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DIGITAL JOURNAL OF LASALLIAN RESEARCH Opening Perspectives Collection Nº1, April 2018 JOHN BAPTIST DE LA SALLE AND THE BROTHERS OF THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS: A CONTEXTUAL APPROACH FRANCE 1525-1725 Richard M. Tristano Accesso gratuito ISSN 2007 - 1965 Copyright ®Creative commons Istituto dei Fratelli delle Scuole Cristiane Servizio di Ricerca e Risorse Lasalliane Casa Generalizia Via Aurelia 476 – 00165 Roma Italia Sito web: www.lasalle.org e-mail: [email protected] Sopporto tecnico: Universidad La Salle Bajío, México http://revista_roma.delasalle.edu.mx Rivista intestate a: LATINDEX ULRICHSWEB DIALNET ATLA DIGITAL JOURNAL OF LASALLIAN RESEARCH Opening perspectives Collection Nº1, April 2018 JOHN BAPTIST DE LA SALLE AND THE BROTHERS OF THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS: A CONTEXTUAL APPROACH FRANCE 1525-1725 Richard M. Tristano Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota ii Aux Frères français au cœur de la mission lasallienne et à Frère Paul Grass, FSC avec profonde gratitude iii Table of Contents p. Acknowledgements iv Preface 1 Chapter 1 Contextualizing De La Salle: Some Theoretical Considerations 3 Chapter 2 The French Reformation. 12 Chapter 3 John Baptist de La Salle and John Calvin on Childhood: A Reformation Comparison 18 Chapter 4 John Baptist de La Salle: From Jansenism to His Mental World 39 Chapter 5 La Puissance Paternelle: The Clément Affair, a Socio-Anthropological Reading 68 Chapter 6 Huguenots and Camisards: The Christian School as Mission 87 Chapter 7 Epilogue: The Mutual Schools, Guizot, and the De-Contextualization of John Baptist de La Salle 112 Chapter 8 General Conclusion 130 References 135 iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research was generously supported by a sabbatical from Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota and by a Lasallian Research grant. That grant funded a collaboration with Brother Diego A. Muñoz León, FSC, Coordinating Secretary of the Service of Lasallian Research and Resources, Rome, Italy. He kindly opened the Lasallian archives and library in Rome to me. I thank Br. Hilaire Raharilalao, FSC, Archivist, Mrs. Anna Cascone, Librarian, and Br. Edorta Zabaleta, FSC, Library Assistant for all their kind assistance in guiding me through their excellent resources. I gratefully acknowledge the support of Brother William Mann, FSC, President of Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota and Dr. Tim Gossen, Vice President for Mission, Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota. I also thank Brother Alain Houry, FSC, Archivist at Les Archives Lasalliennes de France à Lyon, and Dr. Karin Maag, Director of the H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies, and its staff, who generously shared their time assisting me during my visit. This study could not have been completed without the indispensable resources of the Fitzgerald Library, Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, especially the assistance of Lauren Leighton, Interim Interlibrary Loan Librarian. I thank Dr. Ken Stenstrup, who read earlier versions of portions of this study and Dr. Mary Catherine Fox for her unfailing moral support. Dr. Dorothy Diehl generously reviewed many of my translations and saved me from many, many errors. I owe a debt of gratitude to Bishop John M. Quinn, Bishop of Winona, who spent many hours with me discussing the Council of Trent, and who generously invited me to participate in two conversations with John W. O’Malley, S.J. In those conversations and in Father O’Malley’s reading of my introduction I received many valuable ideas and advice that enhanced this study. I thank the Lasallian readers who read earlier versions of this manuscript and offered me their sage advice. Of course, I am responsible for the content of this study. All translations are my own, unless otherwise identified. Finally, I dedicate this study to the French Brothers of the Christian Schools, whose work I admire and from which I profited greatly, and to Brother Paul Grass, FSC. From the moment I proposed a half- baked germ of an idea one evening in a parking lot at Saint Mary’s University, to the completion of its very last word, Brother Paul has supported this research with the greatest of kindness, patience, and most of all through his deep knowledge of the Lasallian charism. He has answered countless questions, shared research, sent me files, offered me encouragement and insightful advice. I can only hope that the work has met his expectations in some way. The idea for this study came in the wake of receiving the Distinguished Lasallian Educator Award at Saint Mary’s University in 2014. I hope that this study repays, in some way, this honor. Finally, I am not trained in early modern French history, that is obvious. But I enjoyed revisiting