Salesian Literature

3.  Rushing into Action (1593-1594)

 

the transformation of the country gentleman into ecclesiastic was in the end rapid. On May 10, 1593, three days after the receipt of the Papal Bull, François de Sales put on the soutane in the parish church of La Thuile: "the breastplate, the belt, of those enrolled in Christ's militia," as he described it. Two days later, he rode along the lakeside to Annecy to be sworn in at the curial office and to receive the provostship in the name of the Church of Geneva. Already he was second to the Bishop. A week later, the renewal of the tonsure, received in boyhood according to local custom, took place. Much later he admitted that he had felt a pang as his fine, fair locks were shorn. "For a couple of days," he told his confessor, " I have been suffering from a temptation against my vocation. The devil has tempted me in all parts of my spirit, even to the tips of my hairs." Here is another hint that his vocation was not as simple and straight­forward as appears on the surface. However, unlike Samson, strength came back to him as the golden curls were cut off. On June 9, just over a month since the arrival of the Bull, he received the four minor Orders and three days later the subdiaconate. Ordination to the priesthood was delayed until Advent. But he did not wait until then to start his active pastoral life. The minor orders and the subdiaconate, thus received without any specific preparation, save a retreat, were enough to convert the layman into a zealous and outstanding ecclesiastic.

 

The best proof of this is that Calvinists of the district were attracted to his first sermon preached in the Bishop's presence. After all, the story of the young heir of the Sales turning priest all of a sudden must have been more than a nine days' wonder. And all the greater wonder in that the new ecclesiastic preached so well as to impress the heretics. Two of them, destined to be distinguished converts, admitted that this first sermon of de Sales set their minds thinking that way.

 

Was this effect due to the matter and manner of the sermon or to the earnestness and sincerity of the man behind the words? To this first sermon, preached on the octave-day of Corpus Christi, he gave much time for preparation, writing it in the ornate oratorical style of the period. But it was not long before his apostolic zeal was moving him to preach to any audience and on any occasion in the simple words that first came into his head. So much so that his father, used to the old, dignified way, had a fresh grievance against his son. "My father, hearing the bell for the sermon, used to ask who the preacher was, "Camus, Bishop of Belley, reported François's account." They said to him 'Who else, but your son?' One day, he said to me: 'Provost, you preach too often. The sermon bell rings even on working days, and they keep on telling me ' It's the Provost again.' In my day things were different. Sermons were rare events—but what events! They were learned and well thought-out. We heard marvels. Why, there was more Latin and Greek in any one sermon than there is in a dozen of yours . . . Now you are making preaching such a common thing that no one thinks any­thing of it—and no one looks up to you as they should.'" The voice of old M. de Boisy goes on ringing down the ages, deploring any change, any innovation, however obviously it may be for the good of souls.

 

De Sales's comment was: "Believe me, we can never preach too much. We can never repeat too often what we cannot say enough—especially in this part of the country so near to the seat of heresy, for heresy is only kept up by preaching and can only be defeated by preaching."

 

Meanwhile, having already startled everyone, even as a mere subdeacon, by using his apostolic imagination in visiting the sick and poor, lending a ready hand to anyone in distress and even founding a confraternity of the "Penitents of the Holy Cross," which still exists, he came near the great day of ordination, December 18, 1593.

 

We know for certain the state of his mind before this all-important event, for the letter which he wrote in Latin to his new-found friend, Antoine Favre, still exists, though in it we must allow something for his anxiety to turn a fine phrase and work out a rounded period rather than speak spontaneously from the heart. The " devout humanist" is very much present in these early letters.

