words that explain the reason: "I have kept your servant, Philibert, a long time, but the reason is that I have not had a single day to myself, even though I am in the country. The burden that I carry brings its martyrdom with it in everything. I cannot say that I can call a single hour my own, except when I am saying my Office. So you see how earnestly I must ask your prayers for me." At the end of the letter, he asks pardon for his tired handwriting.
Despite a holiday with his mother at Thorens, overwork was leading to an illness at the turn of the year which he himself took lightly but which the doctors could only account for by some form of poisoning though this time there were no heretics to blame.
In the middle of January he wrote to Mme. de Chantal: "Brother John [from Dijon] has found me emerging from a continuous fever, the effects of which prevent me from writing save by another person's hand." By the middle of February, he still needs someone to write for him, though he can add some words of his own. Despite this, he later brushes away his illness with the words: "My illness was nothing at all, I think. But the doctors who thought I was poisoned frightened those who loved me so much that they thought that I was going to slip away from them altogether."
The winter's illness, it need hardly be said, was not allowed to stop him from fulfilling his next important engagement, preaching the Lenten sermons in the little town of La Roche, where he had been at school for a short time. All the grandeur of Dijon and its famous Sainte-Chapelle one year; the humble Savoie townlet the next. It was all the same to him so long as he was helping others. Still, we may perhaps discern in a letter to Jeanne de Chantal the need he felt to strengthen his resolution for an undertaking to which his health was hardly equal. He was explaining that the will of God is to be discerned in two ways, necessity and charity. "I want to preach in a little spot in my diocese. If, however, I fall ill or break my leg, I need have no regrets or worry at not preaching, for then it is certain that God wills me to serve Him by suffering, not preaching. But if I am not ill, yet I have the chance of going somewhere else where the people may well become Huguenots unless I go, here too the Will of God shows itself and makes me gently change my plans."
But his illness was over and there were no Huguenots calling, so to La Roche he gave himself. And for him preaching the Lent meant visiting all the people, most of all the poor, catechising the children, spending hours in the confessional and even administering the sacraments of Confirmation and Ordination. What we to-day call a "Mission," lasting a few days when the mission-priests seek to bring all the people of the parish to church, was François de Sales's idea of preaching in a little town, swollen by people from all the neighbourhood. Incredibly, he even found time to instruct a deaf-mute whom no one had thought worth consideration and take the instruction far enough to enable him to make his first communion. In doing so, he gained a personal servant, for Martin, the deaf-mute, joined the staff of his residence in Annecy.
The Lent at La Roche turned out to be a prelude to an episcopal labour which he had not been able to carry out since his consecration: the visitation of the diocese.
By the Council of Trent a bishop was obliged to make a formal pastoral visit to all the parishes of his diocese every two years. Even today this is a heavy burden in large dioceses, despite the facility of means of communication. In those days, travelling on horseback or jolting carriage or even on foot, bishops must have dreaded the fatigue involved. But François de Sales's diocese was no ordinary diocese. Its parishes were often far distant from one another, separated by mountains through which communication depended on primitive paths. Pastoral journeying from week to week would involve climbing and descending at all heights up to 4,000 feet and more. Such was the prospect that faced him after a summer in the middle of which he could write to Jeanne de Chantal: "Don't be jealous, I tell you again. You are not the only one to have a cross to carry. Yes, since you desire it, I must start speaking to you of myself from this aspect. After all, it is the truth: yesterday, all day and all night, I had to carry a cross like yours, not in my head but in my heart ... It is true that yesterday I felt my will to be so feeble that a mite would have been strong enough to crush it."
In August, 1605, he had a moment of consolation to set against the fatigues and depressions of the year. Ecclesiastical business took him once again to his beloved Chablais and Thonon. "I have just come back," he wrote to Mme. de Chantal, "from the Swiss end of my diocese. I have finished the establishment of 33 parishes where, eleven years ago, only Protestant ministers were to be found, while I had been for three years preaching alone the Catholic faith. God enabled me to feel in this journey a sense of complete consolation, as I reflected on the fact that where once I found only a hundred Catholics, now I cannot find a hundred Huguenots. Yet it was a troublesome journey and very awkward as I found much obstruction in regard to temporal matters and provision for the churches. But God's grace made everything turn out for the best, and some spiritual fruit resulted. I tell you all this because my heart cannot hide anything from yours. It cannot be different or other than yours—but just one with yours."
