Salesian Spirituality & the “French Connection"

Some years ago, while paging through the American Heritage Collegiate Dictionary of the English Language, I was startled to discover that our own Francis de Sales – described as a “French ecclesiastic” – had made the cut! I shared my excitement with one of our Salesian scholars,  Fr. Alexander Pocetto, OSFS, emailing him about my unintended find. Minutes later I received an email reply, in which Fr. Pocetto dryly remarked, “Francis would be rolling over in his grave.”

Because, of course, Francis de Sales was not French: he was a Savoyard, and proud of it. Bordered by what are today France, Italy, and Switzerland, the Duchy of Savoy was of strategic importance in the region. Jane de Chantal, that other great source of what would become known as Salesian Spirituality was French, hailing from the Burgundy region. Francis de Sales died in 1622; Jane de Chantal died in 1641.

Fast forward approximately 150 years to the tumultuous period known as the French Revolution. (A major event in the French Revolution, the storming of the Bastille, occurred on July 14, 1789 and is a French holiday to this day, akin to July 4 celebrations in the United States of America.) French troops occupied Savoy in 1792. The following year witnessed the beginning of the Reign of Terror.

It began as a way to harness revolutionary fervor but quickly degenerated into the settlement of personal and regional grievances. At the end of July, price controls over a wide range of goods, and in September 'revolutionary groups' were established to enforce these controls. The Law of Suspects ordered the arrest of suspected "enemies of freedom", initiating what became known as the "Terror." According to archival records, from September 1793 to July 1794 some 16,600 people were executed on charges of counter-revolutionary activity; another 40,000 may have been summarily executed or died awaiting trial. During the period, the bodies of both Francis de Sales and Jane de Chantal were exhumed from their respective tombs in an Annecy church and concealed for safekeeping for fear that their remains would be desecrated, as happened to the bodies of many religious figures in regions that came under revolutionary control.

The French Revolution went through a number of phases during its twenty-five-year run but ended with the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. In the years that followed, two more French citizens – Louis Brisson and Leonie Aviat - would pick up where Francis and Jane left off, disseminating Salesian Spirituality during the height of a revolution of another kind: the Industrial Revolution.

Today, the remains of Francis de Sales and Jane de Chantal are interred in two bronze sarcophagi in their final resting place at the Basilica of the Visitation in Annecy, France. (Savoy was officially annexed by France as a result of the Treat of Turin in 1860.) They are actually relics, insofar as both bodies suffered significant disintegration while being hidden during the French Revolution. The Basilica, completed in 1930, is home to beautiful mosaics and stained glass windows that recount the life and legacies of St. François de Sales and Jeanne de Chantal.

Of course, Salesian Spirituality – a confluence of both French and Savoyard influences – was “revolutionary” in its own rite, proclaiming that living a life of devotion was not only possible - but doable – to people of every state and stage in life! Its clarion call recognized the God-given dignity and destiny of every human being that is expressed not by doing superhuman things, but by doing ordinary, everyday things with great love. Author Ruth Kleinman would one day describe this spirituality as a “Revolution in Charity.”

Rev. Michael S. Murray, OSFS

Assistant Provincial

Wilmington-Philadelphia Province