Salesian Literature

5.  Unique Apostle (1596-1598)

 

François de sales at the earliest possible moment made it clear to the people of Thonon that his whole spiritual work was based on the central act of Catholic worship: the Mass. Despite the fact that he had to write to the Nuncio in Turin that his mission was without any resources, he was determined to bring the Mass back publicly to the Chablais. "Besides, no church has been restored, no permanent altar set up," he wrote to Mgr. Riccardi. "We are even without chalices, missals and other things indis­pensable... In the church at Thonon everything is topsy-turvy, without any furniture, except for a badly-made simple wooden altar we put together for Christmas."

 

But on that badly-made simple wooden altar the Mass of Christmas, 1596, had been celebrated publicly for the first time in Thonon for sixty years. "I am planning," he had written to the Duke, "to have an altar erected in the church of Saint-Hippolyte, where I have been normally preaching for these last two years so as to be able to celebrate Mass there during these good days of Christmas. The syndics of the town have tried to stop me, but they have given way. I cannot imagine on what grounds they dared to make their opposition, since the Treaty of Noyon is not violated."

 

The fact that the Protestant leaders' opposition was not pressed home and that the first public Mass in Thonon could be held without disturbance of the peace is a striking indication of how much de Sales had accomplished behind the scenes in the course of two years by his prayers, his personality and his preach­ing. From now onwards Mass was to be celebrated publicly every Sunday in the chief town of the Chablais. The spiritual effect of this first public restoration of Catholic worship was bound to be immense. The scattered, hidden Catholics were given new heart and the many Protestants, shaken by the apostle's personality and arguments, began to feel that there was a definite religious option ahead of them. It was more than just talk. Before long they might have to act.

 

This change, however, inevitably brought fresh dangers from the frightened extremists. When de Sales at the beginning of Lent, 1597, made up his mind to restore the old Catholic custom of placing the ashes on the heads of the faithful, the people, taught to regard such ceremonies as the grossest superstitions, were infuriated. They closed in angrily on him and called for his imprisonment, some of them openly threatening to kill him on the spot. The situation became so ugly that he had to give way and finally make his escape through an open door and up a staircase. "A la garde de Dieu," he shouted spiritedly as he disappeared, and this name is still given to the remains of the house where he found refuge.

 

Such incidents made the Due de Savoie nervous. He was anxious to avoid trouble, and Favre again warned de Sales that Charles-Emmanuel, so far from wanting to support the apostolic task by political and military means, was determined to do everything possible to maintain peace and order. In the circum­stances the Duke thought it best to send a regiment into the Chablais—a decision which some historians have seized on to prove the political nature of the apostolate. But neither the Duke nor the missioner had any intention of using the "Martinengo" regiment as a threat. De Sales's only concern was to minister spiritually to the men, make sure that they behaved themselves properly and were of as little burden as possible to the people. As such they would be an encouragement and an example, not a menace. A little later he was to write to a military captain to beg him not to bring troops, for their presence would scandalise both Protestants and Catholics.

 

How could anyone suggest that this apostolate, set in conditions of abject poverty within a legally Catholic land under a Catholic ruler where the lives of Catholics were still not safe, was a political undertaking carried out under threats of Catholic political violence? It is clear that the young Provost of Geneva had undertaken a humble spiritual work of personal apostolate that we more naturally associate with religious of a missionary order than with a scholar and priest of the world due for high promotion. It was inevitable that the zeal and brilliance with which he was carrying out his mission would bring him a fame that he might not so easily have earned in Annecy itself. Though Bishop Granier had no immediate need of a Coadjutor, rumours and more than rumours were already spread about that de Sales would shortly be appointed to the position that would give him one day the Prince-Bishopric of Geneva.

 

In a letter to Favre of February, 1596, he refers to the fact that the Duke was talking of "magnificent prospects for him" and added that he himself would much prefer to follow the example of a friend who had become a Capuchin. In another letter, he refers openly to the Coadjutorship, and writes: "Every reason and my own experience prevent me from wanting it. Besides, the duty, honour and zeal I feel towards the Bishop would stop me from ever thinking of it so long as God keeps us our prelate, while my own incapacity would hold me back once God has deprived us of him."

 

A more unexpected recognition of his work in the Chablais came from the Pope, Clement VIII, himself. He received a papal brief telling him that Pere Esprit, a missionary who had come to help in the work, had a special message for the Provost. The message was that the Pope wanted de Sales to go to Geneva and see no less a person than Theodore Beza (or de Beze), who had played a leading part in the growth of French Protestantism and succeeded Calvin as the leader of the Reform. Now Beza was approaching his 80th year, and it is astonishing that the Pope should have entrusted to a priest of only 29 the task of seeing what could be done to bring the Calvinist chief back to the Catholic faith he had professed until that same age.