 

" The awe-full day—to use St. Chrysostom's words—is now close upon me: the day when by the will of my Bishop, who is my interpreter in my search for the will of God, I shall, after having received other Holy Orders, be raised to the dignity of the priesthood...  I beg you to wish me well, for never before in my life has anxiety so deeply affected me... Unless I am mistaken, nothing more difficult nor more dangerous can happen to a man than to hold in his hands and bring to be, through his words, Him whom the Angels, so far beyond our conception and praise, cannot comprehend or sufficiently extol.    I have indeed always known the terrible nature of the responsibility which this holy and august dignity brings with it, but distance veils the eyes, and it is a very different matter to be so close to it. I feel that you are the one person capable of understanding my sense of perturbation, for you observe, venerate and understand the things of God so well that you can appreciate the danger and the awe of possessing responsibility for them, the ease with which one may slip into sin, even grave sin, and the difficulty with which one avoids treating them lightly. If you really understood how weak I am, I would ask no more of you than sympathy which you would feel called upon to give me. But I am not without courage, a courage that so far has remained firm and strong. I have said enough, and said it, truth to tell, rather to excite your sympathy, for this is how one consoles oneself... Sympathy is the infallible sign of friendship, that most perfect of relationships which, in friends, is so much more precious when there is a community of feelings rather than a mere goodwill which does not share suffer­ing. But do not believe that the holy mysteries so much frighten me as to destroy my sense of hope and happiness which are well beyond my personal merits. I am so happy to think that I shall soon be able to make myself one with you in the best way of all —by my sacrifices, by the highest sacrifice..."

 

After ordination, he wrote to his old master, Possevino: "I have been made so much of an ecclesiastic that I celebrated Mass on St. Thomas's feast in our cathedral church of Saint-Pierre, where I am the unworthy Provost—the highest dignity after the episcopal. By my bishop's command I have preached the Word of God here and elsewhere in the diocese. Rashness would have been the explanation of this had not obedience taken away my scruples. I have done this—and continue to do it as well as I can—by often thinking of you as I stand in the pulpit. Would to God I had but half of your assiduity in the service of God."

 

François de Sales would always vividly remember his first priestly ministration. It was the baptising of Jeanne, the thir­teenth child born to the Sales, the little sister he was so dearly to love—and to lose fourteen years later when she died while staying with Jeanne-Francoise de Chantal and her daughters. "I begot her to her Saviour," he would then write to Jeanne-Franchise, "for I baptised her myself some fourteen years ago. She was the first creature on whom I exercised my sacerdotal ministry."

 

As priest and Provost, de Sales seemed to sweep everything before him according to a predetermined plan. Those long years of preparation and meditation and hesitation seemed to convert themselves automatically into a precise and carefully thought-out apostolate into the highways and byways of Annecy and the surrounding country. So much so, that people began to whisper in the Bishop's ear that these de Sales were all alike, ambitious and ever seeking the main chance. If things went on like this, there might as well be no bishop. Monseigneur de Granier, who at François's ordination had wept with pleasure at the thought that he was ordaining his successor, grew anxious and worried. Happily, he was soon reassured after a conversation in which, no doubt, the Provost explained his apostolic plans.

 

The first of these, clearly the fruit of his long preoccupation with the Calvinist challenge and how best to meet it, was openly declared during his speech of acceptance of the Provostship.

 

"Love," he told the Chapter, "will shake the walls of Geneva; by love we must invade it; by love we must conquer it... The smell of powder and steel, the taste of them, suggest the furnace of hell, and I do not propose their use to you. I have no interest in organising those camps the soldiers in which are without piety or faith. Our camp must be God's camp, where the trumpets sound in harmonious melody: Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts. My comrades in battle, it is in that sense that you should be thinking. Ardent prayer must break down the walls of Geneva and brotherly love charge them... Everything gives way to love. Love is as strong as death, and to him who loves nothing is hard…"

 

Even more boldly, he imputed the present discontents to "the crimes of our times and our forbears. "He took heart from the fact that Geneva had retained the names and monuments of the Catholic past." Heresy, as it moves forward, overthrows and destroys churches and hacks the images of the saints. But Geneva has preserved its temples; the stalls of its Canons are still there. These, my good friends, are good signs, a providential sparing which recalls to our foes their usurpation, but stirs us to recover what belongs to us and to choose our last rest in the same tomb as our ancestors. But the way to this is the propitiation of Almighty God by our penances."

