Salesian Literature

15.  Last days in Annecy (1620-1622)

 

François de sales returned to Annecy that winter of 1619 to 1620 a prematurely ageing and sick man. He had never been physically strong, and he would soon begin to show ever graver signs of the disease which, given the medical ignorance of the times, must bring him to the grave within a few years. Arterio­sclerosis, high blood-pressure, an overtaxed heart and consequent dropsy with a steady increase in his already considerable weight - all these were symptoms which at least demanded early retire­ment from the immense burden of the episcopate and public life. He himself knew it, and he longed to live in reclusion in a quiet place, where he could pray and write in peace.

 

His writing plans included a Treatise on the Love of our Neighbour and a study of the Life of Christ, as well as more directly theolo­gical works. Though he well realised that his writing plans were highly optimistic - "to keep one's mind in tune one must plan more than one can undertake, as though one still had many years to live, while being ready to do no more than would be possible if one were to die the next day" – he does not seem, to go by his letters, to have envisaged dying as soon, in fact, as he did. Human judgment cannot but regret that his last years were not to be spent in writing for posterity. Instead they were to be a martyrdom of public duty.

 

However, he was relieved and consoled when his brother, Jean-François, was  nominated by the Due  de  Savoie as his Coadjutor bishop, an appointment that resulted from his own inability to accept Princess Christine's request that he should be her Grand Chaplain. Jean-François accepted instead, as nothing less grand than a bishop would serve for the job.

 

"You will believe me," he wrote to Mere de Chantal, "when I tell you quite simply that the nomination of my brother to the Coadjutorship is so clearly the work of God that I have never written a single word about it and neither begged nor procured any recommendation." Better still "it gives me some hope of retiring from pressure of work. This is worth a good deal more than any cardinal's hat."

 

Jean-François was to be consecrated in Turin and to return in 1621 to Annecy to share with the Bishop in the ceremonial and pastoral work of the diocese. François had great faith in his brother bishop and, with his usual humility, saw in him the man to repair his own mistakes. Their temperaments, however, were very different, Jean-François being inclined to an external severity and rigidity greatly in contrast with the ways, softened yet further by age and experience, of the now almost legendary François. Consequently, they had their little troubles, examples of which have been handed down to posterity in delightful stories.

 

On one occasion on the feast of St. Anthony, François lingered at his devotions to that popular saint. "You are like those good women who rush to light a candle to St. Anthony when they have lost their distaff," Jean-François said to him irritably when he returned. François explained to his brother that he was very devoted to St. Anthony on whose behalf God had effected many miracles. "Why not let us both pray together to St. Anthony to ask him to find the things we lose everyday: you, Christian simplicity, I, humility.  "On another occasion while the two bishops were dining together, Jean-François was surprised at his brother's silence. "What were you thinking about," he suddenly asked. "Well," replied François, "if you want to know, I will tell you. I was thinking that there was one lucky woman in the world." Jean-François innocently asked whom he had in mind and suggested some names. "I'm afraid you don't understand," François said, smiling. "The lucky woman I am thinking of is the one you did not marry."

 

Although François was not to let up in the slightest in his normally overburdened pastoral work in his diocese, there is a certain feeling of peace and relative leisure in his correspondence during these months, even though he confessed in a letter that he had no idea what might happen to him and where he might go "being no more certain of what I shall do as of when I shall die, so much am I now committed to others." A journey to Rome; preaching in Chambery,—such possibilities are mentioned in his letters, but in fact he remained where he was, taking special pleasure in helping to educate his young nephew, Charles-Auguste, son of his brother Louis, and destined to be his first real biographer.

 

His correspondence continued to be very heavy, with Mere dc Chantal in Paris and the many superiors of the Visitation convents now dotted over France. "I am reviewing the Rules, the Constitutions and the Formularies," he wrote to Mere Rosset in Bourges, "In them I found much that was wanting, both in the printing and the writing, and I am correcting it all. I shall express those blessed vows so clearly that everyone will be satisfied and remain in peace."

 

He maintained the keenest interest in the relationship between Mere de Chantal and Mere Angelique Arnauld and to both of them we have many letters. Referring to Angelique in a letter to Mere de Chantal, he wrote; "I am so happy that you find her so amiable. She is very much to my own taste despite the things she says against herself—true things, I know, but balanced by such good will and frankness that it does not matter, especially as she herself has no love for these faults and one day they will vanish before the grace of God. Believe me, my dear Mother, I should like to support her wish to live in greater retirement with us and I agree with your idea that she might. She would gain much from this. But how accomplish it? The more I think about it, the less possibility I see… God knows things we do no know. If it is expedient for His glory, He will make possible what seems impossible to us."