And so he came to October when the formal visitation of the diocese was to start. Actually, it took four years to complete, a number of months each year being devoted to it. "Delayed up till now by a number of difficult matters," he wrote on October 13 to Jeanne, "I am off on this blessed visitation, though I foresee crosses of all kinds at every corner. I tremble at the thought of it, but in my heart I love it all."
Different though the work might be, it is the apostle of the Chablais that one meets again on these visitations, as he trudges along on horseback, with Rolland and his servant Favre, through every sort of weather, putting up at night with such rough accommodation as could be found, preaching, often in patois, confirming, hearing confessions, sometimes having severely to deal with negligent and tepid priests, sometimes delighted to find immense fervour and young men desirous of instruction for the priesthood so that he sighed at the lack of any diocesan seminary.
The enthusiasm of the mountain folk could be as embarrassing and fatiguing as the lack of proper accommodation, for they would demand souvenirs of his visit and even tear pieces off his clothes to keep as relics. Strange superstitions held sway in remote villages and on occasion the Bishop, so widely venerated as a saint, was criticised as being anything but a good man since he put a stop to keeping wolves away with blessed bread or protecting houses from fire by throwing paper with one's name written on it into Christmas bonfires.
"All things to all men"—it is strange to think of the elegant and learned de Sales, sought after as prize preacher in Paris and Dijon, as spiritual director to men and women of sanctity and rank, as diplomat and writer, spending week after week among the simplest folk of the world, talking their language, sharing their living, solving their problems and warming their hearts with the message of that same love of God as, in very different terms, he would explain in lengthy letter after lengthy letter to souls who could share in this high mystical vision. To him, the universal apostle, it was always the same work, the same will of God, adapted to an infinity of different circumstances and people.
The best story of his visitations is the one Holland relates. On a visitation journey when the weather was very hot, the little cavalcade was quietly making its way from one village to another. Rolland and Favre were ahead. Looking back after a time, they could see no Bishop. They halted their horses and waited. After a time, the silhouette of Bishop and horse could be seen in the distance against the sunset. When he had caught up with them, they exclaimed: "How slowly you are riding, Monseigneur!" The Bishop smiled and answered: "My dear Monsieur Rolland, old friend, one jogs along as one can!" That was how he always saw it: to shirk nothing, to accept everything as it came, and to do it at his own pace and in his own way.
Describing this first 1605 visitation, while en route, de Sales wrote in a letter to Jeanne de Ghantal: "What more shall I say? I reached this place on Saturday evening, after scouring the country for six weeks, without stopping in any one place more than half-a-day. I have usually preached every day, and sometimes twice a day. How good God is to me. I never felt stronger. All the crosses I foresaw at the start have turned into palm-trees and olive-trees. I had expected vinegar and it has proved to be honey—or nearly so. But I can truthfully say that except on horseback or during waking periods at night, I have never had a moment to think of myself and worry about my feelings, so busy have I been with one important matter after another. I have confirmed a numberless quantity of people. And you have shared in all the good done among these simple folk, just as you have shared in everything else that has been done and will be done in this diocese so long as it is in my hands. Why do I tell you this? Because with you I speak as I do with my own heart."
De Sales was to refer to other visitations in his letters to Jeanne de Chantal, which greatly help us to see him at work and to understand his feelings.
In the middle of 1606, he would write: "You know how ready I am to go to Burgundy, my dear Daughter, for visitations are necessary and a principal part of my duties. I go with great courage, and this morning I felt a special sense of consolation in undertaking it, though for some days past I have been feeling a thousand vain apprehensions and sadness—but they only touched the skin of my heart, not the heart itself. It was like the shivering one gets just before a cold."