 

Today, such an attitude might be commonplace, but then, when the inevitability of the heretic's damnation was generally assumed, delicacy as to the quality of the means by which they could be rescued from their fate was rare. It is remarkable that this newly-ordained priest, brought up at home and in Paris to think of Calvinists and Huguenots as religious and political criminals, could invite his countrymen to overcome by spiritual arms alone their opponents' intolerant usurpation. Even more impressive was the confidence and sureness of this fresh voice, so lately hesitant even in accepting his own ecclesiastical vocation.

 

Another surprise. François, brought up to be so conscious of his rightful place in the world and the legitimacy of the honours which it could bestow on the deserving, now unhesitatingly refused his friend Favre's offer of a seat in the Savoie senate – a seat which his own predecessor in the Provostship had held. Nor did he this time mind offending his father in rejecting a position that could have been of great value to him in his ecclesiastical mission. "Go in peace then," his father said bitterly to him when he heard the news, "I see I should be wasting my time trying to change your mind. I suppose your heart will never allow you to serve two masters." It was the first step along the lowly way which would bring him to his end as the humble bishop of a country diocese-in-exile when, with only the slightest push on his part, he might have been cardinal and the holder of one of the greatest Sees of France. Whereas as a layman his devout human­ism had encouraged a life on two levels, the temporal upheld by the spiritual, now as a priest he would grow ever more spiritual, the spiritual, however, always expressing itself in deep relations of love and courtesy with men and women of all ranks and stations in the world.

 

The Latin letters which he exchanged at this time with Favre were still the letters of the ex-classical student, but under the I quaint expression we can discern the deeply personal quality of his relations with those he loved.

 

"As for your last letter," he wrote to Favre in March 1594, "written on the same day as mine, so closely does it match mine in its sentiments that we might be brothers in friendship—not, alas, in our way of writing, for you are far ahead of me in elegance of style. It is fitting, then, that you should be for me and do for me what I am and have done for you, for with all my heart I want to be your most loving friend—mine in the fullest way—as I am yours almost to the point of feeling other than myself."

 

In another letter: "Since you allow me to look forward to I' being with you during the coming carnival, my heart is so filled with delight at the prospect that no one ever looked more eagerly forward to Easter after the unpleasant Lenten fasts than I do to this coming carnival. Then will be revived that ancient form of Christian courtesy according to which the days before Lenten fasting were celebrated together in a little holiday—thus preparing us for the silences of the season and the higher thoughts to which it should raise us... If you come here [Annecy] I shall take good care not to be otherwise engaged. Even if you do not come, I shall not go [in reference to the marriage party of a friend's daughter]. How should I, having no wedding garment?    Be­sides, I dread that sort of convivial gathering."

 

It seems a far cry from this personal correspondence, this conscious delight in deep friendship, to the pastoral task which the Provost undertook from the start. Then, as sometimes now, an insufficiently trained clergy, readily accepting old abuses, often class-conscious and exercising an authority that was not wholly pastoral in that peasant land, did not always regard its job as being "all things to all men." François de Sales did.

 

In his ministry to the lowly folk, the devout humanist went so far as to make use of the local patois which he had picked up as a small boy. A Provost and a Sales! How could he? The poor people themselves were surprised and shocked. Was he trying to make fools of them? But it was only a question of learning by experience the always delicate task of breaking through conven­tions without suggesting ulterior motives.

 

It soon became clear that he had only one motive in his tramping about the countryside, preaching on every occasion, taking the place of priests who were ill or away, giving his atten­tion as fully to the poorest as to the well-to-do—it was to make known to them the love of God through his love of them. It might be strange for a Provost and a Sales to do this, but at any rate he had no option but to share a good deal of their poverty. Shorn of Geneva, the Annecy diocese was extremely poor, and he had no fortune of his own. But rather than accept stipends for his personal ministry, he looked to his family to meet the absolute necessities of his office. In his life he would do a great deal of not very successful begging for the basic needs of the Church's ministry, but, brought up always to look to his tutor for necessary funds, he was always to make-do on the very insufficient revenues that came his way. So ready to accept social conventions in other ways, he would never be ashamed of the outward marks of personal poverty in tattered and re-mended clothes, simple fare and the plainest of lodging. If it was the aristocrat in him that made him unconscious of money, he knew how to convert his advantage into a conscious practice of the holy poverty that should mark priests and bishops as true followers of Christ.

