Salesian Literature

François de Sales

by  Michael de la Bedoyere

London: Collins, 1960

 

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'I am nothing if not a man,' St. François de Sales once wrote, and these words best sum up one of the greatest and most human of all saints.

 

A nobleman of Savoie and Bishop of Geneva, François de Sales charmed into a more Christian way of life not only the hardy people of his native mountains and valleys, but the learned and sophisticated men and women of the French capital.  Henry IV described him thus: ‘A rare bird indeed; devout, learned and a gentleman into the bargain… He does not know the art of flattery: his mind is too sincere for that… He is gentle, good and humble – deeply pious, but without useless scruples.’  Yet François’ charm was but the outward expression of a toughness and holiness, shown in his extraordinary apostolate of the Calvinist Chablais and in his leadership of the great mystical revival in 16th to 17th century France.  His own spiritual development was accomplished through his affection for another saint, Jeanne de Chantal, a friendship which forms one of the most attractive stories in the lives of the saints.

 

 

The patron of writers and journalists, François de Sales takes his place in French literature, even though he only wrote by accident.  His great work, The Introduction to the Devout Life, was an immediate best-seller, and has remained so. It was a pioneer book in showing that he Christian life is not the prerogative of the religious and ‘pious’, but a call to everyone, of whatever rank or state of life, of whatever spiritual insight.  Less well-known, but even more important, was his great work on mysticism, The Treatise on the Love of God, which Dom John Chapman has called ‘the greatest work of genius in theology since St. Thomas.’

 

Relying largely on François de Sales’ admirable letters, Michael de la Bedoyere has endeavoured in this new biography to express in a short compass the personality, the spiritual heroism, the charity and the outstanding personal attraction of this delightful saint.

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