The Reform of Zeal François de Sales and Militant French Catholicism Thomas A. Donlan St Andrews Studies in French History and Culture ST ANDREWS STUDIES IN FRENCH HISTORY AND CULTURE The history and historical culture of the French-speaking world is a major field of interest among English-speaking scholars. The purpose of this series is to publish a range of shorter monographs and studies, between 25,000 and 50,000 words long, which illuminate the history of this community of peoples between the later Middle Ages and the late twentieth century. The series covers the full span of historical themes relating to France: from political history, through military/naval, diplomatic, religious, social, financial, gender, cultural and intellectual history, art and architectural history, to historical literary culture. Titles in the series are rigorously peer- reviewed through the editorial board and external assessors, and are published as both e-books and paperbacks. Justine Firnhaber-Baker, University of St Andrews (Editor-in-Chief) Editorial Board Sarah Easterby-Smith, University of St Andrews David Evans, University of St Andrews Linda Goddard, University of St Andrews Andrew Pettegree, University of St Andrews Julia Prest, University of St Andrews Guy Rowlands, University of St Andrews (Founding editor) Bernhard Struck, University of St Andrews Stephen Tyre, University of St Andrews Andrew Williams, University of St Andrews Akhila Yechury, University of St Andrews Rafe Blaufarb, Florida State University Peter Hicks, Fondation Napoléon, Paris/University of Bath Peter Jackson, University of Glasgow Simon Kitson, University of Auckland Alexander Marr, University of Cambridge Darrin McMahon, Dartmouth College Eric Nelson, Missouri State University David Parrott, University of Oxford Michael Rapport, University of Glasgow Malcolm Walsby, Université Rennes II Sandy Wilkinson, University College Dublin The Reform of Zeal François de Sales and Militant French Catholicism by THOMAS A. DONLAN St Andrews Studies in French History and Culture PUBLISHED BY THE CENTRE FOR FRENCH HISTORY AND CULTURE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS School of History, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, United Kingdom This series is a collaboration between the following institutions: Centre for French History and Culture, University of St Andrews http://cfhc.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/ Institute on Napoleon and the French Revolution, Florida State University http://www.fsu.edu/napoleon/ Fondation Napoléon, Paris http://www.napoleon.org/fr/home.asp Digital Research Repository, University of St Andrews Library http://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/ © Thomas A. Donlan 2018 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. First published 2018 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University of St Andrews ISBN 978-1-907548-16-1 paperback ISBN 978-1-907548-17-8 e-book Front cover: St. Francis de Sales, 17th century, oil on canvas. Philadelphia, Old St. Joseph's Church. Photo: courtesy of Saint Joseph's University Press, Philadelphia To my mother, Pat Donlan, and the memory of my father, Herb Donlan CONTENTS Notes on the author page iii Acknowledgements iii Abbreviation iv Introduction 1 1 The Salesian Reform of Militant Catholicism and 15 Its Roots 2 Early Religious Influences and the Question of 27 Zeal 3 Reforming the War on Heresy 45 4 Reforming Spiritual Warfare 71 5 Order of the Visitation: 95 Witness to a Catholicism of Douceur Conclusion 121 Bibliography 125 Index 137 i ii Notes on the author Thomas A. Donlan holds a PhD in History from the University of Arizona and teaches in the Religious Studies Department at Brophy College Preparatory in Phoenix, Arizona. He is also the author of “Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary: Witness to a Catholicism of Douceur” in Love is the Perfection of the Mind (Salesian Center for Faith & Culture: DeSales University, 2017). Acknowledgements This book would not have been possible without the support of several individuals and institutions. The project first took shape in the Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies at the University of Arizona. Across several years, the Division provided financial, intellectual, and moral support, for which I am very grateful. I would like to thank Susan Karant-Nunn, above all, for her guidance in the early stages of this study. I would also like to express my appreciation for the Salesian Scholars Seminar, especially its leaders, Wendy Wright and Joseph Chorpenning, both of whom have inspired and mentored me in my study of Francis de Sales. Yann Rodier, John McCormack, Jonathan Reid, Matt Donlan, Lewis Fiorelli, as well as Margaret and Jeff Flagg, all offered crucial feedback at