The mantle of paternal loyalty and patriotism undoubtedly descended upon the young J. P. Camus, for second only to his love for God, and His Church, was his devotion to France, and its king.
On his mother's side, as well as on his father's, he was well connected. Her family had given to France chancellors, secretaries of state, and other distinguished personages, but noble as were the races from which he sprang their chief distinction is derived from the subject of this sketch.
"This one branch," says his panegyrist, "bore more blossoms and more fruit than all the others together. In John Peter the gentle rivulet of the Camus' became a mighty stream, yet one whose course was peaceful, and which loved to flow underground, as do certain rivers which seem to lose themselves in the earth, and only emerge to precipitate themselves into the waters of the ocean."
Books and objects of piety were the toys of his childhood, and his youth was passed in solitude, and in the practices of the ascetic life. His physical strength as it increased with his years, seemed only to serve to assist him in curbing and restraining a somewhat fiery temperament. His wish, which at one time was very strong, to become a Carthusian, was not indeed fulfilled, it being evident from the many impediments put in its way, that it was not a call from God.
Nevertheless, this desire of self-sacrifice in a cloistered life was only thwarted in order that he might sacrifice himself in another way, namely, by becoming a Bishop, which state, if its functions are rightly discharged, assuredly demands greater self-immolation than does that of a monk, and is indeed a martyrdom that ceases only with life itself.
If he did not submit himself to the Rule of the Carthusians by entering their Order, he nevertheless adopted all its severity, and to the very end of his life kept his body in the most stern and rigorous subjection.
This, and his early inclination towards the religious life, will not a little astonish his detractors, if any such still exist, for it is surely a convincing proof that he was not the radical enemy of monasticism they pretend. In his studies he displayed great brilliancy, being especially distinguished in theology and canon law, to the study of which he consecrated four years of his life.
After he had become a Priest his learning, piety, and eloquence not only established his reputation as a preacher in the pulpits of Paris, but soon even crossed the threshold of the Louvre and reached the ears of Henry IV. That monarch, moved by the hope of the great services which a prelate might render to the Church even more than by the affection which he bore to the Camus family, decided to propose him for a Bishopric, although he was but twenty-five, and had not therefore reached the canonical age for that dignity.
The young Priest was far too humble and also too deeply imbued with a sense of the awful responsibility of the office of a Bishop to expect, or to desire to be raised to it. When, however, Pope Paul V. gave the necessary dispensation, M. Camus submitted to the will both of the Pontiff and of the King, and was consecrated Bishop of Belley by St. Francis de Sales, August 30, 1609.
The fact that the two dioceses of Geneva and Belley touched one another contributed to further that close intimacy which was always maintained between the Bishops, the younger consulting the elder on all possible occasions, and in all imaginable difficulties.