 

In a letter to the Pope of April, 1597, de Sales briefly described his first attempt. "My first duty," de Sales wrote, "was to make use as prudently and carefully as possible of the first chance of learning from Beza himself what his real feelings were and to talk to him about them. With this in mind, I very often entered Geneva on the excuse of having business there. But I was unable to find any way of getting into close and secret contact with the man I was seeking until Easter Tuesday. I then met Beza alone and found him fairly easy to approach. When at length I left, after having tried every means of penetrating into his mind, not leaving any stone unturned, I had to see in him a heart of stone that was not to be moved—or at least sufficiently moved. In a word he was a hardened old man full of evil days. So far as I can judge from what he said to me, I would say this about him. If one could see him more often and in less hazardous circumstances one just might bring him back to the fold of the Lord, but for an octogenarian all delay is dangerous."

 

A little later, de Sales paid a second visit, taking with him this time his friend, Favre, whose learning and official position in Savoie might help to impress the veteran Calvinist. Naturally on these visits the Provost had to wear secular clothes for Geneva would not have tolerated a Catholic priest freely walking through its streets.

 

This time Beza seemed pleased to see his visitor and to welcome Favre. But the small-talk was leading to nothing when de Sales pointed to a number of dusty tomes lying in the corner of the room. Though he had recognised them, he asked his host what they were. The old man said that they were volumes of the Fathers of the Church and he did not think much of them. De Sales saw the opening, and said that he took a very different view of them. Over a volume of Augustine the three men dis­cussed together de Sales's old problem of grace, justification and predestination. Beza seemed to enjoy the conversation and to appreciate the charm and learning of his visitors, as well he might. This introduction enabled de Sales to ask Beza the direct question —to which Church should a man trust himself if he wishes to be certain of his final supernatural destiny? Beza had to admit that the Roman Catholic Church was a true Church, but maintained that the Reformed Church was also true and an easier Church within which to be saved. After this it was a question arguing whether Christ had founded an easy Church in which a man depended on faith alone or a hard one in which salvation depended on living up to the good works that proved a real faith.

 

Charles-Auguste de Sales, to whom we owe the details of this meeting, also tells us that François's servant, Georges Rolland, overheard Beza saying as the visitors were leaving: " If I am not on the right road, I do pray God every day that His mercy will guide me to it." Eight years later, Beza died, a Calvinist, it seems, but no one can know what effect François de Sales may have had on him in his inmost self.

 

But if the interviews with Beza seemed barren, de Sales did not leave Geneva without a consolation which was to mean very much to him. On a previous visit when he was disputing with the Calvinist minister, de la Faye, he had met a simple, but most courageous, Catholic servant in the Ecu de France where he stayed. This girl, Jacqueline Coste, used to help the occasional Catholic priest entering the town. Each time he saw her, he confirmed her in her religion and he brought her Holy Communion. A few years later, Jacqueline was to convert on her death-bed the wife of the owner of the inn, but rather than stay and marry the widower, she left Geneva to settle in Annecy near its new Bishop, Mgr. de Sales. Later, this brave woman would find a niche in history as the first touriere[1] of the Visitation Order, a truly beloved figure in the golden legend of the beginnings of the contemplative nuns established by the inspiration of two saints, François de Sales and Jeanne-Françoise de Chantal.

 

From now onwards, the Chablais apostolate was to be for the Provost, beginning to be thought of as Coadjutor and future Bishop of Geneva, a long administrative headache. The increase in the number of converts set the problem of establishing parishes and finding clergy to run them—and this with hardly any finan­cial resources. Letters to the Duke and the Nuncio followed one another. In one letter it is a question of organising personnel. Second to de Sales himself was the young Capuchin preacher, Pere Cherubin, ardent, impetuous but without de Sales's tact. Jesuits also were needed, and would it be better to have a certain Jesuit from Turin or a Frenchman from Milan and what about. Fr. Alexander Hume, the Scotsman? In another letter, how many parishes? M. d'Avully thought 22 necessary, but "I have always thought 18 would suffice." As for money, de Sales was for years to try to induce the Knights of SS. Maurice and Lazarus, to whom had been temporarily given what was left of the old Chablais church revenues, to disburse what was now needed— and with very little success.

