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Despite his affinity for gentle, pastoral expressions of faith, François de Sales also admired aspects of this Catholic militancy. Certain scholars have overlooked this attraction, arguing that de Sales did not encounter Catholic militancy during his Paris years.70 _{This, however, is untenable, for the Latin}

Quarter, where de Sales lived, studied, and worshipped for a decade, hosted the most radical Catholic leaders.71 _{Jean Boucher, the Sorbonne theologian,}

served as a pastor at the parish of Saint-Benoît, where he preached the extermination of heresy and moral depravity. It is likely that de Sales frequented this parish.72 _{The church of Saint Séverin, a short walk from the}

Collège de Clermont, was the ‘cradle of Left Bank militancy’.73 _{Its pastor,}

Jean Prévost, also a militant clergyman, worked closely with the Duke of Guise, head of the Catholic League.74 _{Beyond the Latin Quarter, de Sales}

had family ties to the Duke of Mercoeur, perhaps the fiercest Catholic Leaguer and an opponent of Henry IV in the 1590s.75 _{It is possible that de}

67 _{Crouzet, Les Guerriers, II, 296-310.}

68 _{Idem, ‘La Représentation du temps à l’époque de la Ligue’, Revue historique, 270}

(1984), 297-388 (pp. 320-1).

69 _{Idem, Les Guerriers, II, 9-14.}

70 _{Maurice Henry-Coüannier, Saint Francis de Sales and his Friends (Chicago:}

Scepter, 1964), pp. 30-1; Lajeunie, Saint Francis de Sales, I, 48.

71 _{Dufournet, La Jeunesse, pp. 98-101.} 72 _{Ibid., 101.}

73 _{Stuart Carroll, ‘The Revolt of Paris, 1588: Aristocratic Insurgency and the}

Mobilization of Popular Support’, French Historical Studies, 23 (2000), 302-37 (p. 318).

74 _{Ibid., pp. 318-20.}

75 _{De Sales mentions family ties to the Mercoeur house in Traité de l’amour de Dieu.}

40

Sales spent time in Mercoeur’s residence in Paris, witnessing League piety and politics up close.76

The words and conduct of de Sales himself reveal a certain absorption of the militant-penitential fervor of the French Wars of Religion. He practiced rigorous bodily mortification, including fasting and wearing a hair shirt several days a week.77 _{In light of his ‘imbecility and nothingness’,}

de Sales also created religious rules for himself, promising to impose ‘extraordinary’ penalties on himself should he fail to observe them. These punishments were to be both ‘spiritual and bodily’ and performed with ‘austerity, humility, and abjection’. Through such disciple and asceticism, de Sales wrote in personal notes, he intended to embody a ‘militant’ and ‘triumphant’ Catholicism.78

De Sales also fixated on moral purity in a fashion typical of Catholic militancy. Witnesses for his canonization testified that he eschewed games and parties during his student days, deeming them sinful. De Sales also lashed out against those threatening to corrupt him. On one occasion, de Sales furiously rejected an acquaintance’s invitation to Carnival festivities, denouncing them as unclean.79 _{Another account even}

has de Sales spitting on a woman who had expressed romantic interest in him.80 _{In such instances, we see that, despite his strong religious inclinations}

toward fellowship and compassion, the young de Sales also displayed moral aggression in interpersonal relations.

De Sales’s fondness for Capuchin Franciscans and the friar, Ange de Joyeuse, in particular, demonstrates his attraction to militant-penitential Catholicism as well. Megan Armstrong has shown that the Capuchins, perhaps more than any other religious order, championed the militancy of the French Wars of Religion.81 _{Their extreme asceticism, poverty, and}

hatred of Huguenots appealed to many young men, including Henri de Joyeuse (1563-1608), member of the royal court. In 1587, at the age of

76 _{Harold Burton, The Life of Saint Francis de Sales (London: Burns, Oates, and}

Washbourne, 1925), p.26.

77 _{André Ravier, Francis de Sales: Sage and Saint (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,}

1988), pp. 29-30; Devos, Témoins, p. 23.

78 _{OEA,XXII, 11-2.}

79 _{Lajeunie, Saint François de Sales, I, 57.} 80 _{Ravier, Sage and Saint, p. 41.}

81 _{Megan Armstrong, Politics of Piety:Franciscan Preachers During the Wars of} Religion, 1560-1600 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2004), pp. 2-10. Jean Dagens also sees Capuchins active in the Catholic League in his, Bérulle et les origines de la restauration catholique (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1952), pp. 113- 4.

41 twenty-four, this courtier abruptly renounced his wealth and privilege for a life of mortification with the Capuchins, assuming the religious name, Ange (Angel) de Joyeuse.82 _{Later, growing increasingly fearful of Protestants,}

Joyeuse joined the Catholic League. Refusing to accept Henry IV’s conversion to Catholicism as authentic, Joyeuse waged war on the monarch until 1597, at which time he returned to a Capuchin monastery.

Joyeuse’s militant religiosity impressed de Sales for some time. Jean Pasquelet de Moyron, a classmate of de Sales, maintained that he and de Sales frequently visited the Capuchin monastery where Ange de Joyeuse resided: ‘I accompanied [de Sales] often to the Monastery of the Reverend Father Capuchins [...] in order to see Seigneur de Joyeuse, who shortly before had left the world to die in the habit of a Capuchin’.83 _{De Moyron}

explained that de Sales wished to be near Joyeuse, stating, he ‘tried as much as he could to make it to the church of the Capuchins to hear Mass served by the said Joyeuse’. De Moyron thought that de Sales might join the Capuchins, given his attraction to Joyeuse: ‘I noticed by the gestures and speech of [de Sales] that he was full of zeal, desire, and affection to imitate and make himself religious like [Ange de Joyeuse]’. 84