Salesian Literature

Introduction

1

 

The Treatise on the Love of God is a timeless spiritual classic, yet perhaps it needs to be introduced anew to modern readers.  Although published eight years after his Introduction to the Devout Life, it was the Love of God to which St. Francis de Sales first set his hand.  He probably started to write at Christmas 1606.  the first mention of it in his correspondence appears in a letter to Baroness de Chantal dated 11 February 1607[1].  he tells here that he is just beginning a biography (i.e., of charity) which will be at least twice as long as St. Teresa of Avila’s Life.

 

Then came a distraction which delayed the work, but proved to be an ideal preparation for it.  Madame de Charmoisy, his cousin, asked him during 1607 for guidance in the spiritual life.  He wrote her many long letters; these were collected in the following year, and published.  In 1609 he revised the work, and the edition of the Introduction to the Devout Life as we know it came from the press.  This meant that three years had passed with his original book untouched; but he had been gaining in insight, in sureness of touch.

 

On or about 15 February 1609 he wrote to Mgr de Villars, Archbishop of Vienne: “I am thinking of doing a little book on the love of God.  I don’t intend to treat it speculatively but form the practical standpoint of keeping the commandments of the first tablet.  This will be followed by another book describing the practice of charity in keeping the commandments of the second tablet.  Both books could be reduced to a single handy volume.”[2]

 

In the following year, on 16 January, he wrote to the Baroness de Chantal: “I still haven’t been able to touch the book on the Love of God.  I have been so busy since I came back here; I’ve even had to preach every Sunday and feast day because our preacher is away.”[3]  A month later, 5 February 1610, he wrote to her again: “I am going to settle down to the Love of God, and I shall try to inscribe on my heart what I succeed in putting down on paper.”[4]  That same year a new factor gave impetus and substance to his book – the founding of the Visitation Order.

 

Two years later, after half a decade of reflection and preparation, he wrote to Father Nicholas Polliens, SJ: “I am working on the book you want.  You will be one of the first to receive a copy, if ever God lets me publish it.”[5]  He worked away at the book in “odd quarters of an hour” which he slavaged from his over-filled days[6].  In 1613 he could begin to speak of publication: “I have promised the book to Rigaud of Lyons.”[7]  He was desperately trying to give more time to it and was able to write to Mother de Chantal on 10 January: “I’ve just spent two hours on the Love of God.”[8]  He made such good progress that in the following yea, on 7 November 1614, he was telling Madame de la Fléchère: “The Love of God is finished, but it will have to be re-written several times before it can be sent to the printers.”[9]

 

He wrote to the Bishop of Montpelier saying that he hoped to have it in the printer’s hands by the following Lent[10].  But Easter came, and still he had corrections and additions to make.  “I’m doing what I can,” he told St. Jane Frances, “to get the book off my hands.  It’s a real martyrdom, believe me, to be unable to find sufficient time.  Still, I am forging ahead, and think I shall be able to keep my promise to you[11].”  It was May of the following year before the manuscripts was ready for censorship[12].  At the end of June he wrote the Preface and Invocation, and on 31 July 1616 the Love of God was finally published.

 

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[1]  Annecy Edition, XIII, 265.

[2]  Annecy Edition, XIV, 126.

[3]  Annecy Edition, XXI, 94.

[4]  Annecy Edition, XIV, 247.

[5]  Annecy Edition, XV, 246. (17 July 1612)

[6]  Annecy Edition, XVI, 136. (January 1614)

[7]  Annecy Edition, XVI, 10. (20 May 1613

[8]  Annecy Edition, XV, 335.

[9]  Annecy Edition, XVI, 261.

[10] Annecy Edition, XVI, 266. (November 1614)

[11]  Annecy Edition, XVI, 315. (5 March 1615)

[12]  Annecy Edition, XVII, 208-9.

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Introduction

2

 

St. Francis’ aim in writing his Treatise was “to describe the birth, growth, decline, activities, qualities, benefits and perfection of God’s love, simply and clearly, plainly and frankly.”[1]  His plan was to write a biography – the life of charity; but he was writing as a bishop, a doctor, and he knew that the success of his Introduction to the Devout Life guaranteed a large circle of readers for this new work, so he decided to give his practical treatment of the Love of God a theoretical basis.

 

The first four Books of the Love of God form the theoretical part; the other eight Books deal with charity in practice.  In Book 5 he divides his treatment into two parts: gratifying and benevolent love – the two ways in which practical charity shews itself.  This division is carried through Books Six to Nine, which forms the central, most important part of his work.  Books Six and Seven refer to gratifying love as it is shewn in prayer – affective love; Books Eight and Nine describe benevolent love as it is shewn in the utter union of the human will with God’s will as far as that is known –effective love.  Gratifying love, in Books Six and Seven, reaches its perfection when the lovers die of love; benevolent love, in Books Eight and Nine, aims at a perfection of compliance and disinterestedness which is the death of the will.  The last three Books are a brilliant synthesis and summary of the theoretical and practical parts that have gone before.