 

The good work in the Chablais made him keenly interested in the Calvinist oppression in those parts of the diocese which lay within the jurisdiction of the King of France, such as the Pays de Gex on the other side of the Lake of Geneva. This, too, would be a vexatious problem that would haunt him through life. In a letter at this time to the Pope, he wrote: "I know of many places which daily complain that being Catholics, they are prevented by the tyranny of Geneva from fulfilling their Catholic duties, even though that republic oppresses these people, not in its own name, but in that of the very Christian King of France. Is the King aware of this tyranny weighing on Catholic consciences? ... I believe that if the King were informed of the situation by the Apostolic See, things would work out differently." But though Henri IV was to become his friend, that monarch was too wily to bring trouble on himself by interfering too much in this difficult problem.

 

It was providential that the lone apostle of the Chablais, destined to succeed to the Bishopric, should gain all this experi­ence in his own difficult mission-field. It seemed that he would not have long to wait before facing the greater problems of the diocese since in the summer of 1597 Bishop Granier had a very serious illness. Everyone was awaiting the official nomination of de Sales as Coadjutor. The appointment was in the hands of the Duke, subject to Papal approval, and the Nuncio in a letter had already hinted to the Provost of" the greater position "for which His Highness destined him. Everyone was already calling him "Monseigneur."

 

De Sales's letter to the Duke, when he understood what was happening, is a model of humble realism: "Knowing that your favour in this high business springs from Your Highness's goodness, persuaded perhaps that there is something in me that corresponds with your favour, I must blush with shame at my own unworthiness, but I must also praise God who has enabled Your Highness to wish to appoint good pastors for your people. Though I am the least worthy of those whom Your Highness could have thought of, the good intention is none the less very commendable." And the writer could not resist the opportunity of reminding the Duke of other matters that seemed much more pressing to him: "I have lately written about the needs of the Chablais, and though I do not doubt that the zeal with which the Lord has warmed your heart has kept the memory of these matters fresh in your mind, I have nevertheless asked the Baron de Chevron to bring them again to your attention." Writing to princes was some­thing which François de Sales understood very well.

 

Bishop Granier, however, recovered. Even so, he asked de Sales for his consent to the appointment so that Papal approval might be obtained. De Sales, who did not know that the Duke had already signed the letters-patent, felt he could speak his mind more openly to his Bishop and he begged to be spared the honour. He was not, he said, made to command, but rather to have charge of a simple parish. No one could have been less ambitious than he, and his natural, as well as supernatural, inclination was to defer important decisions until he could no longer doubt the will of God. To make quite sure of this, he went to the church of Thorens where he had been baptised just thirty years earlier to say a votive Mass of the Holy Spirit. Asked what his mind was after saying this Mass, he answered: " You will tell the Bishop that I have never wanted this for the reasons I have already given you. But since it is his wish and, as you say, his command, I am ready to obey. If I do any good the merit will be his."

 

The prospect of the succession to the See of Geneva, though highly honourable, must have seemed to him a great burden and responsibility. For a man like him, it could only mean a lifetime of dedication and service to others without thought of himself and of the many interests of family, friendship, social graces, scholarship and writing, which were so very much part of the saintly " honnête homme " that had marked his character and tastes since the beginning. The appointment—though not the honorary title of Coadjutor—was, in fact, never to be officially taken up, partly through inevitable delays, but also because of his own complete disinterest in the matter.

 

One of the causes of the delay was another grave illness. The labours and vexations of the Chablais mission had worn him down, aggravating his poor circulation and causing him to suffer from varicose veins, an unfortunate affliction for a man who was always on his feet ministering to the needs of others. In this weak state, he seems to have caught a contagious disease which was going about in Savoie in that winter of 1597. For the second time in his life, he was considered to be a dying man. By January, 1598, he seemed to have turned the corner and he could write to the Nuncio Riccardi: "After the Lord in His goodness visited me with a continuous fever and recently allowed me to have so serious a relapse that for seven days my death was expected, now, through the same divine goodness, I am getting better. But I am left so weak, especially in the legs, that I doubt whether I can make the journey to Rome before Easter, despite my great desire to be there for Holy Week. I shall do my best to manage it."

 

The visit to Rome was to obtain the Pope's personal approval of the Ducal appointment to the Coadjutorship. But the illness dragged on, and in the end he was cured, we are told, by the supreme remedy of the time—drinking a medicine containing gold. He would not be able to get to Rome until the autumn.

 

During that long illness, he again suffered something of the spiritual anxiety about his eternal fate as in his student days in Paris and Padua. Another temptation that assailed him was some undisclosed difficulty about the Real Presence in the Eucharist. So terrible was it that he would never confide to anyone its nature nor the answer to it. Such weaknesses under stress of illness make it clear that his habitual and characteristic spiritual serenity was not just a happy natural disposition, but the result of a strong will-power deliberately turned to God and brushing away the temptations which arose within him when illness enfeebled him. He had to struggle like the rest of us—only much more successfully.

