period 1594–1598. In October of this last year, however, the duke of Savoy, who came then to assist in person at the great religious feasts which celebrated the return of the country to unity of faith, expatriated such of the leading men as obstinately refused even to listen to the Catholic arguments. He also forbade Calvinist ministers to reside in the Chablais, and substituted Catholic for Huguenot officials. St Francis concurred in these measures, and, three years later, even requested that those who, as he said, “follow their heresy, rather as a party than a religion,” should be ordered either to conform or to leave their country, with leave to sell their goods. His conduct, judged not by a modern standard, but by the ideas of his age, will be found compatible with the highest Christian charity, as that of the duke with sound political prudence. At this time he was nominated to the pope as coadjutor of Geneva,[1] and after a visit to Rome he assisted Bishop de Granier in the administration of the newly converted countries and of the diocese at large.
In 1602 he made his second visit to the French capital, when his transcendent qualities brought him into the closest relations with the court of Henry IV., and made him the spiritual father of that circle of select souls who centred round Madame Acarie. Among the celebrated personages who became his life friends from this time were Pierre de Bérulle, founder of the French Oratorians, Guillaume Duval, the scholar, and the duc de Bellegarde, the latter a special favourite of the king, who begged to be allowed to share the Saint’s friendship. At this time also his gift as a preacher became fully recognized, and de Sanzéa, afterwards bishop of Bethlehem, records that Duval exhorted all his students of the Sorbonne to listen to him and to imitate this, “the true and excellent method of preaching.” His principles are expressed in the admirable letter to André Frémyot of October 1604.
De Granier died in September 1602, and the new bishop entered on the administration of his vast diocese, which, as a contemporary says, “he found brick and left marble.” His first efforts were directed to securing a virtuous and well-instructed clergy, with its consequence of a people worthy of their pastors. All his time was spent in preaching, confessing, visiting the sick, relieving the poor. His zeal was not confined to his diocese. In concert with Jeanne Françoise Frémyot (1572–1641), widow of the baron de Chantal, whose acquaintance he made while preaching through Lent at Dijon in 1604, he founded the order of the Visitation, in favour of “strong souls with weak bodies,” as he said, deterred from entering the orders already existing, by their inability to undertake severe corporal austerities. The institution rapidly spread, counting twenty houses before his death and eighty before that of St Jeanne. The care of his diocese and of his new foundation were not enough for his ardent charity, and in 1609 he published his famous Introduction to a Devout Life, a work which was at once translated into the chief European languages and of which he himself published five editions. In 1616 appeared his Treatise on the Love of God, which teaches that perfection of the spiritual life to which the former work is meant to be the “Introduction.”
The important Lents of 1617 and 1618 at Grenoble were a prelude to a still more important apostolate in Paris, “the theatre of the world,” as St Vincent de Paul calls it. This third visit to the great city lasted from the autumn of 1618 to that of 1619; the direct object of it was to assist in negotiating the marriage of the prince of Piedmont with Chrétienne of France, but nearly all his time was spent in preaching and works of mercy, spiritual or corporal. He was regarded as a living saint. St Vincent scarcely left him, and has given the most extraordinary testimonies (as yet unpublished) of his heroic virtues. Mère Angélique Arnaud, who at this time put herself under his direction and wished to join the Order of the Visitation, attracted by its humility and sweetness, may be named as the most interesting of his innumerable penitents of this period. He returned to Savoy, and after three years more of unwearying labour died at Lyons on the 28th of December 1622. A universal outburst of veneration followed; indeed his cult had already begun, and after an episcopal inquiry the pontifical commission in view of his beatification was instituted by decree of the 21st of July 1626, a celerity unique in the annals of the Congregation of Rites. The depositions of witnesses were returned to Rome in 1632, but meantime the forms of the Roman chancery had been changed by Urban VIII., and the advocates could not at once continue their work. Eventually a new commission was issued in 1656, and on its report, into which were inserted nineteen of the former depositions, the “servant of God” was beatified in 1661. The canonization took place in 1665.