Two months later he was writing: "During these last few days I have seen some formidable mountains covered with thick ice, and the people of the neighbouring valleys told me that a shepherd, trying to follow his cow, fell into a crevasse in which he died of cold. O God, I said to myself, was the zeal of this shepherd so keen in the quest of his cow that the thought of the ice did not deter him? Why then should I be so cowardly in seeking out my sheep? The thought moved my heart and, tepid as it was, it melted within me. I saw marvels in those places. The valleys with their many habitations and the mountains all covered with ice: the simple people, like the valleys, so fertile, but the bishops, raised so high in God's Church, so frozen! Will no sun prove strong enough to melt the cold that runs through me!" And a little later: "It is one of God's little miracles, for every day I am so tired that I cannot move body or spirit; but in the morning I am brighter than ever. What a wonderful people I have found among these high mountains. What honour, what welcome, what veneration for their Bishop! The day before yesterday I came to a little town late at night, but the people had so many lights and festivities that it was like day. How much better a bishop they deserve."
After the evidence of what these visitations meant to a bishop like François de Sales, one can read—with a certain amusement— the way he distinguished between episcopal and lay life in the letter he wrote to Archbishop Fremyot on the art of preaching. A bishop, he wrote in that letter, must not be "vicious with moral sin and must avoid certain venial sins, as well as some actions which are not sinful at all ... A layman may hunt, or go out at night for social chatting, and there is nothing wrong in this, nor as a means of recreation is there any sin in it. But in the case of a bishop, if such actions are not seasoned by thousands of circumstances not easily realised, they are scandalous and gravely so. People say: they are having a good time; their hearts are given over to it. Preach mortification after that, and everyone will make fun of the preacher. I do not say that a bishop may not play at some decent game once or twice a month by way of recreation; but he must do this with great circumspection. Hunting is absolutely forbidden. And the same for unnecessary expenses in festivities, clothes, books. Such things are superfluities for lay people, but for bishops they are great sins . . . Hospitality does not consist in giving feasts, but in willingly asking people to meals such as are suited to bishops and in keeping with the instructions of the Council of Trent, Oportet mensam Episcoporum essefrugalem. I except certain occasions which prudence and charity will easily pick out."
It seems a long cry from the Bishop in his Savoie mountains or even from the Bishop writing his endless letters to the Baronne de Ghantal and other women correspondents to the affairs of the great world outside. But it was in this private pastoral year of 1605 that François de Sales only just escaped the high ecclesiastical honours which would probably have forced him to separate himself from his "poor wife" of a diocese.
In 1605 the Pope, Clement VIII, who had supported him in the Chablais apostolate and had instituted the devotion of the "Forty Hours" which the Provost de Sales had put to such good use in that mission, died. His successor could hardly fail to be one of the great cardinals with whom de Sales had made friends in Rome. In fact, the conclave unanimously elected the Cardinal Alexander de Medici who had been Clement's legate for the triumphal "Forty Hours" of Thonon. He took the name of Leo XI.
Soon de Sales had news that the new Pope intended to create a number of new cardinals and his own name was on the list. His nomination, it seems, was largely due to the efforts of Henri IV who was extremely anxious to press his view that François de Sales was lost to the world in his mountain diocese and should shine before the world from one of the great Sees of France.
" From two sides I have news that they want to raise me higher before the world," he wrote to Jeanne. "My answer before God is 'No.' Be certain, my daughter, that I shall not blink an eyelid for all the world which I heartily despise. Unless it be for the greater glory of God, there will be no movement that way from me. All this between the father and the daughter—it must not go further, please. And by the way in regard to that word ' daughter'; I do not want you to use in your letters any other title than that of 'father'; it is stronger, more pleasing, more holy, more glorious for me."
When the chaplain at his home was at this time asking for instructions about any messages to his mother, the Bishop answered: "Tell my mother to pray to God and to implore Him not to raise me to a higher position. The present one is already too heavy for me."
François de Sales was saved—if this is the right word—from the Sacred College by the untimely death of the new Pope, three weeks from his coronation. Leo XI was succeeded by Cardinal Borghese, Pope Paul V, whom he knew much better than Leo. We seem to have no explanation of why Paul V, who was to live until a few months before de Sales's death, never raised the question again. But the last person to worry about this apparent neglect was de Sales himself, dedicated, as he felt himself to be, to what he called his "cher Nessy " [Annecy]
After his first visitation at the end of 1605, he once again fell ill. "You were ill after the Conception (December 8) and I was also for seven or eight days running," he wrote to Jeanne in January, 1606. "I thought it was going to be much longer, but that was not God's will. I cannot write as lengthily as I would, for this is a day of farewells, as I have to start tomorrow for Chambery, where the Jesuit Rector awaits me for the five or six Lenten days that I am keeping apart to refresh my poor spirit storm-tossed by so much business."
