A SCHOLAR AND A GENTLEMAN

Today is the feast of one of my favourite saints, François de Sales. He was born when Philip Sidney was 13, in what is now the Haute-Savoie, the region of Annecy (a town in a setting so lovely that it cries out for a small university). Destined for the law, he decided instead on the priesthood, and became Catholic Bishop of Geneva. As Geneva was a Calvinist theocracy, this was a tricky job. Wisely, he decided not even to try installing himself there, but lived in Annecy instead.

I came across François as an undergraduate, through Louis Martz’s excellent book The Poetry of Meditation, in which he shows the influence of Renaissance Christian meditation practices on the religious Metaphysical poets. The main forms of such meditation were found in Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises and in François de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life. I still have my old paperback copy of this latter book, very tattered and almost read to bits. François de Sales was known for his learning, but especially for his tact, his diplomacy, and his genuine kindness (useful qualities for a Catholic Bishop of Geneva). Together with his closest friend, Jeanne Françoise de Chantal, he founded and directed several religious orders.

Rereading the Introduction not long ago, I found it a little more uncompromising than I had remembered it, but still a masterpiece. And the Salesian meditation techniques are far more accessible to ordinary people living in the world than the Ignatian version. Each meditation is based on an hour’s duration, divided into three 20-minute parts. The Composition of Place consists of using the imagination to visualise a scene from, say, the Gospels, to place oneself inside that scene as vividly as one possibly can, and to live it. The Analysis uses the intelligence and its ingenuity to figure out what meanings each aspect of the scene contains – anyone who has read some Renaissance literature, such as Spenser, will have an idea of the richness of meaning to be found. Finally, the third section uses to faculty of the Will, to draw conclusions for one’s own life and to pray for the strength and intelligence to live these in one’s daily reality. And – this is typical of François – at the very end, he says, you go back over the whole meditation, pick out two or three of the moments you have found most valuable, and tie them into a “spiritual posy” or bouquet that you then put into your buttonhole, to take out and look at and smell for the rest of the day. What a charming man, this Gentleman Saint.