A visit from Camus, the Bishop of Belley, and a return visit in Belley were agreeable distractions in the summer heat which, by now, was very difficult for him to bear. "For eight days our most friendly Mgr. de Belley has been with us. He has given some marvellously devout exhortations and especially on the feast of the Visitation. I have found it a very great consolation seeing him and savouring the true goodness of his spirit."

 

We can imagine the two bishops in the cool of the summer evening chatting together about their lives and work, as they were rowed by a boatman along the lakeside. It was at such a time, no doubt, that the older man would gently pull the leg of the always excited, gesticulating younger one, his head crammed with ideas, hopes, fears, scruples about his worthiness as bishop and whether he ought to give up the charge laid on him at too young an age and which he managed in so mediocre a way as compared with his saintly companion.

 

"You preached magnificently at the convent this morning," François would say, "Everyone is crying out mirabilia about it. I know only one person who was not satisfied." And Belley begged again and again for the name of his critic. At last, François smiled and said: "You are looking at him." Crest­fallen, Belley said: "I would rather have had your praise than that of all the rest put together." And François would explain that his friend had been flattering his congregation and making them feel good with windy rhetoric and sounding brass. "You should never go up into the pulpit without a definite purpose to strengthen some special corner of the walls of Jerusalem, to inculcate some special virtue or to expose some particular vice, for the end of all preaching is to uproot sin and guide men to the good life. It is always safer to keep your hearer humble than to excite him to climb slippery paths beyond his experience." And he would pull his leg gently again: "I hear that you have taken a fancy to imitating the Bishop of Geneva in the pulpit." - "Is he a bad example? Don't you think he preaches much better than I do?" Belley answered. And François, laughing outright, said: "You are only spoiling the Bishop of Belley and not suc­ceeding in copying the Bishop of Geneva. But, joking apart, you are spoiling yourself by going against all the rules of nature and art. I am the kind of person who always has to drive himself on, but the more I try the slower I go. I cannot find words and I cannot utter them when I do. I am heavier than lead. I toil and sweat and make no headway, while you go forward under full sail. You fly and I crawl and drag along like a tortoise, you have more fire in the tip of your finger than I in my whole body, and now they tell me that you are weighing each word and dragging out your sentences. No wonder you bore your listeners to death! "

 

And Belley would recall the time when he had consulted François about a scruple he had had in giving soldiers in the field permission to eat eggs and cheese in Lent. "Why do you want to consult me about what soldiers may eat in Lent, as though any serious need did not prevail over regulations. God grant that these good fellows may never do anything worse than eat eggs or beef, cheese or cows. We should not hear so many complaints if that were the case."

 

Then they might chat about the many journeys they had had to make by mountain paths in bitter cold or excessive heat and the curious adventures they had had. "I am very fond of inn­keepers," François would say, "for few men have a better chance of serving God and their neighbour and showing kindness," and he told the story of how a traveller cheated by the innkeeper angrily left the inn to cross the road and enter another. On the road was a crucifix, and the traveller entering the second inn, drew the innkeeper's attention to it and said "I see that as of old Our Lord was placed between two thieves." The poor innkeeper, who had done no harm, protested. "Oh well," conceded the traveller, "you shall be the good thief."

 

François de Sales's interest in monastic life and its reform was maintained until the end of his life. The founder of the Visitation was, before he died, to institute two more Orders. The first was the Hermits of Mont Voiron. A quarter of a century earlier the apostle of the Chablais had renewed the pilgrim­age to that sanctuary of Our Lady on this mountain range between Annecy and Thonon, and barely escaped with his life when he was attacked by Calvinist toughs determined not to see the shrine re-erected. Since those days, the Black Virgin had been restored and pilgrimages were popular among the Catholics of the Chablais. To serve the pilgrims a few men had devoted themselves to living eremitical lives without any rule. François thought they should have a rule, the more so in that his nephew, Charles-Auguste, felt a vocation to join the little community. With hermits, de Sales took strict views: many fasts, no meat, sleeping on palliasses, rising in the middle of the night. The only relaxation from the strictest rule was a daily recreation of three-quarters of an hour. Ever practical, he added a regulation not always observed in pilgrimage centres even now. There must be no eating or drinking on the part of the pilgrims within 200 feet of the shrine. The Hermits lasted as a religious institution into the second half of the 18th century. Charles-Auguste did not join. He was, in fact, to become the third de Sales Bishop of Geneva.