He had been asked by the Senate of Savoie to preach the 1606 Lent and in preparation he was putting himself into retreat under the Jesuit Pere Fourier whom he made his own spiritual director. The Bishop of Grenoble, in whose diocese, Chambery, the capital of Savoie, lay had given him permission to act in his name during the Lenten preaching. At first, he seemed to make little impression on the people, and he confessed to Jeanne, "as for myself I am here where I can see little happening save a slight rousing to devotion on the part of souls. God will increase it, if He wills, for His greater glory."
By Holy Week, the de Sales spiritual magic had taken full effect, and his days and nights (despite medical objection) were given up to the heavy apostolic round of preaching, confessions, confirmations and personal visits to all whom he could help. Apart from this, there were the heavy Holy Week ceremonies. So busy was he that a critic grumbled that he must be thinking himself to be the Bishop of Grenoble—to which he answered in words that warn against episcopal jealousies: "It is rather a pleasant thought, but anyway the bishopric of Grenoble is just like mine: one tiny portion of the heritage of Jesus Christ, our only and sovereign Pere de famille" It was on Good-Friday in Chambery that people saw the great Crucifix above the preacher give out rays of light surrounding him. The figure of this crucifix, after a chequered history, rests today in the Visitation cloister in Chambery.[1]
But the year 1606 does not stand out in François de Sales's life for the Chambery Lent, but for one of the other facets of his many-sided personality. In telling the story of his life, we have almost forgotten his close friend, Antoine Favre. But their intimacy had never been broken. Letters took the place of personal contact when they were separated. From 1597, however, they had been close to one another, for Favre, appointed to the presidency of the Council of Genevois, had left Chambery to live in Annecy. Delighted at the change, he had hoped to be able to spend half the day with François, discussing together literary matters and reading to one another examples of fine poetry and prose. It was, of course, a vain hope, but François, apostle, missioner, spiritual director, priest and bishop, had never lost his taste for fine writing and the turning of a classical phrase nor for the ideal of devout humanism: beauty and style in the service of the good, in the service of God.
Favre convinced de Sales that the time was ripe for founding in Annecy a literary academy in which the best minds of Annecy and Savoie could devote themselves together to the study of science and the arts in the service of the Church. It was one of the ideals of the Sainte Maison of Thonon, but doomed there to remain dormant. Called the Academic Florimontane — interestingly a purely secular name, commemorating the beauty of Savoie — it was established in the autumn of 1606, with a severe and almost stoical ideal. "None of the academicians will show any sign of frivolity of mind, however small — or else they will be reprimanded by the Censors " one of the constitutions reads. "The style of speaking or reading will be grave, exquisite, rounded and it must not in any way smack of pedantry. The lessons will comprise theology, politics, philosophy, rhetoric, cosmology, geometry and arithmetic. The style of languages, and especially of the French language, will be treated." Public sessions would be held to which could come "the worthy masters of honest arts, such as painters, sculptors, carpenters, architects and the like."
Annecy, it was hoped, would blossom into a Christian Athens. But the high hopes were never realised, no doubt because the Bishop, however delighted with the idea, was no longer in a position to give his full mind to such a project, nor had he the time to spare to ensure its standards and its success. Certainly, when one reads his letters and remembers the constant burden of work falling on his tiring shoulders, it is difficult to see him concentrating on a project, very much in tune with his ideals, but outside the present range of the spiritual interests which more and more absorbed him. No reference to the founding of the Academy is to be found in his surviving letters, and he would surely have described it to Jeanne de Chantal, herself a woman of literary interests, had he considered it of great importance. It was he who opened it, however, in the absence of the Due de Nemours, but no records of its meetings were apparently kept. When, after a few years, Favre had to leave Annecy for good, the Academy fizzled out. Its chief interest lies in the fact that it was a precursor of the French Academy, founded thirty years later by Richelieu. One of the first of the French academicians was a son of Antoine Favre who would have attended the open meetings of the Academic Florimontane which held its sessions in Favre's house in Annecy.