Febvre, Bloch, Braudel, and Duby, to whom I was introduced in graduate school and whose work I have always admired. I have tried to make this study as “French” as I possibly could. At the very moment I was drafting this document, my learned colleague, Dr. Erich Lippman, sent me a copy of Winks and Adams’ “Preface, The Value of History.” They begin this quite extraordinary appreciation of the discipline of history with these sentences. “History is a series of arguments to be debated, not a body of data to be recorded or a set of facts to be memorized. Thus controversy in historical interpretation – over what an event actually means, over what really happened at an occurrence called ‘an event,’ over how best to generalize about the event – is at the heart of its value.”1 I have not tried to be provocative, but a helpful participant in a series of arguments. I have tried to connect my training and interest as a historian to the life and thought of John Baptist de La Salle, and to purposely provide the new conclusions that Lucien Febvre advocated nearly a century ago. I have gotten to know the Founder better, and that is no easy task. I admire him more than when I began this study, and perceive him more as a human being – flawed, eccentric, sometimes disturbingly willful – than as a saint. It would be my fondest wish that anyone who reads what follows would come to feel the same. 1 Robin W. Winks; R. J. Q Adams, Europe 1890-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), viii-xiii. Preface 1 PREFACE In my view, De La Salle has to be approached, first of all as, a man of his times, with all that critical historical scholarship can tell us about those times, where he fits in and how he was influenced by them. I think on this we both agree. However, for me the question arises as to the extent to which he was influenced by these forces but also how he resisted or transcended his historical situation. Luke Salm, FSC to the Author While preparing this study, I came across a review by Jonathan Berkey of a book written by Aziz al-Azmeh, The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity: Allah and His People.1 The author of the review summed up the book’s thesis as, “Islam as we know it was not the sudden product of Muhammed ibn ‘Abd Allah in the seventh century of the Common Era, but had its roots in a much deeper process of historical change. It was the “end product of the translation of Romanity to the “East,” a Roman identity that had at its foundation both a “salvific” monotheism and the pretensions of an “oecumenical empire.’” This is a stunning idea; an altogether new and historical explanation for the foundation and nature of Islam as a world religion. It is not that al-Azmeh eliminates the role of the divine, for apparently a great deal of the book is dedicated to the development of the concept of Allah and monotheism. But that he re-conceptualizes the accepted narrative of the origins of Islam, from one that was charismatic and the product of specific moments of divine intervention, to one that was historical, the effect of gradual cultural change. Berkey refers to a “canonical” narrative as having developed centuries after the Prophet’s death, and he understands al-Azmeh’s work as fitting into a new field of historical inquiry, namely, late antiquity. In the latter, Berkey is identifying al-Azmeh’s ability to explain Islam contextually. That context was late antique Rome, a Christian empire. Al-Azmeh is tracing the cultural influence of Rome on Arabian culture in two forms: monotheism, whether Christian or Muslim, and empire, an oecumene. This was revelatory. It offers a historical and cultural explanation for a new religion that has an identity we all recognize in modern Islam, the oneness of God and the world- inclusiveness of the Umma, the Islamic community, which were in essence the same basic components of the Roman Empire. Islam was the effect of the late Roman Empire on Arabian culture (my conclusion not Azmeh’s). I do not argue anything approaching the grandeur of Azmeh’s claim, but I ask the reader to consider the benefits of going beyond the traditional interpretation of the life and thought of John Baptist de La Salle by exploring the Reformation as a new hermeneutical framework, just as al-Azmeh does with the Roman Empire. The Reformation itself is, of course, not a new historical field, but can be used as a new analytical tool to provide a reconsidered view of De La Salle’s life. This is not a refutation but an invitation, a request to consider a new perspective in the hope that it can expand and enrich Lasallian studies. This is history not theology; history is really a series of debates and not an orthodoxy. I ask the reader to approach the following pages in the spirit of 1 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014) in American Historical Review 121, no.

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