 

Despite his age and health, the Bishop was forced once again to face in winter the arduous journey to the Abbey of Sixt more than 2,500 feet up in the Faucigny mountains. The Commenda­tory Abbot had rebelled against the reform and the Bishop. The arguments which could be put before the Abbot were unan­swerable and therefore hotly answered. It needed the goodness of de Sales in person to break down resistance and restore peace, piety and order. But only a few weeks later he had to return to help the Abbot to die in peace and resignation.

 

Another and tougher problem faced the Bishop in the case of the ancient convent of Bernardines of Saint Catherine, just south of Annecy. Like Port-Royal, these nuns, daughters of the nobility, had lived under a very relaxed rule for many years. De Sales would long ago have changed all this, but the convent was exempt from the Bishop's jurisdiction. There was nothing for it but to persuade the inmates to live in a manner more in accordance with their vocation. He could hope at least to make an impression on the younger nuns, but knew that there was little hope with the older ones, grown too used to their comfort and their visitors and their social gossip. Happily one of the younger nuns, Bernarde de Vignod, though notorious for her worldly ways and love of fine clothes and jewellery, was deeply shocked to hear of a grave scandal affecting a relation of hers in another convent. This was enough to bring her to her religious senses and make up her mind to change her way of life. Four other younger members of the community took the lead from her—and from the delighted Bishop. The only solution was to withdraw the five young nuns from Sainte-Catherine and set them up in a new reformed convent at Rumilly which he agreed to call the convent of Divine Providence, though the name of Reformed Bernardines continued to be used by the people. To one of the nuns, still hesitating about joining the reform, he was to write shortly before his death: "If, like you, I hoped for a reform, I could not wish the hour to join it to be too early. Since you have the authority of your superiors, you have no excuse for delay in acting. So, start as soon as possible for Rumilly, and pay my respects on your arrival to my dear daughters already there." This Cistercian reform became virtually a new order, and from Rumilly a number of other Bernardine convents were founded.

 

But by far the most touching incident of this period was François de Sales's hopeless plan for retirement. Now that the Coadjutor was taking on more of the pastoral load, he felt he could make his preparations. He, too, would become a hermit, and the spot he had chosen was the ancient hermitage of Saint-Germain up the hill above the Benedictine monastery of Talloires, half-way down the lake of Annecy on the eastern side. For a son of Savoie, he had chosen well, for below the hermitage lay the lake at nearly its narrowest point with the wooded slope of the Semnoz rising to a point opposite and reflected in the lake Annecy itself could be seen to the north-west.

On an autumn day of 1621, he and his brother made their way up from Talloires to consecrate a new altar, to open the tomb of Saint-Germain and venerate his bones, and to inspect the cells which he had had made for his retirement there with the company only of his nephew Charles-Auguste whom he would teach. "How beautiful this place is," he exclaimed, as he turned round to look at the lake. "Here great and beautiful thoughts will come thick and fast like the snow which falls in winter. When we settle down here we shall serve God with the breviary, the rosary and the pen. Here I shall have the leisure to write out, for God's glory and the instruction of souls, all that has been turning round in my mind for thirty years—all that I have made use of in my sermons, instructions and personal meditations. I have plenty of notes and I hope that God will inspire me."

 

If we may so put it, this was François de Sales's one self-regarding moment in his life. And how he had deserved that moment! Tired, ill, ceaselessly working for others, the vision of peace, instead of war, for God's sake, of contemplation instead of incessant activity, had come to him. How God must have been tempted to answer this prayer and say at last "Well done, good and faithful servant."

 

But François de Sales had taught others the sublimest spiritual ideal of utter detachment from self-regard, of utter abandon, and he had never taught anyone anything that he had not first done himself. Across France, his daughters, under Mere de Chantal's inspiration, were being offered no respite. Their self-sacrifice in prayer, penance and poverty was until death. Could he expect anything else? Could he expect to finish in the comfort of con­templation? He knew himself it was a mirage. He had already written in a letter: "Here is another worry. I do not know if His Highness will want me to reside for some months with Madame Christine while my brother takes my place here. In a word, unless God takes a hand, half my freedom is caught up with that court—that court in which at no time in my life have I wished to live, nor in any other court, my soul being wholly antipathetic to those ways. I hope, however, that one day during this mortal life I may sing ' Thou hast broken the chains that bound me: I will sacrifice in thy honour.'"

 

But the first call was not to come from a temporal prince, but from the Pope. And hardly had the Pope's commission been fulfilled than earthly princes again required his presence, and he would never again see Annecy, Talloires and the hermitage of Saint-Germain. His last days were to be an exile and a living martyrdom. God wanted him to drink to the last drop the chalice which he had always held up for himself and offered to others.