De Sales was now coming to the end of his first four years as bishop—Bishop of Geneva, not of Annecy, as he himself never forgot. The thought that he remained exiled from his rightful episcopal city was never far from his mind, not because he had the smallest interest in the worldly glory attached to the title "Bishop and Prince of Geneva," but because even the spiritual cure of the Chablais was but the cure of the body, while the head remained mortally injured so long as Geneva remained, as he put it in a letter to a cardinal "the throne of Satan." " I plead to-day the cause of this diocese," he wrote in this letter, "which, more than all the other dioceses of the Christian world, merits the support of the apostolic goodwill, the favour of prelates and the sympathy of men of good will . . . My adversaries are men who hold the doctrine of the devil."
It was now time for him to journey to Rome and make his canonical visit to the new Pope, Paul V, and the thought of what his old friend, then Cardinal Borghese, could do to recover Geneva and settle the problems of the French part of his diocese was uppermost in his mind. Yet, despite this great urge, he felt unable to make the journey to Rome himself.
" At the approach of the fifth year of my episcopate," he wrote to the Pope, "I have the duty, according to the constitution of the Apostolic See, to visit the tombs of the holy Apostles. But this journey is so lengthy that I cannot undertake it owing to my lack of means, the difficulty of travel and the care of the diocese itself. So I am sending my brother [Jean-François], Canon of my Church, in my place. He will bring as clear and precise a report of this diocese as possible. Here it is in summary. Large is its extent, but equally large is its devastation. Yet its restoration demands reforms which cannot be carried out, save in virtue of the authority of the Holy See . . ." And he signs with the words "From Annecy, the place of our pilgrimage and exile, where we sit, weeping at the memory of our Geneva."
François de Sales's constant prayer for the recovery of Geneva has been used by Protestant historians, such as Mr. Woolsey Bacon, as an example of his readiness to stick at nothing in order to defeat heretics and exalt the Catholic Church. Just before de Sales's consecration as bishop, the Due de Savoie attempted to take Geneva by surprise, which he was entitled to do since they were still formally at war. The alarm, however, was given, and the attempt completely failed. It has been maintained that de Sales knew of the attempt and hoped to celebrate his first Christmas as bishop in Geneva's cathedral of Saint Pierre. He might well have done so, but in fact there is no evidence that he knew of the abortive coup, and Mr. Bacon's argument that he did rests on his mistaken impression that de Sales made his pre-consecration retreat in Annecy, through which the troops passed. Actually at that time he was in Thorens and cut off, by his retreat, from normal communications with the outside world.[2] Before he was bishop, de Sales, as has been said, entered Geneva for his abortive conversations with Beza. He was only to enter it once again in his life.
It was in the year 1609, when he was suddenly called to Gex. He decided to go the quickest way—through Geneva. By that date, Catholics were allowed to do business in the Calvinist city, and a number lived there. But all open religious acts and all proselytism were forbidden. To the surprise of those with him, the Bishop insisted on wearing his normal episcopal dress. He tells what happened in a letter to his old tutor, Possevino.
"Recently, while on my way to Gex, I got the inspiration, after saying Mass in a near-by village, to cross through Geneva. It was the quickest way. I was not at all apprehensive, perhaps because of a kind of boldness, more compounded of simplicity than prudence. As we reached the gates of the city, the official asked for my name. I told my Vicar-General to answer and say that I was ' Monsieur 1'Eveque.' To the answer 'Which Bishop?,' I asked him to reply 'Monsieur 1'Eveque de ce diocese.' The official then wrote in the register 'Monsieur François de Sales, Eveque de ce diocese.' I do not really know whether he knew what the word 'diocese ' meant. Anyway, he let me go in, and so I rode on horseback through the town, saluted with great respect by most of the men and women. After I had left, the news that I had passed through spread among the people, and differing views of it all were taken. The seditious said that I ought to have been held so that I could have been forced to deny my office; but the more sincere said that on the contrary I should have been detained so that the proper courtesies could have been paid to me as a neighbouring lord and friend. In general, my boldness in coolly passing through their midst, dressed as a bishop, was taken as a bad augury."
Though it took a François de Sales to break through all precedent in this way, the Bishop had, of course, no hope of seeing the integrity of his diocese restored, and his only real personal concern was the souls of Geneva's inhabitants, not the worldly glory of any return to his true cathedral of Saint-Pierre.