one juncture or another. I express my gratitude for that assistance. Finally, I thank Justine Firnhaber-Baker of the Centre for French History and Culture at the University of St Andrews who helped me to improve the manuscript significantly. iii Abbreviation OEA François de Sales, Œuvres de François de Sales, évêque et prince de Genève et docteur de l’Église, 27 vols (Annecy: Nierat, 1892-1964) iv Introduction Over the past four decades, historiography on early modern French Catholicism has profited from groundbreaking studies. One compelling paradigm of scholarship to emerge has illustrated the interplay between piety and violence in Counter-Reformation France. Inspired by Natalie Zemon Davis’s pioneering work on the ‘Rites of Violence’ in the 1970s, historians documented the militant Catholic cultures characterized by combat against Protestantism and sin, especially during the French Wars of Religion.1 Led by Philip Benedict, Barbara Diefendorf, and Denis Crouzet in the 1980s and early 1990s, this new historiography revealed how certain theological-emotional dispositions among French Catholics, especially the fear of heresy, God’s wrath, and the End Times, contributed to violence in the era.2 Equally important, this scholarship revealed that many Catholics were simultaneously ‘militants’ and ‘penitents’, waging war not only on Huguenots, but also on themselves, through severe penitential mortification.3 Since the late 1990s, studies have continued to explore the nexus between devotion and violence, as a new cadre of scholars has examined liturgy, printed religious propaganda, and preaching within militant French Catholicism.4 Despite the contributions of this historiography, one weakness has been the absence of commensurate examination of nonmilitant and 1 Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘The Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth-Century France’, Past and Present, 59 (1973), 53-91. 2 Philip Benedict, Rouen during the Wars of Religion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Denis Crouzet, Les guerriers de Dieu: la violence au temps des troubles de religion, vers 1525-vers 1610, 2 vols (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1990); Barbara B. Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). 3 Benedict, Rouen, p. 202; Denis Pallier, Recherches sur l'imprimerie à Paris pendant la Ligue: 1585-1594 (Geneva: Droz, 1975), p. 173. 4 Megan Armstrong, Politics of Piety: Franciscan Preachers During the Wars of Religion, 1560-1600 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2004); Luc Racaut, Hatred in Print: Catholic Propaganda and Protestant Identity during the French Wars of Religion (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002); Ann W. Ramsey, Liturgy, Politics, and Salvation: The Catholic League in Paris and the Nature of Catholic Reform, 1540-1630 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1999). 1 nonviolent religious cultures in Counter-Reformation French Catholicism. To be sure, there is excellent scholarship on political and legal strategies employed by French Catholics to address the bloodshed of the French Wars of Religion.5 The study of the interplay between piety and nonviolence in early modern French Catholicism, however, remains underdeveloped. This is a significant imbalance, considering that, for large portions of the French Catholic population, religious belief and practice did not result in militancy or severe penitence, and, in some cases, actually produced opposition to them. Indeed, as Diefendorf has acknowledged, there was ‘profound tension within Catholicism, a contest over the nature and practice of the true faith’ in the era of the French Wars of Religion.6 A more recent scholarly trend has begun to redress this imbalance by documenting alternatives to the prevailing militant-penitential piety, especially among dévots in the seventeenth century. Diefendorf, for instance, has shown that in the 1630s, Parisian women practiced works of mercy rather than the aggressive penitence typical of Catholic Leaguers and early dévots.7 Examining the years 1629 to 1645, Anthony D. Wright has revealed pastoral differences between the rigorist ‘proto-Jansenists’ and the Society of Jesus, which took a more forgiving approach to confession and the Eucharist.8 Recently, Alison Forrestal has illustrated how, from the 1620s to the 1650s, Vincent de Paul and the Lazarists drew on the virtue of charity far more than on hostility toward Protestants.9 This book contributes to this emerging historiography by exploring nonmilitant sites within French Catholicism even earlier, during the French Wars of Religion (1562-1629) themselves. This study also selects as its primary object of inquiry the spiritual evolution of one Catholic priest, François de Sales (1567-1622),