Francis the Humanist

The first theme of Salesian spirituality to be discussed is humanism. Perhaps a better term would be humaneness. Humanism is a very technical and philosophical word whereas humaneness speaks of loving kindness, consideration, and the acceptance of our human condition. Francis de Sales was indeed humane. The first talk in this series discussed the initial friendship between Francis de Sales and Jane de Chantal. We developed the contrast between the male and female approach to spirituality. We offered some thoughts on the life of Jane de Chantal and tried to point out her heroism. Today our study will focus on the humanism of St. Francis de Sales. In a letter to Jane, Francis wrote, "I am as human as anyone could possibly be." This lecture will try to throw some light on this short gallic phrase. We will discuss what is meant by humanism or by humaneness in the life of Francis de Sales, its origin, its development, and its application in his pastoral work.

Initially, Francis de Sales experienced sound training from loving parents both mother and dad, natural beauty through his surroundings in the Alps, and intellectual challenge in his education at Clermont, and at the University in Padua. These were key elements in his formation during his young years. We realize today how deeply parental relationships affect our attitudes towards others. Francis' primary formation came from, don't be shocked, his little fourteen year old mother. It is true she owed respect and fulfilled the duties of a faithful wife to a husband who was thirty years older than herself. But she lavished on her baby boy all the tenderness and affection of a young girl. He was such a delicate baby that at birth he had to be wrapped in cotton and wool. As Catholic mothers do today, she taught him his prayers as soon as he could babble, and he would tag along at her side when she attended Mass in the chapel of the castle in Thorens. There he would kneel, his eyes solemn with awe and his little hands joined in prayer. As a little boy he thoroughly enjoyed the company of his cousins as playmates. However sometimes he would go outside to think.

According to his nurse who was a witness at his canonization, Francis was a gracious and cheerful little lad, gentle and affectionate. He was fair with blue eyes and rosy cheeks. As a boy he, his cousins, and their beloved nurse would hike into the mountains or go down to the creek which ran by the estate. He was not a saint, at least not yet. Once he stole a silken scarf from one of the workers. Another time he burnt his hands handling hot buns from the kitchen, a place into which he was forbidden entrance. He would embarrass his parents sometimes when non-Catholics came to visit. On rainy days it was possible for the little boy to play hide and seek on the stairs of the towers in the castle or solemnly turn the pages of the books and parchments in his father's library. One day his father said to him, " Francis, I want you to learn to think of God and be a gentleman." Sometime later his father noticed how solemn and quiet his little son was and asked what he was doing. The boy replied, "I am thinking about God and being a gentleman." He liked nice things and was rather fastidious.

The feudal system had not yet vanished especially in the thinly populated regions of the Alps. Francis noticed the great compassion that his parents had for the poor who were oppressed with heavy taxes and tithes on even the smallest plot of ground. His father, M. de Boisy, was often an arbitrator in lawsuits between neighbors. While the latter had some enemies, he had many more friends who enjoyed his company at table or at the hunt for he was a skilled horse and swordsman. M. de Boisy did his part in the training of his son, asking him to do without things, to be ready to mount a horse at a moment's notice. He taught Francis games which could be won by intelligence rather than by chance. Gambling was out of the question. If the boy did something wrong, he was not punished if he honestly confessed his acts. So we see that the basis of Francis' Catholic upbringing was very well balanced between his mother's gentle piety and his father's exacting discipline. He probably learned self-control and obedience to authority from his father while his mother taught him a deep love for God combined with graciousness and courtesy to others. When Francis was seven, his father, wishing to develop more masculine traits in his son, sent him away to a boarding school.

Now we need to fast forward some eighteen years later and accompany Francis along with his brother and their tutor, M. Deage, to the University of Padua. His father had great visions of his eldest son wearing a long red gown and presiding over the Senate Chamber at Chambery. In those days law was the way to eminence, to fame, and to wealth. As the oldest of the family Francis was to succeed his father as its head and the owner of the estate. Francis' name appears in the roster of those who enrolled in the University on the day after Christmas, December 26, 1588. Here he encountered and was dazzled by the Italian Renaissance now in full flower. Padua was at the crossroads of thought, i.e., the scholasticism of the late Middle Ages held in the north and the ferment of new ideas arising from the writings of the ancient Greek philosophers in the south. Greeks who had fled to western Europe after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks were disseminating the writings of these pagan authors.

One does not compartmentalize historical epochs of course, but this new current of thought was beginning to undermine the age of Scholasticism. Two examples show to what point the latter had deteriorated. Preoccupation with the question of how many angels can dance on the point of a needle was considered trivial. Also the students in Padua began heckling the professor whenever they were taught something in a course that contradicted what they found written in one of these new books. The students went by the book. A new concept of the world and humankind thus appeared because of the influence of these pagan authors. The young men found the good life described in them much more to their liking than that taught by the dry dialectics prevalent at the time about the dichotomy between body and soul. The Jesuits of Clermont had embraced these new learnings much to the anxiety and scandal of the Catholics in Paris, for these writings did pose dangers to the teachings of the faith and morals. So when Francis went to Padua, he already was very well grounded in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. In those days students were exposed to the classics in their original language and then had to translate texts into their native tongue just as we used to do. In this manner educated persons acquired a quantity of epigrams and myths and historical data which they could quote at will. However none of this led to devotion.