Even more unexpected was the next strange incident in his life. It was to be the ex-student of Paris whose soul had been torn by the fear of predestination to eternal loss of God, to make what appears to have been the decisive contribution to the final ecclesiastical resolution of the conflict between the Dominicans and the Jesuits over the problem of God's efficacious grace and human free-will.
On appeal to Rome, Clement VIII had in 1598 established the Special Congregation De Auxiliis to settle the quarrel once and for all. Paul V was now determined to find a practical settlement to the impassioned theological discussion. It happened that de Sales gave to his brother, Jean-François, when he set out on his ad limina visit to Rome, a memorandum on the controverted subject. Jean-François passed it on to Mgr. Germonio, an old friend of the Bishop's, who held an official position. In a letter to de Sales, of August 8, 1607, Germonio wrote: "I was most happy to receive Your Reverence's letter and to welcome your brother ... I have read your letter to His Holiness, and he appreciated it so much that he ordered me to show it to Cardinal Pinelli in his capacity of prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office and therefore of the Congregation De Auxiliis. He went further and asked me to make him a copy so that it could be read to the said Congregation, as I did the day before yesterday.""
Though de Sales's memorandum was never published and has never been found, it is generally believed that it had a decisive effect on the views of the Pope who made up his mind to bring the dispute to an end by allowing both parties to maintain their position and respect one another m doing so. Pius IX in the Briel proclaiming François de Sales a Doctor of the Church accepted the tradition and said that it was "on his (de Sales's) advice that he (Paul V) imposed silence on both parties, believing that so delicate and dangerous a dispute should be allowed to rest."
In his Treatise on the Love of God, François de Sales wrote that God truly willed the salvation of all "but in a way and by means suited to the condition of human nature with its gift of free-will. In other words, He willed the salvation of all who were ready to consent to the graces and favours which He was to prepare, offer and give for this purpose. So, among these favours, He willed that the call to salvation should be the first, and one so tempered to our freedom that we could accept it or reject it as we chose. And to those who, as He foresaw, would accept it, He willed to furnish the sacred movements of penitence; to those who would follow up these movements He arranged to give holy charity; to those who received this charity, he decided to give what was necessary for perseverance; and to those who made use of this divine help He resolved to give final perseverance and the glorious bliss of His everlasting love."
The truth is that only the subtlest theologians can hope to throw any glimmer of light on the relation between grace and human freedom, and the faithful may feel grateful to François de Sales for having been instrumental in the forming of a Papal decision which leaves the field open to the theologians, while leaving the faithful to accept without worry firstly that in the work of salvation all is from God, even our own co-operation in it, and secondly that nevertheless man possesses what we call free-will in the choice of good and bad.
Of the days, weeks and months of these years, as François de Sales moved from the thirties (how young he still was after so much accomplished) to the forties, one sentence in a letter to Mme. de Chantal may stand as a permanent witness. He was preaching what he was calling his first Lent in Annecy in the spring of 1607, since of the first which he preached immediately after his consecration, he said in the letter that then "people just came to see what I looked like."
"For seven or eight days I have not even been able to give a thought to myself. I can only get a superficial glimpse of myself. So many have come to me that I might see and serve them, thus leaving me no time for thinking of myself. For your consolation, however, I will assure you that I do feel deep-down-within-me, God be praised. For the truth is that this kind of work is infinitely profitable to me." This is interesting evidence that active work to the point of utter exhaustion need not weaken a person's spiritual inner peace, but on the contrary strengthen it.
The Annecy Lent; a special two months' Jubilee granted by the Pope for Thonon, to which pilgrims came from France as well as Savoie; the death of Anne d'Este, mother of the suzerain of Annecy, the Due de Nemours, the princess for whose devotion the Holy Shroud had been brought from Chambery to Annecy before François's birth, demanding of de Sales a funeral oration, a task he disliked because it meant mixing worldliness with spirituality —such were some of the outstanding events in the daily round of pastoral work and business, whether at Annecy or in the visitation of the diocese, to which he gave up time each year, completing it only in 1608.