Besides the works which we have named, there were published posthumously his Entretiens, i.e. a selection of the lectures given to the Visitation, reported by the sisters who heard them, some of his sermons, a large number of his letters, various short treatises of devotion. The first edition of his united or so-called “Complete” works was published at Toulouse in 1637. Others followed in 1641, 1647, 1652, 1663, 1669, 1685. The Lettres and Opuscules were republished in 1768.
The only modern editions of the complete works which it is worth while to name are those of Blaise (1821), Virès (1856–1858), Migne (1861), and the critical edition published by the Visitation of Annecy, of which the 14th volume appeared in 1905.
The biography of St Francis de Sales was written immediately after his death by the celebrated P. de La Rivière and Dom John de St François (Goulu), as well as by two other authors of less importance. The saint’s nephew and successor, Charles Auguste de Sales, brought out a more extended life, Latin and French, in 1635. The lives of Giarda (1650), Maupas du Tour (1657) and Cotolendi (1687) add little to Charles Auguste. Marsollier’s longer life, in two volumes (1700), is quite untrustworthy; still more so that by Loyau d’Amboise (1833), which is rather a romance than a biography. The lives by Hamon (1856) and Pérennès (1860), without adding much to preceding biographies, are serious and edifying. A complete life, founded on the lately discovered process of 1626 and the new letters, was being prepared by the author of the present article at the time of his death. With the Lives must be mentioned the Esprit du B. F. de Sales by Camus, bishop of Belley, who, amid innumerable errors, gives various interesting traits and sayings of his saintly friend. Among the very numerous modern studies may be named an essay by Leigh Hunt entitled “The Gentleman Saint” (The Seer, pt. ii. No. 41); a remarkable causerie by Sainte-Beuve (Lundis, 3rd Jan. 1853); Le Réveil du sentiment religieux en France au XVIIe siècle, by Strowski (Paris, 1898); Four Essays on S. F. de S. and Three Essays on S. F. de S. as Preacher, by Canon H. B. Mackey. (H. B. M.)
FRANCIS, SIR PHILIP (1740–1818), English politician and pamphleteer, the supposed author of the Letters of Junius, and the chief antagonist of Warren Hastings, was born in Dublin on the 22nd of October 1740. He was the only son of Dr Philip Francis (c. 1708–1773), a man of some literary celebrity in his time, known by his translations of Horace, Aeschines and Demosthenes. He received the rudiments of an excellent education at a free school in Dublin, and afterwards spent a year or two (1751–1752) under his father’s roof at Skeyton rectory, Norfolk, and elsewhere, and for a short time he had Gibbon as a fellow-pupil. In March 1753 he entered St Paul’s school, London, where he remained for three years and a half, becoming a proficient classical scholar. In 1756, immediately on his leaving school, he was appointed to a junior clerkship in the secretary of state’s office by Henry Fox (afterwards Lord Holland), with whose family Dr Francis was at that time on intimate terms; and this post he retained under the succeeding administration. In 1758 he was employed as secretary to General Bligh in the expedition against Cherbourg; and in the same capacity he accompanied the earl of Kinnoul on his special embassy to the court of Portugal in 1760.
In 1761 he became personally known to Pitt, who, recognizing his ability and discretion, once and again made use of his services as private amanuensis. In 1762 he was appointed to a principal clerkship in the war office, where he formed an intimate friendship with Christopher D’Oyly, the secretary of state’s deputy, whose dismissal from office in 1772 was hotly resented by “Junius”; and in the same year he married Miss Macrabie, the daughter of a retired London merchant. His official duties brought him into direct relations with many who were well versed in the politics of the time. In 1763 the great constitutional questions arising out of the arrest of Wilkes began to be sharply canvassed. It was natural that Francis, who from a very early age had been in the habit of writing occasionally to the newspapers,
- ↑ With the title of Nicopolis in partibus.—Ed.