 

In May, 1622, François de Sales received the order from the Pope, Gregory XV, who had been elected fifteen months earlier, to preside over the Chapter-General of the Feuillants (reformed Cistercians) in Pinerole, near Turin. It was an important com­mission because of the belief that the coming election of a Superior-General of the Order might lead to an unedifying and unsettling division of votes as between a Frenchman and an Italian. The Pope evidently believed that the Savoisien Bishop of Geneva, with his great reputation for sanctity and learning, was the best person to ensure a happy outcome. Unfortunately, the Pope or his advisers had not informed themselves of the rapidly deteriorating state of the Bishop's health and the likely effect on him of a journey on horseback across the Alps in the heat of summer. He was indeed feeling far from well, confessing to a friend one day, as he put his hand on his heart, that he wondered whether he had long to live.

 

The mission to Pinerole meant further attendance on the Duke and his family in near-by Turin and he had to excuse himself from going to Court before presiding over the Chapter.

 

The journey, during which the Bishop's companions had to watch lest he fall through weakness from his horse, turned out to be unnecessary. There was no special difficulty about the election of the best Superior-General. Dom Jean de Saint-François was virtually unanimously elected, and the Bishop's twenty day stay no doubt greatly helped the new General to write his Vie du bienheureux Messire François de Sales, two years after the latter's death. In that life Dom Jean told of the impression which de Sales made on the community because of his " first-class mind, able to examine the gravest matters, duly weigh and wisely resolve them, and his incomparable goodness of soul with his deep learning and abundance of supernatural enlightenment."

 

From Turin, after the commission had been accomplished, de Sales wrote to Cardinal Caffarelli-Borghese: "As for the Chapter-General which has been held, I can truthfully say that never have I seen a more modest and more religious assembly, nor one in which peace shone with greater brightness. They elected a General gifted with eminent learning, rare prudence and singular piety. Besides, he was elected with a virtual un­animity of votes. I feel sure that your illustrious lordship will greatly enjoy seeing him and view with him favour when he journeys to Rome in the autumn, for he is a person of great merit who has served and will continue to serve Holy Church by his learned writings, and, besides, seeing that he has been created General of your illustrious excellency's monastery, he greatly looks forward to your protection."

 

The meetings of the Chapter-General had covered, besides the election of the General, a great many matters concerning the organisation of the Order and its work, with liturgical questions, and with the election of lesser offices. The Bishop had closely concerned himself with all this business, as well as preaching, hearing confessions and doing other pastoral work in the town. No wonder he collapsed on two occasions, once having to retire from the business meeting and the second time in the crowded church when those around him thought he would never recover.

 

Once this ecclesiastical business was finished, François de Sales had no choice but to fulfil his obligations to the Court in Turin and to Princess Christine whose Grand Chaplain he still was. He was naturally offered accommodation suited to his rank and function, but as he had come from Pinerole to Turin with the Superior of the Feuillants in Turin, he asked that he might remain with him and have some humble accommodation in his convent. He seems to have been taken rather too literally at his word, for he was given a tiny cell exposed to the midsummer sun. Once more, he was to collapse, and this time he had to remain in bed for two or three weeks.

 

Finally in August, he took leave of Christine who presented him with a beautiful diamond ring in token of her gratitude. Shortly after leaving Turin, the attendant who had the ring was unable to find it. De Sales had, anyway, made up his mind to sell it and give the money to the poor of Annecy. When he was told that it was lost, his only comment was that perhaps some poor man would find it, sell it and live happily ever after. He was content that it should be so. However, as so often happens, the attendant discovered the ring in a fold of his dress.

 

The return journey across the Alps was a terrible affair. Mere de Chantal was to give an account of it. Referring to the effects of the heat and the bad and filthy accommodation in Turin, she went on: "Overcome by all this, he crossed the mountains, affected by unbearable pain and inconvenience, because of the piles from which he was suffering and the consequent loss of blood. So ill was he that the attendants did not think that he would live to see his home again."

 

It seems  difficult  to  explain  this  unnecessary journey to Piedmont with the peculiar horror of the tiny, dirty cell, turned into an oven by the Italian sun, save in terms of François de Sales's bargain with God. After all, he was a very great man even in the worldly sense, and it is hard to believe that pressure could not have been put on him to live in at least the modest comfort which befitted his state and office, the more so in that he was not a man to insist fanatically on external penance and degrada­tion. He preferred to take what came without fuss whatever it might be. One can only conclude that God had specially called him to complete his life of abandonment and dedication to the love of God and detachment from himself by following to his last hour that same way of the Gross of which his Master had given the supreme example.

 

In the next and last chapter, we shall see how this otherwise inexplicable way of the Gross was to be followed right up to his last breath.

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