 

The reports to Bishop Granier that the new Provost de Sales was above himself, like the rest of his family, as well as com­plaints from the poor, who feared he might be making a fool of them with his new-fangled ways, make it clear that de Sales's ardent pastoral zeal, combined as it was with intelligence and a fresh imagination, did not win through without opposition and criticism from those whose maxim in every century is "What was good enough for our forefathers is good enough for us." It was not to be expected. Nevertheless the impression he quickly made was overwhelming, the best proof of the fact being that within a few months of his ordination he was chosen, with his cousin, Canon Louis, for a task considered utterly hopeless where any other of the clergy of Annecy were concerned. This was no less than the wresting of the Chablais from the Calvinists and the recovery of Catholic worship within it. It must have seemed almost as hopeless for the ardent young Provost, aided by his cousin, to attempt it. But everyone agreed that if anyone could make headway, it was this born apostle.

 

To understand how the opportunity arose and what was Involved in it, it is necessary to study the complex religious history of the district, that had from his earliest days filled the imagination of François de Sales.

 

The Chablais is the country, then part of the domains of the Duc de Savoie, to the south of the Lake of Geneva from east of Geneva to Saint-Gingolph and due north of Annecy and Thorens where de Sales was born. It is cut in two by the river Dranse, east of Thonon. As the result of the highly complex political and religious situation, just before and just after the Reformation, in which the Swiss patriotism of the " Eiguenots " or confederates was strengthened by adherence to the Reformers, Geneva and the districts of Savoie around it, including the Chablais west of the Dranse, were occupied by the Bernese Protestants, and François I of France undertook the conquest of the Duchy of Savoie. As de Sales was to describe it later when reporting to Clement VIII: "the people of Geneva shook off the sweet yoke of Christ and the authority of their sovereign at one and the same time, thus most unhappily plunging into the seditious democracy which now oppresses them." The people of the West Chablais were made subject to a violent persecution, all outward signs of the Catholic faith being destroyed and the people heavily fined for worship in the old religion. The result was the virtual elimina­tion of the Catholic faith.

 

Twenty-eight years later, in 1564, a new Due de Savoie, Emmanuel-Philibert, managed to recover his authority over the Chablais, but tacitly allowed the new religion to retain its hold —an astonishing tolerance for the times, due not to any broader views, but to the duke's unwillingness to add to his military commitments. De Sales was to call it " an iniquitous arrange­ment which was accepted in the hope of better days and the fact that, given the times and the place, there was no alternative."

 

In 1589, when de Sales was in his first year's study in Padua, Charles-Emmanuel of Savoie, called the Great, took up arms once more against the insurgent Calvinists who were now seeking with French help to recover their political and religious rights over the Chablais—"sheer perfidy," reported de Sales to the Pope, "but, incredibly, it proved propitious and profitable to us, for the Duke, in view of their broken word, restored the Catholic faith to these people." This was agreed to on paper by the Treaty of Noyon whose terms involved the Calvinists undertaking the re-establishment of Catholic liberties, while they would only retain for themselves three churches in the Chablais. A mission of some fifty priests was immediately sent by the Bishop of Geneva-Annecy to re-evangelise the unfortunate land. But when the Duke decided to use his forces to support the Catholic League-in France, the Calvinists in 1591, though still political subjects of the Duke, once more imposed Protestantism and drove out the priests. The conversion of Henri IV of France in July 1593 led to a truce in the Chablais. The truce recognised Savoie's political authority, and agreed to the religious position defined by the Treaty of Noyon, namely that Catholic worship should be free and the Protestant severely restricted.

 

Thus, by a singular accident in those days of confused and cruel politico-religious warfare, the involved story of the fighting, for the marginal land of the Chablais left the Catholic record unblemished so far as treaty rights went. Charles-Emmanuel would have been acting fully within his rights if he had enforced by military action the terms of the Treaty of Noyon so far as it affected religion. Luckily, he was too busy to do so, and a spiritu­ally ideal situation was created. It was left to the spiritual arm of the Church alone to take an apostolic advantage of the religious rights of Savoie.