 

By the time he had completely recovered, he was able to begin to reap the fruits of those first hard years in the Chablais. Thonon by now was one-fifth Catholic, and the mission had become a question of organisation and development, though in conditions of poverty which broke the missioners' hearts. Pere Cherubin, who could never have started the work with any hope of success, was just the man to carry it through with his more forceful and rougher ways. The Provost was always in the back­ground to stand by him in trouble and smooth out any difficulties which he made.

 

De Sales's relinquishing of direct control came between two great public demonstrations of faith which underlined his own Constant insistence on the primacy of the spiritual in the work of Conversion. These demonstrations were the Quarant’ Ore, or Forty Hours, of Annemasse and of Thonon.

 

The Quarant’ Ore was a recently established popular devotion in Rome and Italy, unknown as yet in France and Savoie. It consisted of the solemn exposition of the Blessed Sacrament for forty hours with constant popular prayers and general rejoicings. It appealed to de Sales as a spectacular answer to the Calvinist denial of the Real Presence of Christ in the consecrated bread and wine—one of the chief points of controversy about which he had for so long to instruct and to preach.

 

To hold Catholic celebrations in Thonon itself on the large scale called for by this public devotion of the whole people was thought to be too provocative for the time being, so the town of Annemasse, two or three miles east of Geneva itself, was chosen. Annemasse had remained in large part Catholic so there could be less objection from the Calvinists. The choice, moreover, gave the excuse for a great Catholic procession from Thonon to Annemasse, a distance of eighteen miles.

 

On the morning of Saturday, September 6, 1597, about 500 Catholics set off from Thonon, headed by poor Georges Rolland, bidden by his master to carry the cross at the head of the procession. He was terrified for he expected to be attacked by the Calvinists and sacrificed for the general good. But his master insisted, and the young man's fears at least remind us that a demonstration of this kind had still to be carried out at some real danger to those taking part. Another procession came up from Annecy with the Bishop. As these processions wended their way through the sun-drenched countryside, more and more people joined in so that a great mass of Catholics at length entered the little town for the High Masses and the mystery play. So confi­dent had the Catholics become that de Sales felt able to lead the pilgrims along the road to Geneva in order to set up again a wayside Cross which had been destroyed. Under it was affixed a notice explaining that it was not the stone or wood which Catholics worshipped, but only God Himself who died on the Cross. De Sales never missed an opportunity of preaching in deeds as well as from the pulpit. Some 30,000 people, including some curious Calvinists, are said to have been present at this Annemasse "Forty Hours."

 

A year separated this first mass spiritual demonstration from the " Forty Hours " of Thonon, and the contrast between the two occasions is another measure of the missionary progress constantly being made. Annemasse was a public and solemn act of devotion of a still slightly nervous minority. Thonon was virtually the celebration of a work successfully accomplished over four long and weary years.

 

Church and State at last appeared in all their glory, the Pope sending his legate in the person of Cardinal Alexander de' Medici and Charles-Emmanuel coming himself as sovereign of his Catholic people. François de Sales had done the work by purely spiritual means and without their help. It was for others to reap the glory. Even so, the great princes were so delayed that the " Forty Hours " had to be held twice—the first time for the im­patient people; the second for Church and State.

 

The celebrations, even on the first occasion, September 20, 1598, were on a far greater scale than in Annemasse. From many parts of Savoie the people poured into Thonon, but the real sign of the times was the number of Protestants who now declared themselves convinced and asked to be baptised and confirmed. Two hundred from one parish, we are told, sixty from another, some from the nobility, many from other classes. While the ceremonies were taking place and the people enjoying the theatrical representations and tableaux in the town, priests were all the time hard at work, and even Bishop Granier had to be dragged out late to confirm some converts whose jobs forced them to leave at once.

 

Excitement was caused by the rumour of a miracle effected by the Apostle of the Chablais, as de Sales was freely called. A new-born baby, child of a Protestant mother, had died without baptism. De Sales had gone to explain Catholic doctrine to the mother, praying that the infant might recover for the time necessary for baptism. His prayer was answered and the whole family became Catholic. Perhaps the chief interest of this miracle lies in the fact that it is the only one recounted in the story of the apostolate of the Chablais, a fact well in tune with the sense one has that this remarkable apostolate has been recorded and has come down to us in terms of sober historical fact, not of wonders and legends exaggerated in the telling. It was a suffi­cient miracle in itself.

