Letters to Persons in the World

Preface | Notice | Book-I | Book-II | Book-III | Book-IV | Book-V | Book-VI | Book-VII

PREFACE

MANY BESIDES MYSELF will have heard with great satisfaction that it is in contemplation to prepare a complete and careful English translation of the works of St. Francis de Sales. The position of St. Francis, as a teacher of the Universal Church, has long been assured. But the recent Pontifical decree, which has enrolled him among those who are formally called Doctors of the Church, has directed the attention of all devout Christians to a more exhaustive examination of all that he has written. Those who use the English tongue may well desire to have an adequate English edition of a Saint who is one of the great devotional teachers of the Church during the time which has elapsed since the Council of Trent.

The two opposite rocks which threaten the soul which aspired to devotion used to be put down as Jansenism on the one hand, and laxity on the other. Jansenism is not perhaps a living danger in these days. The winter of its bitter reign has gradually given way before the warmth of the teachings of St. Alphonsus. No more powerful element can be found in modern spiritual activity than the devotion to the Sacred Humanity of Our Lord which is enforced by this great Saint. Besides bringing back the children of the Church out of the cold into the warmth

and familiarity of their Father’s house, it has done much to preserve devotion from degenerating into mere duty, or the worship of principle, or love of one another, or self-respect— developments to which the advance of self-consciousness has given great prominence. It has encouraged the simple by the thought that the highest form of religious worship is easily within their reach, and it has reminded the learned and the educated that child-like devotion to the Incarnation and Passion of our Saviour is for the vast majority the only safe path. St. Francis de Sales, it is needless to say, wrote before Jansenism had infected devotion. Neither did he write and preach against laxity of morals, or licentiousness. He made war against sin, without doubt, as other preachers have done. But his special work was not denunciation of evil or the threatening of the fires of hell. He was like some serene and clear-eyed messenger from heaven who alights upon a confusion and chaos, and whose gentle look and magic voice bring back order and a new harmony. His task was the simplification of Christian devotion. In other words, it was the shortening of the Christian’s path to his last end.

Nothing is gained by exaggerating the state into which devotion had fallen at the appearance in the world of St. Francis de Sales. The Church never grows old, and the influence of the Holy Spirit reigns and rules in every age. When Francis was writing those fugitive letters to Madame de Charmoisy which he afterwards expanded into the Introduction à la vie dévote, the writings of great modern spiritual teachers were already known to the world. The works of Louis of Granada, of St. Theresa, and of Blessed John of Avila circulated, at least on this side of the Alps. In the preface to the treatise De l’Amour de Dieu, he himself gives a list of a dozen authors who had written devoutly and learnedly on the very subject he was going to treat. The names of more than half of these are almost unknown at the present day; but the mere enumeration proves that spiritual subjects were understood, and well understood, in the early years of the seventeenth century. Not to speak of the “Imitation of Christ,” we must not forget that the “Spiritual Combat” was at that very time coming into use in every part of Europe from Spain to Southern Italy. The special evil of the time was not that devotion was not correctly understood by those whose office it was to teach it; it was this—that, in French countries at least, few understood what to say about the ordinary lives of the noble and the gentle. On the one hand, there was a feeling among the best ecclesiastics that Court life was beyond redemption or improvement. On the other hand, the Catholic religion was upheld by the State; its Bishops were great personages, its festivals were honoured, its functions and ceremonies were largely attended, and many of its preachers were followed by a fashionable crowd. The noble gentleman or lady therefore, who wished to “follow the Court,” and yet to be a good Christian, had great difficulty in knowing how to behave. Many confessors would hardly give them absolution; whilst others were too easy and let them do as they pleased. Court life—or in other words, a life of ease, wealth, distinction and refinement—was, and is, a necessity. No doubt such a life is full of danger. But the worst possible result that could ensue would be to drive a whole class into recklessness by telling them they could not possibly be saved. And hardly better could it be to encourage worldly men and women, who merely went to Mass and to fashionable sermons, in the idea that such external practices were real religion. It was to prevent, or put a stop to, these two nearly related evils that St. Francis de Sales wrote and preached. He has been slightingly called the Apostle of the “upper classes.” The phrase sounds odious enough; but in his days it was very significant. And when we remember that it was chiefly to make a gentleman a true and humble Christian that he exercised his Apostolate, we need not object to giving him the title. Christianity is a great leveller of class distinctions; and no one has shown men more clearly that they are all brothers in God and in Christ than St. Francis.