 

Had the diocese possessed the means, it would have organised a fully equipped mission to tackle a job which was bound to prove dangerous since Savoie's political authority possessed little more than a token reality, the effective rulers remaining the Calvinists, supported by neighbouring Geneva. But the diocese was so poor and the danger so great that it was left to Provost de Sales, with his cousin Louis, to win back to the Church the sixty thousand or so inhabitants of the Chablais. The missionary conditions of the first apostles had been granted to these lone workers, travelling on foot as poor men with virtually no financial resources. It was only two years since Deage had been making fun of the hatless Padua student during his Italian tour. However drawn out his humanistic adolescence, his maturing as priest and apostle was proving unbelievably rapid.

 

De Sales, of course, knew the Chablais and had many friends and relations in it. He was not unduly perturbed by the mission. "We are not dealing with barbarians," he said. "What would it be if they were sending us to the Indies or to England—yet we should have to go." A degree of local physical safety would be ensured by the Savoie garrison established in the Allinges fortress on the high ground south of the chief town, Thonon. De Sales could have made it a fairly safe mission, and no doubt this was the general expectation. If so, the zeal and character of the missioner had not yet been understood.

 

Some of de Sales's sufferings in the Chablais apostolate were due to his father, a man whose narrowness and stupidity, while they may have been tolerated by François who was a saint and a loving son, soon begin to wear down the good-will of the biographer. One would have thought that the old soldier might have appreciated the son's lone apostolic battle against heresy. But not a bit of it. He was furious. Perhaps he thought that this was not the road to ecclesiastical preferment. His anger was such that he refused to give the material aid in the way of money, equipment, service that he could easily have afforded and which would have done so much to ensure safety and some degree of comfort. For one of the greatest physical dangers would come from the bitterly cold winters in a desolate snow-covered and frozen country in which de Sales would tramp by day and night, ill-clad and ill-fed, hoping to make a friendly contact, or sleep in a hay-loft or, as on one occasion, tied to a branch of a tree, lest he fall off in his sleep, to be untied by peasants next morning, too frozen to do anything for himself. It was left to his mother to give surreptitiously what little material help she could and at least arrange for messengers to keep him in contact with his family.

 

The greater danger came, of course, from physical attacks by rabid Calvinists or ruffians employed by their betters. Much of this danger he could have avoided had he agreed to be escorted by soldiers from the garrison, but only once or twice did he permit this when the actual danger had been foreseen and the Governor was adamant. To preach the Gospel under the protection of soldiers was no part of his plan.

 

The Provost's spiritual ideal was hinted at in a letter written a month before his departure. "Yes, I suppose it is very easy for a Christian to follow Christ curing the sick and bringing the dead back to life. We can all do that. It is another matter to follow Him suffering and dying. Only a few are capable of this. It is not so hard to embrace the Cross when it is standing up and when no one shakes it or tries to uproot it; but to hold it up in the face of those who would bring it down betokens a tried courage. Blessed struggle when we are both dying and living for Christ... Knowledge alone never raised to the heights the Martins, the Chrysostoms, the Hilaries, the Damascenes. It was the Christian magnanimity with which they declared war for Christ's sake against the emperors and the false brothers, showing themselves intrepid in fighting the wars of the Lord." Little did he think as he tried to work up a courage fitted to the task before him that he also one day would be numbered among the great apostles and doctors of the Church.

 

So on September 14, 1594, the two cousins set out on foot, with their packs on their backs, to realise the impossible: to convert a population of sixty thousand (among whom were but a hundred or so remaining Catholics) sustained and supported by Calvinist leaders who had already often shown that they would stick at nothing to prevent the restoration of the old Faith. Some 40 miles they must have tramped that first day to the Allinges fortress, setting from the start the sort of scale by which they would measure the vastness of the enterprise that lay ahead of them.

​

Back to Top

​