Salesian Literature

Part I: Presentation

1. The Canticle in Francis’ Youth   ::   2. The Canticle in his Life and Writing

3. Analysis of the Salesian Commentary on the Canticles   ::   4. Theology of the Canticle of Canticles

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1.  The Canticle in Francis’ Youth

 

(a) Gilbert Genebrard:  It is in the Treatise on the Love of God that St. Francis de Sales reveals to us how he had been introduced to the Canticle of Canticles.  He does it when he cites a book by Genebrard: “in the Chronology of the Hebrews, published by the scholarly archbishop of Aix, Gilbert Genebrard, whom I mention (with love), with honour and consolation, for having been his disciple, although unprofitably, when he was Royal Lecturer in Paris and expounded the Canticle of Canticles.”[1]

      

We are, then, in the year 1584, when Francis reacted against the pagan authors whom he studied, but who supplied him with nothing substantial.  With the permission of Monsignor Deage, he then turned toward Theology and Sacred Scripture.  He was, at the time, seventeen years old, and his professor, Genebrard, whose disciple he called himself, was forty-seven.[2]

      

Genebrard was a Benedictine from Cluny, a Doctor of Theology on the faculty of Paris and Royal Professor of Hebrew.  He had already published numerous studies, and Francis had possibly procured for himself at that time his Commentary on the Psalms of David, published in 1577.  But if he called himself his “profitless disciple,” certainly it is because he was not able to study the Hebrew language.  Behold the text, in the Controversies, where he simply acknowledges it: “It would be foolish for me to wish to speak of the artlessness (originally, authenticity) of translations, I who never knew well (how) to read with the points in one of the languages necessary in understanding and who am scarcely knowledgeable in another.”[3]  The “points” in Hebrew correspond, by and large, to the vowels.  Undoubtedly he would have known some of the Hebrew roots, just as we see them, but no more than this.  Likewise, it is of benefit for us to hear also of his ignorance of Greek!

      

On the other hand, this should not astonish us.  St. Francis de Sales never undertook systematic “clerical” studies; what he knew in theology he learned alongside that other work, real and imposed, of knowing the “humanities” in Paris and “law” in Padua.  Yet that did not prevent him from becoming a “Doctor of the Church!”

      

That same year, 1584, Theodore Beza published in Geneva a translation in Latin of the “Canticle of Canticles,” and it was to oppose that edition that Genebrard would publish, in his turn, another Latin translation.  Thus, there was nothing unusual in making this subject a starting point.  Francis normally found himself involved in the dispute, and we will later have some echoes of this.  Let us note that Beza translated in “torchaic” verse, meaning in syllables composed of one long and one short (sound), and Genebrard opposed him with a translation in “iambic” verses, which are composed of one short and one long sound!  But it does not seem that the dispute would be positioned there, as a matter of too great a freedom of interpretation on the part of the Protestants.  No more does it seem that the translation of Beza would be suspected of being too lewd a translation (although he might have published certain poems that were rather frivoulous…), since at that time the protestant Castellion was expelled from Geneva for having concluded that the “Canticle of Canticles” was a lewd and obscene poem.

      

These few indications situate well the atmosphere in which Francis knew the Canticle; actually, this was a revelation, and we can better specify in these circumstances that it was the “clap of thunder.”  As Fr. Lajeunie says, Francis happily learned that “the history of the world and of salvation, was, therefore, a history of love.”[4]

 

(b) The Student of the Canticle:  In this way Francis studied under Genebrard; he would have taken notes and, in 1585, would have been able to obtain for himself the printed work.  Now at this time, Francis is assailed by a terrible crisis, and this crisis thoroughly attacks his reason being, for living, and for believing.  It is more than a crisis of “despair,” as it is so often called, since never in the course of this trial does he despair of the love of God.  it is not God and his love which are its cause, but him (Francis) and his capacity to love.  One thinks, in this case, of the Spouse, bewildered in the dark, who runs after her Bridegroom and who questions the jeering watchmen (Song 4:9).  Francis learns to love; it is his first “wound of love.”

      

In the manuscript of March, 1586, where he notes his studies of philosophy, we find, justifiably, the famous citation of the Canticle which he will make his motto: tenui nec dimittam – “I have taken hold of him and will not let him go (Song 3:4)”.  Thus, for him true happiness does not consist in the knowledge of the object loved but in the possession of it; it is the same with God.[5]

      

The same year, in a rule which he made for himself regarding the reception of the Holy Eucharist, we find this beautiful commentary on a verse of the Canticle:

      

(if I cannot make the sacramental communion) … I will comfort myself with a spiritual communion… like ones who are nourished … with the scent of fragrant and vaporous things … intoxicating themselves in the unique scent of such a powerful and strong wine … and though not receiving the unction, I will not stop running to the scent of the sweet perfumes of the Lord.[6]

 

It is astonishing how this image will be taken up again, developed and made use of by our saint.  For him, to breathe a perfume will be “to pray,” and to embalm or pour fourth a perfume, the very symbol of the apostolate.