But for François de Sales, so closely bound to his family, so fond of children, so tender in all personal relations, one event must have stood out—an event, the sorrow of which could be shared by even the humblest of his flock. It was the death of his youngest sister, Jeanne, news of which he received while on visitation high up in the mountain country of the Saleve between Annecy and Geneva. Jeanne, eleven years old, had been sent in the spring of 1605 to the Abbesse du Puits-d'Orbe for her education, but, unhappy there and elsewhere, it was arranged in 1607 that she should go to Monthelon to live with Mme. de Chantal and her family. François took the closest interest in these arrangements. "I am rather worried about whether our Abbess will be annoyed," he wrote to her, "but there is no help for it. It would not be reasonable to keep so long in a monastery a girl who does not wish to live there all her life." And he goes on to ask her to tell of all that is needed for the child. "You must tell me all that is needed for her in the way of equipment, and just as you yourself would wish it, like the princesses of Spain do when they are given noble girls as companions. I insist on this, even to her having a cloth hood and cloak, if it suits your livery."
Under the eye of Mme. de Chantal, they were happy times at Monthelon for Jeanne de Sales, as she worked and played with the boy Celse-Benigne de Chantal, three years younger than her, and with his little sisters, Marie-Aimee, Françoise and Charlotte. Alas, in the midst of this idyllic upbringing for a girl, privileged to be the sister of a saint and under the guardianship of another laint, death came in the homely fashion of catching an autumn cold which would not yield to treatment. On October 8, 1607, Jeanne de Sales died at fourteen years of age. Jeanne de Chantal felt the tragedy almost as keenly as she had felt the death of her husband. She had worn herself out striving in vain to save the child's life. She had eagerly offered up her own life if only God would take it and save Jeanne de Sales.
François interrupted the visitation on which he was engaged and returned to Thorens to console his mother. Writing on the feast of All Souls to Jeanne de Chantal, he poured forth his feelings in a moving letter.
"My dear daughter, is it not reasonable that God's holy Will should be done, as well when it touches the things we cherish as otherwise? But I must first tell you that my good mother has drunk of this chalice with a wholly Christian fidelity . . . Last Sunday, she sent for my brother, the canon (Jean-François), and noticing that he and his brothers were so unhappy, she said to him: 'I dreamt all night that my daughter Jeanne was dead; tell me, is it true ?' My brother, who was waiting for my arrival before breaking the news to her, for I was on visitation, seeing that this was a good opportunity, as she lay in bed, to offer her the chalice, said 'It is true, mother.' He stopped there because he was too unhappy to say anything more. 'God's will be done,' said my mother, and she cried and cried for a time. Then she called to Nicole (a servant) 'I want to get up and pray to God in the chapel for my poor daughter.' At once she did so ... I know that you want to ask me how I have borne the news and what I am doing. Alas, my daughter, I am a man and nothing if not a man. My heart has been broken in a way I could not have believed possible . . . You well know, my dear daughter, how wholeheartedly I loved that little girl. I engendered her to the Lord, for it was I who baptised her with my own hands, about fourteen years ago. She was the first creature on whom I exercised my priestly Orders. I was her spiritual father and I was confident that one day I would make something good of her. Besides, what made her so dear to me (I must tell you the truth) was that she was yours. Still, my dear daughter, within my heart of flesh which has suffered so much from this death, I very strongly feel a certain sweetness, tranquillity and repose of spirit in divine Providence which pours into my soul a great contentment even with its sorrows ... I am sending you the coat-of-arms you ask for, and since you wish to have the service in the place where she rests in her body, I agree, but no pomp and ceremony, except for what Christian custom demands. Of what use the rest? Afterwards, please, make a list of all the costs, including those of her illness, and send them to me. I want it to be so. Meanwhile we shall pray from here for that soul and nicely carry out the little honours due to her. But we shall not send representatives to the forty-day anniversary. No, my daughter, there is no need for such mysteries in the case of a girl who has held no rank in the world. It would look ridiculous. You know me. I like simplicity whether in death or life. But I should like to know the name and the title of the church where she will lie."
_______________________________________
[1] * This seven-foot Crucifix was taken to the Chambery Visitation convent in 1672, though apparently its story had been forgotten, for it was sold and then rebought. It was hacked about during the French Revolution and finally returned to the Chambery Visitation in 1830 where the figure was repaired and repainted and affixed to a new cross.
[2] Dublin Review, 3rd Series, Vol. VII, p. 114.
Books | Quotes | 27 Volumes | Pictures | Videos | Audio Books | Articles | Prayers