I need to digress now to the forerunners of the Renaissance who influenced thought from the middle of the thirteenth century until the Age of Enlightenment around the Napoleonic era. You can't really say, here is where the Middle Ages stopped, here is where the Renaissance began. The first of these philosophers was Plato who realized that the transmission of culture was done through education, that virtue could perfect man, that God existed and could be reached through virtuous living. Sound familiar? By comparison merely a minor though more modern philosopher, Descartes held that what was most noble in humanity was also most acceptable to God. Plutarch was one who developed new ideas and attitudes by blending Christianity with Greek culture. Antonio de Medici had donated some land and a building where scholars could meet and discuss the classics; here Puccino founded a platonic academy. He also translated Greek and Latin texts and gleaned from the writings of Plato all that could be applied to Christianity. Since both philosophy and faith were manifestations of the spiritual life, Puccino concluded that man has within him a divine element which strives towards honor, glory, and certain forms of art and order. The tutor was even more tolerant of this literary world than some of the pagan critics. Joining other scholars of repute, he began to discover that most of the philosophical theories were eventually related to the highest goals of human life -- contemplation and union with God. From these scholars Francis drew the material for his greatest tome, The Treatise on the Love of God.

Padua, situated between Venice and Milan, was a ferment of religious, cultural, political, and medical disputes. Here young de Sales, already initiated into this new world of thought during his time with the Jesuits in Clermont, sifted through these new teachings, retaining only what was sound and forming his own reactions with the help of his spiritual guide. He joined the Sodality as he had done at Paris and advanced in the ways of prayer. Two very difficult experiences also prepared him to understand human nature later as a pastor. The first was an unusual illness which almost killed him. The director prepared him to face the end by administering Extreme Unction, now called the Sacrament of the Sick. Francis eventually recovered but the experience marked him for the future. The second trial was a repeat of his Parisian experience regarding the maddening question of predestination. Thomas Aquinas' position was rather dreadful. According to him God predestined some souls to be damned to demonstrate his justice. Poor gentle Francis absolutely refused this position and in a piteous letter to Thomas and St. Augustine told them that all his study of Scripture and even of some of the pagan authors led him to believe that there are two aspects to freedom. God is free to do what He wishes but He always supplies the grace needed for salvation. Man is free to choose those graces if he so wills. Therefore, it is not God that damns for man has a thousand choices.

It is to Francis' credit that he never studied theology in all its formality and that is why we have this informal, perhaps verbose, flowery language. However as you know, Italian is a very, very expressive language and I am beginning to realize that his style is largely drawn from the Italian language. So his writings are filled with imagery, comparisons, notes, anecdotes and other means. He also of course consulted Scripture continually and from there learned the love of God for man. He read voraciously from Augustine, Jerome, Bernard, and especially John Chrysostom who was one of his favorites. He always carried a little pocket book called The Spiritual Combat which he read daily to master its lessons; he also recommended this book to his directees. At the same time, he plodded through jurisprudence making copious notes and a few personal observations. In one of the manuscripts he wrote, "Whoever can study this must be made of stone." Yet through all his studies and his difficult sufferings, the love of God inculcated in his childhood by his parents, especially his mother, never deserted him. He showed the same tenacity toward the wonderful goal of union with Jesus as Jane showed through her own dark night. That is why he was able to help her. After three long years he received his degree in both canon and civil law. "In Padua," he told Mother de Chantal years later, "I studied law to please my father and I studied theology to please myself." Early in 1592, with M. Deage and his brother under orders from his father, M. de Boisy, Francis set out to travel through Italy. They went to Verona, to Venice, to Milan, and to other cities. They regretted being unable to visit Rome where the new great basilica was in the process of being built.

So in March the party returned to Savoy. Francis was the polished gentleman his father had envisioned. But deep in the young man's heart was the call to the priesthood. How could he face his father who had filled a library with law books? Remember how precious books were in those days. He also had reserved for him a place in the Senate of Chambery. He even had picked out a young woman as a future wife for Francis in the high hopes that the house of Sales would continue with his eldest son as master. According to an account of the time Francis was handsome, blonde, fair, with an aristocratic nose and blue eyes. He was modest and virtuous but he could be firm and courageous. His lips were concealed by a light beard. Sometimes he could be rather caustic in speech. More than a few young women of Padua would have loved to have him as a suitor but Francis wasn't interested. In preparation for serving the people of God he had studied Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He had plunged deeply into French, his native tongue, so he could win people for Christ. From Martin Luther who insisted that worship should be done in the vernacular Francis had learned that the real religion of man comes not from religious practices but from a heart captivated by the love of God.

In Padua he had drawn up for himself a rather stringent program which governed most of his spiritual life throughout the next several years. It governed his study habits, his relationships with those in authority, his companions, and his servants. He would be gracious towards all but he would be intimate with very few. He was also fully aware that through study and meditation, the Holy Spirit enlightens the mind and warms the heart so that we may become other Christs. This likeness emerged through Francis' gracious personality. Other humanists who influenced him during his pastoral work were the holy Mother Teresa who was not yet canonized, Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, St. Philip Neri who had founded the Oratory which was a kind of charismatic group in Rome.

I should like to close now with the source from which the opening quotation was taken. It is found in a letter to Mme. de Chantal whom he addresses as my dear daughter. Remember the time I told you how little by little the formal "Madame" was dropped when she became his daughter and then finally, Mother. Some time before October of 1607 his mother, Mme. de Boisy who was now blind had requested that her daughter, Jeanne, should go to a school for girls near Monthelon where Jane was living. Unfortunately the little girl who was about fourteen became very ill and died on the third of October that year. Jane de Chantal was beside herself with guilt and grief. She even vowed that she would give one of her own daughters to the house of Sales. She also had to write to Thorens to advise the family of the tragedy. At this time Francis, now the bishop of Geneva, was visiting his parishes and was staying in a little town when he wrote on November 2, 1607: