The Lives of the Saints, Volume 01 (of 16): January

by S. Baring-Gould

The winter, always severe in Savoy, was this year one of unusual rigour. The roads were one sheet of ice, and Francis was obliged to put iron clamps on his shoes, in order to prevent himself from slipping. As he suffered terribly from broken chilblains, his heels became in such a state that the blood stained the snow as he walked along, penetrating through his stockings and gaiters. One night he arrived, with his cousin, Louis, at a village where all the doors were closed against him. In vain they knocked and entreated for admission; the inhabitants, who had been prejudiced against them, refused to give them shelter; they crept into the village oven, which was still warm, and there slept.

On the 17th July, he preached a wonderful sermon at Thonon on the mediation of Jesus Christ. He showed his hearers that the Catholic Church, so far from destroying this doctrine, as the Protestant asserted, based her whole system upon it. The Calvinist ministers were exasperated at the effect of the sermon, and held a public meeting, in which it was resolved to charge him with sorcery and magic. They even suborned a man to swear that he had seen Francis in communication with devils at a witch's festival. As he was walking through a wood at dusk immediately after this, two men rushed upon him with swords, uttering horrid imprecations. Francis met them with such composure, that they were overcome, and casting themselves at his feet, implored his pardon, alleging as their excuse the orders they had received from the Protestant clergy. The Saint forgave and blessed them, and pursued his road, unmolested. The Calvinists, more furious than ever, hired a body of assassins who came secretly, in the dead of the night to the house in which he lodged. Francis had not yet gone to bed. He was watching and praying in his room, when he heard the tramp of armed men in the street, and their whispered consultation at the door. He quietly slipped into a secret chamber, cleverly concealed by a panel in the wall which had been provided in case of any such emergency, and the assassins hunted through the house from garret to cellar without being able to find him. What promoted the Catholic faith far more than his sermons, was his daily life of never-failing charity. Madame de Boisy at last brought her husband to see and feel the beauty and reality of the mission in which their son was engaged. This was an untold relief to Francis; and from that time, father and mother worked together in forwarding to the utmost of their power the apostolic labours of their son. They gave shelter in the castle of Sales to such of the converts as were compelled to resort to flight in order to escape the fury of the heretics; and it is impossible to exaggerate the tender zeal with which Madame de Boisy looked after their temporal and spiritual wants. The Saint, in the meanwhile, continued without intermission his pastoral work. As he could not carry the Blessed Sacrament publicly through the streets of Thonon to the sick, he used to take a Host in a little silver pyx in the shape of a triangle, suspended by three little silver chains round his neck, and thus bear our Lord on his breast. Then wrapping himself up in a large cloak, he would walk along very gravely, looking on the ground, without speaking to any one, or raising his hat. This was the sign he had given to the faithful, who no sooner saw him passing in that manner than they left their occupations and silently followed, though at a little distance, so as not to excite hostile observation. It was an intense joy to him to carry the Blessed Sacrament in that way: his flock often remarked that his face on such occasions positively shone with the fire of his love. As prudence still forbade the public sacrifice of the Mass in Thonon, S. Francis used to celebrate it in the little village of Marin, on the other side of the river Drance, in the old church of S. Stephen.

On one occasion he went to preach in an old parish church near Allinges; it was S. Stephen's Day, 1595, and he summoned the inhabitants as usual by ringing a bell, but, as it was very bad weather, only seven people came. Some one said to him that it was not worth while his preaching to so small an audience. He replied, "One soul is as precious to me as a thousand;" and he began a most eloquent discourse on the Invocation of Saints, of which he explained the doctrine, and refuted the Protestant objections with great clearness. Among his seven hearers was a magistrate of Thonon who had lately joined the Church, but had been beset by the ministers, who had succeeded in shaking his feeble faith. After the sermon, he threw himself at the feet of S. Francis and exclaimed, "You have saved my soul this day!" He then declared that he had meditated abjuring his new Catholicism next Thursday; that having heard the bell ring, and seen only half-a-dozen poor peasants obey the summons, and come to the church, he had thought that, if S. Francis were to preach, it would be a proof that he loved souls, but if he did not preach, then he would be convinced that he sought applause. He went on to say that the pains taken by S. Francis to explain to those half-dozen peasants the doctrine of the Communion of Saints, had cleared away his difficulties, and had convinced him of the grand and unutterable truth of the Catholic Church, of which he would ever remain a member. Little by little the work advanced; Francis was given three energetic assistants; for some time the progress was very small, but the great mass of the people were like an avalanche, slowly undermined, to fall in a body at the foot of the Cross.

It would exceed our limits to detail the steps by which S. Francis advanced the cause. Let us turn to the crowning of his labour. In 1597, he celebrated the "Forty Hours" Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament at Thonon. The churches of S. Augustine and S. Hippolytus had been given up to the Catholics, and the Bishop arrived to consecrate them anew, and to administer the Sacraments of Confirmation and Ordination for the first time for sixty-three years. An enormous crowd assembled from all quarters. After the Blessed Sacrament had been carried in procession through the town, it was placed in an oratory erected for the purpose. Very soon a crowd came up, consisting of three hundred people, inhabitants of Bellevaux, all begging to be admitted into the Church. The inhabitants of S. Cergue arrived next, bearing with them a cross which had been concealed by them between two walls during the Calvinist persecution, and which cross remains in the hamlet to this day. Some of these poor people arrived barefoot bearing other emblems of the Passion of our Lord, the spear, the nails, the crown of thorns. Then came the people of Bonneville, with the nobility of the Chablais. One portion of the procession arrived later than the rest, and that was from the village of Ternier. They had been attacked by the fanatics of Geneva on their way. During the "Forty Hours" of Adoration, prayers, meditations, catechizings, and sermons succeeded each other without intermission. The personal love which all the people felt for S. Francis, together with his tender and touching exhortations, gave an additional impulse to the devotion of the spectators. Whole villages took the opportunity of returning to the faith of their fathers; and when the Exposition was over, the Bishop and S. Francis had several hard days' work in receiving such numberless abjurations and administering to them the rites of conditional baptism and confirmation.

On September 30th, the Duke of Savoy visited Thonon, and the Chablais ceased to be Protestant. Few heretics now remained, and the Duke ordered them to cross the lake to the land of Vaud, as the Calvinists before had expelled those who would not submit to the abolition of their religion. The spiritual conquest achieved by Francis has been commonly reckoned to have amounted to 72,000 souls.

In 1599, S. Francis was appointed coadjutor bishop of Geneva. The continual disputes between France and Savoy were at length adjusted by a treaty contracted at Lyons, by which the latter government yielded to the former the province of Gex to the north of the lake of Geneva, containing thirty-seven parishes, with about 30,000 inhabitants. S. Francis visited Paris in 1602, and persuaded Henry IV. to re-establish the exercise of the Catholic religion throughout Gex, wherever there were a sufficient number of Catholics; only the king stipulated that this should be done gradually, so as to avoid giving alarm to the Protestants.

Francis now returned to Savoy, where the failing health of the aged Bishop of Geneva made it necessary for him to be present. Some time previous to his death, he had the consolation of celebrating the jubilee at Thonon, by which the history of the conversion of the Chablais was wound up. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims of all ranks, in companies preceded by cross and banner, poured from all the country round, making the Alpine valleys resound with their pious chants, as they thanked God for having brought them out of darkness into the glorious liberty of the children of God. More than a hundred confessors were engaged continually at the tribunal of penance; and altogether 62,000 communions were made in the church of Thonon. On Dec. 8th, 1702, Francis was consecrated bishop, and appointed to the see of Geneva, in the parish church of Thonon.

The first business which Francis undertook after he was settled at Annecy, the seat of the Bishops of Geneva, after their expulsion by the Calvinists from the city of Geneva, was to establish a confraternity of Christian Doctrine, and to make catechetical instruction his strongest point. He heard the classes himself every Sunday. A more interesting sight there could not be than to behold him, seated in front of the altar, teaching the little ones, the girls on one side, and the boys on the other. Twice in the year he made a festival for the children, and went through the city with them processionally, singing Litanies. The influence of his kindness over them was so great, that he never came forth, without the children running out from every nook and corner of the streets to ask his blessing or kiss his robe. When some friends complained of the troops of them who followed him, he said gently, "Suffer them to come, they are my own dear little people."

In 1603, when he was preaching the Lent course of sermons at Dijon, by invitation of the magistrates, he made the acquaintance of Jane Frances of Chantal, in combination with whom he afterwards founded the Order of the Visitation. In 1605 and 1606, he made a general visitation of his whole diocese, undergoing great fatigue, and often danger, in traversing the Alpine districts, which formed the greatest part of it, and everywhere preaching, catechizing, and hearing confessions. In 1618, Francis was chosen by the Duke of Savoy to accompany an embassy to Paris to negotiate the marriage of his son with the daughter of Henry IV., and sister of Louis XIII. The negotiations of the embassy lasted for nearly a year, during which Francis received incessant invitations to preach, which he did almost daily; the people never tiring of listening to him. The secret of his power lay in the exquisite charm of divine grace which radiated from him. The churches were so crowded, that it more than once happened that a ladder had to be brought for the preacher to enter by the window, the doors being completely blocked up. People ran to gaze at him, or to touch his robe as he passed in the streets. Cardinal de Retz, Bishop of Paris, had set his heart on having him as his coadjutor, and offered him a rich pension, the entire control of his diocese, and the appointment of his brother, John Francis, to succeed him at Geneva, if he would consent to come; but all was in vain.