In the “intimate fragments” relative to his most painful crisis, we again find the Canticle of Canticles in the most lofty place, in an invocation to the Virgin Mary, who later will deliver him:

 

O Virgin, charming among the ‘daughters of Jerusalem,’ of whose delight hell cannot be happy, hell will I never see you thus in the kingdom of your Son, ‘beautiful as the moon, bright as the Sun’?[7]

 

It is indeed the Virgin Mary who will be the “most loved and most loving” Spouse.  At this time, moreover, Francis entered into the “Congregation of Mary,” where he delicately acquires fervour in this marvellous working of Love and Beauty:

 

O Love, O Charity, O Beauty, to which I have vowed all my affections, ah, will I no more take joy in your delights, and will I no more be intoxicated by the abundance of your house, and will you no more water me from the stream of your voluptousness?[8]

 

No doubt, we are already replete with this arduous atmosphere of the Canticle of Canticles.

 

(c) The Canticle in Padua:  St. Francis de Sales reveals, by this last text which we have cited, that he already arrived at a certain level of the spiritual life.  Therefore, it is not astonishing that, by analysing and studying his manner of progressing in this domain, we would find it again in Padua.  One of the exercises which he seemed to practise the most is what he calls “spiritual repose”:

      

As the body has need of taking its sleep … so it is necessary that the soul have some time for sleep and repose between the chaste arms of its heavenly Bridegroom…[9]

 

In the same images of the Canticles we find again three times the sleeping Spouse by her Beloved.  But it is important to note that the allegorical sense here immediately finds the response in the Gospel, since it adds “in imitation of the Beloved Disciple.”[10]

      

Francis, therefore, assimilated the language of the Canticle; he compared it with the Sacred Scriptures and, more particularly, with the Gospel.

But in Padua, Francis is not only concerned with essentially interior and personal problems; no, he begins to consider himself in relation to the exterior world.  Thus, he draws up his famous Rule of Padua, in which tow Salesian themes clearly stand out: Optimism and the concern for “human relation.”

      

And it is here that a typical aspect of Salesian Spirituality appears which is particularly good to underline today: never in the writings of our saint has the spiritual life been a strictly personal affair, a cutting of life with other men.  Quite on the contrary, it is in his intimate life with God that he found the true conduct in relation to men.  And the foremost value to consider in them is beauty:

 

Fourthly, I will sleep sweetly in the knowledge of the excellence of virtue … which is so beautiful … it is what renders man interiorly and also exteriorly beautiful.[11]

 

And the second attitude is that of being “welcoming.”  But as he knows that in each of us “virtue” is hardly ever dominant, our saint looks for a way to proportion its presence and communication with others.  Nevertheless, he follows a basic principle: “never despise meeting a person.”[12]

      

And, indeed; these two aspects find themselves curiously taken up again in a work of St. Francis de Sales, an “exercise of youth,” which is called the “Mystical Declaration on the Canticle of Canticles.”

      

First of all, for beauty we go to God:

      

Look for my paths in all creatures … above all in human nature … because it is as beautiful in itself as if it had all the ornaments of the world.[13]

 

In the next place, always, this inquiry into “human relation”:

 

The more a way is known to us, the more we frequent it; … here we speak to one, there to another … But if I consider God in man … while in this path which is familiar to us, we stop at all the flowers.[14]

 

Therefore, St. Francis de Sales began to study the Canticle of Canticles, and the more this chant of love helped him to communicate with God, the more it demanded of him another service, that of being able to communicate with man.

      

When he returned to Annecy, the “zeal of love,” of which he would speak to us later, invited him almost impatiently to accept the mission to the Chablais, during which he continued to live very intensely this communication of love with the Bridegroom, as these lines, written in the rapture of spiritual consolation, witness:

 

Amor Meus, Furor Meus!

My love is all my passion.

It seems to me indeed,

that my zeal is changed to passion for my Beloved … [15]

 

It is certainly the Spouse of the Canticles who put on his lips these words all full of ardour.

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[1] Oeuvres de St. Francois de Sales. Annecy: Religieuses de la Visitation, 1893-1993), Tome 5, p. 277. Treatise on the Love of God, Book 11, Chapter 11. 

[2] E.J. Lajeunie, St. Francois de Sales: l’homme, la pensee, l’action (Paris: Guy Victor), Vol. 1, pp. 137-138.

[3] Oeuvres, Tome 5, p. 164. (Genebrard published his commentary in Paris in 1585, Apud Aegidum Gorbinum, sub signo Spei, e regione Collegi Cameracensis).

[4] Lajeunie, op. cit., p. 138.

[5] Oeuvres, Tome XXII, p.10.

[6] Oeuvres, Tome XXII, p.13.

[7] Lemaire, Henri. Les Images chez St. Francois de Sales, (Paris: Nizet, 1962, pp. 340.  cf. “parfum”

[8] Oeuvres, Tome XXII, p.18.

[9] Oeuvres, Tome XXII, p. 28.

[10] Oeuvres, Tome XXII, p. 28.  cf. Jn. 14:23

[11] Oeuvres, Tome XXII, p. 35.

[12] Oeuvres, Tome XXII, p. 37.

[13] Oeuvres, Tome XXVI, p. 18. The Mystical Exposition of the Canticle of Canticles, trans. Henry Benedict, Canon Mackey, D.D., O.S.B. (publication information unknown), Discourse I, p. 5.

[14] Oeuvres, Tome XXVI, p. 21. The Mystical Exposition of the Canticle of Canticles, Discourse II, p. 9.

[15] Oeuvres, Tome XXII, p. 104.

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