 

A fortnight later, the Duke and the Legate arrived for the second "Forty Hours." Charles-Emmanuel, who had done so little to help de Sales, sent a message to the Bishop to say that he was coming as a judge to punish the Calvinist leaders who in 1591 had driven the priests out and imposed Protestantism. Only the entreaties of Bishop Granier, supported by de Sales, persuaded him to change his mind. When later the Duke presented François de Sales to the Legate, he found the right words with which to describe him: "My Lord," he said, "here is the true apostle of the Chablais, a man of God whom God has sent us. It was he who dared to enter this country alone and in danger of his life … I have come with my sword to further this holy enterprise, but no one can deny that all the glory belongs to this zealous missionary."

 

That glory was indeed made public when in the great church of Saint Augustine, its walls draped with cloth of gold and silver, the Legate, with the Duke at his side, received the abjurations of the notabilities of the land. So many were they that secretaries could not keep pace with them, and they had to be content with listing the heads of families only. A list of 2,300 is to be found in the Vatican Archives. No doubt, the changed circumstances and fear of the consequences of refusal were now strong motives in some of these abjurations, but François de Sales, who had made it all possible, is not to be blamed for the inevitable consequences of the links between Church and State in those times. Moreover even these abjurations were to leave a third of the people Protestant.   The purely political pressure cannot have been very heavy.

 

Invoking in their own favour the religious clauses of the Treaty of Noyon, the Protestant leaders now begged the Duke to allow them to retain the three Protestant ministers legally per­mitted to them. Charles-Emmanuel's answer was, one must in honesty confess, subtler than that of de Sales. The latter feared a recurrence of Protestant proselytism and was against the peti­tion. The Duke neatly clinched the matter by asking whether the Protestants would allow him to send in return three Catholic priests into Geneva and Berne. Merely to ask this question made it absurd for the Calvinists to press their petition. But afterwards, when the Duke insisted on expelling Protestant leaders who refused to abjure, de Sales had the courage to step forward and explain that it was not a question of expulsion or abjuration but only of a readiness at least to study with an impartial mind the Catholic teaching and the reasons for it.

 

From these political events one may easily derive a very false picture of the true state of affairs in the Chablais after four years of apostolate. The reality behind the political showpiece of Thonon is described in a letter to the Nuncio by de Sales himself, and it explains his own nervousness about the future.

 

"The happy harvest of many thousands of souls which has been gathered in during these last days in Thonon," he wrote, "has given us an unbelievable consolation, but …" And he goes on to explain. "Our affairs are in such a state that more than ever we need a protector and promoter like Your Lordship. From His Highness we have the right to expect and desire no more than the mere maintenance of the very Christian works he has accomplished. There is nothing for us to do but to beg for an active, prompt and generous co-operation from the Holy Apostolic See … We could wish that His Holiness, in accordance with the views of His Highness, should insist on the restitution of the benefices held by the Knights ... In this business caution is out of place and all delay dangerous ... It is true that the Holy Faith has been re-established in most parts, but the churches are ruined and we are still without sacred ornaments, chalices and crosses. Where shall we get them? The parish priests cannot be fifty-ducat men; each needs an assistant. Woe to the man who is all alone, especially in the neighbourhood of leopards, bears and wolves. If necessary, chalices and precious objects that other churches do not need should be sold so as to raise funds to nourish their hungry souls."

 

The truth was that he had had extremely little assistance from first to last from State or Church. Alone at first and then with the help of other priests modelling themselves upon his pioneering zeal, two-thirds of the Chablaisiens returned to the faith of their forefathers. The work, in fact, ran far ahead of the resources of a poor and disorganised diocese, and ahead, too, of the practical interest and assistance of the Church as a whole and of the political responsibilities of the State.

 

Nervous as de Sales might be of the future, all this only brings out the more forcibly the quality of his own realistic driving force which alone could have accomplished this unique apostolate. One hardly recalls that all through he was still a young man and young priest, scarcely emancipated from his long student days and still humbly deferential to parental, legal and ecclesiastical authorities, a young man who could still so greatly value the charm of a happy turn of phrase in letters to his dearest friend. The attraction of his personality, the untiring zeal and the freshness of his missionary endeavours, the saintly dedication of every moment of his life to God's work, all these are rightly insisted on by his biographers. They should not, however, be divorced from a business capacity and a determined will which would have made him a leader of men in any walk of life. There was always hidden strength behind the sympathy which made him already so well loved, so fully appreciated as a man even by his opponents. Yet this apostolate, outstanding in the long history of the Church's missionary work, was only a prelude to the great responsibilities of a prelate whose personality, genius and sanctity were to raise his fame far above the circumstances, however heroic, of a small diocese in a small principality.

​

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Lay-sister looking after the community's material needs.

​

Back to Top

​