The Work
Saint Francis de Sales's Introduction à la vie dévote (Introduction to the Devout Life) was first published in Lyon in 1609 by Pierre Rigaud. The text had its origin in a series of letters of spiritual direction that Francis de Sales had written for a laywoman, Madame de Charmoisy, cousin of his friend Claude de Granier. The letters were assembled with additions and published at the suggestion of a Jesuit confessor. Francis revised and expanded the text for a second edition (1609) and a third (1619), and it is the third edition that forms the basis of subsequent editions.
The book is organized in five parts: Part I addresses the aspiration to devout life and how to begin; Part II provides a method of mental prayer and meditation drawing on the Ignatian tradition; Part III gives guidance on the practice of the virtues suited to each state of life; Part IV counsels on the temptations that afflict devout souls; and Part V provides means for renewing one's devotion. The work is characterized throughout by Francis's conviction that holiness is not the monopoly of the cloister but is possible for and required of Christians in every state of life - merchants, married people, soldiers, courtiers - each pursuing holiness according to the requirements and opportunities of their particular vocation.
Biblical Engagement
Matthew 5:48 ('Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect') is the dominical command that Francis interprets not as an impossible absolute but as a direction of travel and a call to the perfection appropriate to each person's state. Against the tradition that identified Christian perfection with monastic withdrawal from the world, Francis argues that the same perfection - the same orientation of all of one's life toward God - is possible for the baker and the banker, the mother and the magistrate, because perfection consists not in external circumstances but in the orientation of the will toward divine love.
Colossians 3:12-17 ('Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering ... And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness') is the Pauline text that most directly supports Francis's program. The 'putting on' of the virtues described by Paul is not a monastic exercise but an instruction to ordinary Christians, and Francis consistently grounds his practical guidance in this passage: the virtues he counsels - humility, meekness, gentleness, charity - are precisely the Pauline virtues of Colossians 3.
Romans 12:1 ('I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service') is the Pauline basis for Francis's understanding of ordinary life as a form of worship. The 'living sacrifice' of Romans 12 is not the martyrdom of the early church or the sacrifice of the religious life in the cloister but the consecration of ordinary daily activities - rising, working, eating, relating, sleeping - to the glory of God. Francis develops this vision with remarkable practical specificity: he advises on how to perform one's daily work in a spirit of devotion, how to use time in travel or waiting, how to maintain interior recollection amid the demands of active life.
1 Thessalonians 4:3 ('For this is the will of God, even your sanctification') is the Pauline assurance that holiness is not merely an optional aspiration but God's active will for every believer. Francis cites this text and similar texts to challenge the assumption that lay Christians are called to a lower level of holiness than religious: if holiness is God's will for all, then the failure to pursue holiness in one's particular state of life is not humility but disobedience.
Author and Context
Francis de Sales was born on August 21, 1567, at the Château de Sales near Thorens in Savoy (then a duchy between France and Switzerland), the eldest son of a noble family. He was educated in Annecy, Paris (where he studied philosophy at the Collège de Clermont), and Padua (where he took his doctorate in law). Against his father's wishes, he was ordained a priest in 1593 and immediately volunteered for the mission to the Chablais - a region of Savoy that had been forcibly converted to Calvinism in 1536 and from which all Catholic priests had been expelled. His extraordinary mission in the Chablais (1594-1598), during which he distributed printed sheets of apologetics door to door and worked for four years in the face of extreme hostility, resulted in the reconversion of virtually the entire region.
Francis was appointed Bishop of Geneva in 1602 - in practice this meant bishop of the diocese with its seat at Annecy, since Geneva itself was Calvinist - and served there until his death in 1622. His partnership with Jane Frances de Chantal, whom he met in 1604 and directed spiritually for the rest of his life, produced the founding of the Visitation Order (1610) and one of the great correspondence collections in the history of Christian spirituality.
Francis worked in the context of the Counter-Reformation: the Council of Trent (1545-1563) had defined Catholic doctrine in response to Luther and Calvin, and the Catholic world was engaged in the long project of implementing Trent's reforms. Francis's distinctive contribution to this project was the recovery of lay holiness: against both the Calvinist predestinarian theology (which tended to identify the visible church with the elected few) and the Catholic clericism (which tended to identify the holy life with the religious life), he argued that holiness was democratically available to all.
The Salesian Method of Mental Prayer
Part II of the Introduction provides Francis's method of mental prayer, which he describes as consisting of: preparation (placing oneself in the presence of God); meditation (applying the mind and imagination to a mystery of faith, drawing on the Ignatian method of imaginative engagement with biblical scenes); affections (allowing the meditation to produce love, hope, contrition, and similar movements of the will); resolutions (making specific practical decisions about how to live differently as a result of the meditation); and a conclusion of thanksgiving and petition.
This method is simpler and more accessible than the full Ignatian method, and it was designed for busy people who could not devote extended time to formal prayer. Francis recommends an hour's meditation in the morning for those who can manage it, but provides guidance for shorter practices for those who cannot. This pragmatic flexibility - holiness adapted to the real conditions of ordinary life rather than imposed on it - is characteristic of the Salesian method throughout.
Reception History
The Introduction was an immediate success across confessional lines: it was read by Catholics throughout Europe and also by Protestants who found in its combination of biblical grounding and practical wisdom a form of devotion they could use without endorsing its specifically Catholic elements. It was translated into English (by the recusant John Yakesley, 1613), German, Italian, Spanish, and Polish within decades of its publication. Its influence on Protestant devotional writing - particularly on the Puritan tradition in England - has been documented by recent scholars.
Vincent de Paul, Bossuet, and Fénelon acknowledged their debt to Francis. In the twentieth century, the Introduction has been read widely across Catholic and Protestant lines as a model of integrating the spiritual life with ordinary work and family responsibilities - a concern that became increasingly urgent as the modern pace of life made the traditional monastic models of prayer seem inaccessible.
Theological Significance
The work's theological significance lies in its democratization of holiness: its argument that the call to holiness (Matthew 5:48) is universal and that the means of pursuing it can be adapted to any state of life. This is a genuinely innovative theological position in the context of the Counter-Reformation church, and its influence on Catholic lay spirituality has been comparable to Luther's priesthood of all believers in the Protestant world - though its mechanism is different (Francis emphasizes the interior transformation of each particular vocation rather than the abolition of vocational distinctions).
Legacy
Francis de Sales was declared a Doctor of the Universal Church in 1877, with particular attention to his contribution to lay spirituality and the theology of the spiritual direction of ordinary Christians. His feast day is January 24. The Salesian religious family - the Salesians of Don Bosco, the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, the Visitandines, and numerous other congregations - carries his name and his apostolic spirit. His influence on the spirituality of lay Christians in the contemporary church has been renewed by the Second Vatican Council's emphasis on the universal call to holiness (Lumen Gentium, chapter 5).
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should work with Matthew 5:1-12, 48 (Beatitudes and call to perfection), Colossians 3:1-17 (the new life in Christ), Romans 12:1-2 (living sacrifice), 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8 (God's will: sanctification), 1 Corinthians 10:31 (do all to the glory of God), and Psalm 1 (meditation as the foundation of all fruitfulness).
Further Reading
- Joseph Chorpenning, The Divine Romance: Teresa of Avila's Narrative Theology (1992) - comparative context for Francis's spiritual theology. - Michael de la Bedoyere, Francis de Sales (1960) - a readable biography. - Wendy Wright, Bond of Perfection: Jeanne de Chantal and Francois de Sales (1985) - the best study of the spiritual partnership between Francis and Jane de Chantal that produced the Visitation Order.