 

St. Francis de Sales is not merely a Doctor of the Church, but also a director of souls.  He teaches and he inspires.  He aims at making even the most abstract ideas clear and attractive; he is out to capture the hearts of his readers, not simply their minds.  To this end he introduces examples drawn from every possible source: the Scriptures, the Fathers, the theologians, the Councils, the liturgy, the mystics, the lives of the saints, the pagan classical authors, the world of nature.

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[1]  Cf. Preface.

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Introduction

3

 

For anyone who sets his heart upon being a man of one book – here is that volume; it is a compendium of the whole spiritual life in theory and practice.  It is instructive.  It deals with the love of God from the dogmatic and moral standpoint.  It affords a clear and extensive treatment of God, the soul, this world and the next, grace and free will, holiness and sin, the commandments and counsels, prayer in all its aspects.  It offers a detailed description of the virtues – charity, of course, but also all the other theological and moral virtues, even the natural pagan ones.  It presents the philosophical foundation of the truths of faith in the simplest possible way, and with that wealth of example which is the outstanding feature of St. Francis’ writings.  He makes the fullest use of holy Scripture in all its senses; he relates theory to practice by copious quotations from the lives of the saints.

 

Emphasis is laid upon keeping God continually before our eyes.  In this way everything we do is done for God, because we love him – charity in practice; everything we do gains in simplicity and order, and we find the freedom of spirit which preserves us from formality, from failing to see the wood for the trees.

 

St. Francis consistently practised what he taught: Book One justifies his ardent love for his friends; Books Two and Four should be read against the background of his temptation to despair; Book Five (chapter 9) contains the secret of his missionary spirit; Books Six and Seven are insights into his state of prayer; the perfection of charity in Book Nine seems less remote when we remember that unwittingly the saint is providing a self-portrait.  Book Ten shows us that his renowned meekness and gentleness sprang not from weakness or ignorance, but from humility and wisdom.  The whole volume sums up his utter devotedness to the loving service of God and his neighbour.

 

St. Vincent de Paul called this book “a universal remedy for the feeble, a spur to the slothful, a stimulus, a ladder for those who would reach perfection.”  Nowhere will you find St. Francis all head and no heart.  He enlightens the mind, but never without inflaming the will.  He sets before us time after time in endless ways the infinite perfections of God – especially his goodness, his loving kindness – as the motives for loving and serving him; these are carefully summarized  and applied in Book Twelve.  He is never afraid to appeal to our emotions, and several chapters are sustained tugs at our heartstrings.

 

Not content with writing a text-book, he makes it a prayer book too.  Frequently he sums up a chapter with an exquisite little prayer; almost the whole of Book Five is written in the form of a prayer – composed at the white heat of love.  Chapter after chapter all though the Love of God can be effectively used for meditation, providing pregnant thoughts, short prayers, acts of the will, practical resolutions.  No wonder St. Vincent de Paul said of this book that “were everyone to give it the study it deserves, none should escape its fire.”

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Introduction

4

 

As far as I know there have been only four previous English versions of the Love of God – three Catholic and one Protestant.  The first English translation appeared within a decade of St. Francis’ death;  it was done by Miles Car, a priest of the English College at Douai, and published there in 1630. The second was made by an anonymous Irish lady at the beginning of the last century[1].  The third was by a Benedictine monk, Henry Benedict Mackey, in 1884[2], whose version is not really a new translation, but a slight revision of Fr. Car’s.  The Protestant version was made in 1878 by H.L. Sidney Lear[3].

 

The translation that follows, therefore, is only the third completely new English Catholic translation to be made in 400 years[4].   The text I have used is the one known as the Annecy Edition[5]; it was prepared by Dom Mackay and published by the Visitation Order in 1894.

 

I have tried above all to make St. Francis readable, but all translation must ever be an imperfect substitute for the original.  The principle which has chiefly guided me can best be expressed in Hilaire Belloc’s words[6], where he gives:

 

a sort of working policy to be applied to translation; and it would seem to be this: first, to read your original until you have thoroughly got inside it, until you are part of it, as it were, or at least clothed with it, then to render into your own tongue freely and naturally the effect upon your mind, and then, in a third process, to compare the result with the original and bring them as close as may be, without leaving anything unnatural in the idiom of your translation, not anything too shockingly untrue to the original.

 

But it is all very well to suggest this as a policy.  The carrying out of it in practice is another matter.  To do it perfectly a man would have to remember all that the had read and to keep a whole book like one picture before his eyes, and that no man can do.

 

“Everything suffers by translation,” observed Lord Chesterfield, “except a bishop.”  Even as a bishop, St. Francis was unwilling to be translated from one see to another; as writer, he resists all efforts to translate him adequately from one language to another.  I am only too well aware how far short of the original my version turns out to be; it would take a genius and a saint to treat St. Francis’ masterpiece as it deserves.

 

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[1]  James Duffy, Dublin.

[2]  Burns Oates & Washbourne, London.

[3]  Rivingons, London.

[4]  Since my version first appeared, a further translation by Mgr John K. Ryan has been published in the USA (Doubleday & Co. Inc.)

[5]  Annecy Edition, IV, V.

[6]  A Conversation with an Angel, and other Essays, 1928.

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