There is a letter of his,[1] addressed to a young gentleman who was about to enter upon

“Court life,” which contains all St. Francis’s mind on this subject. It was written in 1610, that is, about two years after the publication of the Introduction, when his thought was mature and his idea had been well thought out:—

“Sir,” he begins, “you are about to hoist sail and venture on the high seas of this world; you are going to Court. . . . I am not so frightened as some people are. I do not consider such a state of life as absolutely the most dangerous of any, for persons of magnanimity and true manliness.” Then, after giving him various points of advice, he brings in (as he almost inevitably does on such occasions) the example of his model and hero, St. Louis of France: “Imagine that you were a courtier of St. Louis. Well did the holy king like a man to be brave, courageous, generous, good-humoured, courteous, polite, candid, and refined; but he liked him to be a Christian far better. Had you been near him you would have seen him laugh amiably when there was occasion for it, and speak out boldly when it was needful; he would have taken care that all his surroundings were noble and dignified, like a second Solomon, in order that the royal dignity might be kept up; and a moment afterwards he would have been seen serving the poor in the hospital; in a word, he joined civil virtue with Christian virtue, and allied majesty with humility. The truth is, one must understand that no one should be less manly because he is a Christian, or less Christian because he is a man. But to be this he must be a really good Christian—that is to say, very devout, very pious, and, if possible, a spiritual man; for, as St. Paul says, the spiritual man discerneth all things; he knows when, and in what order, and in what way to practise each different virtue as required.” This short extract seems to contain, not an abridgment of St. Francis’s spiritual teaching, but the very spirit and essence of it all. Few, perhaps, have well considered what the benefits are which it has conferred upon Christianity in Europe. Christianity is intended to sanctify the world, and not to abolish the world; and the world is not, and can never be, the cloister. For the generality of men of the world the true apostle is he who makes the way of perfection as easy and as smooth as it can be made without sacrificing safety. This is what St. Francis has, by the testimony of the Church herself, done better than any other writer. It is true that both his language, his form, and his method have a history and a pedigree. His language seems to be modelled on Joinville’s life of St. Louis. His form is that of the “Spiritual Combat.” His method, with its four qualities of familiarity, clearness, unction, and illustration, is to a very great extent the reflex of his own most original and happy genius; but, if it had a predecessor, I should be disposed to look for him among the Italian Humanists of the sixteenth century. Humanism, as far as it affected general literature, mainly consisted in the bringing back into philosophy the flowing and conversational method of Plato and Cicero in the place of the formal argument of Aristotle and the Schoolmen. It was the substitution of talk for proof; easy, polished serious talk, if you please, but still talk. One need merely recall the familiar names of Erasmus, of Sir Thomas More, of Fisher (who in happier times might himself have been a Francis de Sales), and then recollect that the models of these writers flourished in Italy, from Bessarion to Angelo Poliziani. When St. Francis, at the end of the sixteenth century, studied in Padua, he lived in the very midst of a society which made it its pride and its boast to model its own literary efforts on the wit, the polish, and the gracefulness of the ancient Greeks and Romans. There is no doubt that the style and method of our holy Doctor was affected by these surroundings. But he remained himself, amidst all the seductions of humanistic literature. If any one takes the trouble to compare the draft of pious resolutions which he drew up at Padua with his latest spiritual letters, he will see that the youthful and studied elaboration of the former have given way to a style equally polished, but strong in that native force and mother-wit which were the Saint’s own. He writes, even in his Amour de Dieu, which is the most philosophical of his works, with an ease, a grace, and a polish which leave his favourite Seneca far behind. But the strong, earnest and serious purpose which pervades every line prevents the least suspicion of fine writing; whilst the intense devotion which flames out from his elaborated thought, like the glow of mighty furnaces in the night, gives his words that precious quality of penetration which is peculiar to the words of the Saints.

This English translation of the works of St. Francis de Sales will form an admirable library of devotion for all who live in the world. I do not forget how much he has written for cloistered souls; the sweet simplicity of his teaching is just as admirably fitted to sanctify the religious as the man of the world. Whilst “devotions” abound and multiply, we are safe in following the guiding hand of the Vicar of Christ, and in taking St. Francis as our master and teacher in whatever relates to real “devotion.”

X J. C. H.

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[1] See Book IV. 2.