In recent decades, historians have drawn on the insights of psychologists, anthropologists, and other social scientists concerning the role of emotions in culture and society.42 Scholars of medieval and early modern Europe
have participated in this development, exploring the Crusades, the German Reformation, and the French Revolution through the lens of the emotions.43
Among the concepts emerging from this scholarship, particularly compelling is Barbara Rosenwein’s notion of an ‘emotional community’, 34 Ibid., III, 157. 35 Ibid., XIII, 110-12, 202, 313. 36 Ibid., 29, 187, XIV, 148. 37 Ibid., XIII, 313. 38 Ibid., XIV, 135-7.
39 Ibid., XII, 380-8, XIII, 313, XIV, 27, 119-21. 40 Ibid., XIV, 135.
41 Ibid., XIII, 374.
42 For a summary of this approach, see Willemijn Ruberg, ‘Interdisciplinarity and
the History of Emotions’, Cultural and Social History, 6 (2009), 507-16.
43 Damien Boquet and Piroska Nagy, Le Sujet des émotions au moyen âge (Paris:
Beauchesne, 2008); Susan C. Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Feeling: Shaping the Religious Emotions in Early Modern Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
79 which she defines as a social group that privileges certain emotions while discouraging others as a means of defining communal norms and boundaries.44
Rosenwein’s concept of ‘emotional communities’ can be applied fruitfully to the French Wars of Religion and the Salesian reform of militant Catholicism. As we have seen, Catholic militancy prescribed certain affective experiences and expressions. Faithful men and women were supposed to feel constant sorrow for sins that produced heresy and enraged God. A devout Catholic ought to be angry and hateful toward Huguenots for rejecting godly doctrine and practice. Good Catholics should fear the many dangers around them, whether heretics, the flesh, God’s punishment, or the End Times. In the ‘emotional communities’ of militant Catholicism, then, sorrow, anger, and fear constituted community-defining emotions.
In de Sales’s pastoral work, however, he challenged these very emotional norms. De Sales highlighted fear as particularly problematic, maintaining that ‘fear is a greater evil than evil’ and that, ‘except for sin, anxiety is the greatest evil for the soul’.45 De Sales drew on the Gospels to
teach that fear jeopardized union with God. It was fear, he asserted, that sabotaged Peter’s efforts to walk on water with Jesus (Mt 14. 30), much as it prevented Martha from enjoying Jesus’s company when he visited her (Lk 10. 40-1).46 De Sales routinely cited the negative effects of fear, stating that
it ignored reason, provoked reckless judgments, and tired the spirit.47
De Sales addressed anger in his pastoral work as well, teaching that true devotion restrains it.48 Drawing on James 1. 20, he observes that
outrage ‘does not advance the justice of God.’49 De Sales asserted that few
humans could put anger to constructive ends: ‘Live without anger,’ [for] it easily takes charge of us and ‘we are no longer master of ourselves’.50 De
Sales’s proscriptions against anger were, at times, nearly absolute. In Book 4 of the Introduction, he teaches, ‘I tell you directly and without exception: do not get upset at all’, and do not open the ‘door of your heart to anger’.51
De Sales often exhorted Catholics to abandon anger directed against
44 Barbara H. Rosenwein, ‘Worrying about Emotions in History’, The American Historical Review, 107 (2002), 821-45.
45 OEA, III, 133, XIII, 211. 46 Ibid., III, 159, XIII, 211.
47 Ibid., III, 132-4, 234, 310-13 XIII, 338. 48 Ibid, III, 15.
49 Ibid, 155*, XIV, 105. 50 Ibid., III, 164. 51 Ibid., 162.
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themselves, teaching that no amount of it would eliminate perceived weaknesses and frailties. Indeed, bitter self-correction only exacerbated ‘emotional displeasure’:
It is reasonable when we are at fault that we are displeased and sorry, but we must refrain from bitter, spiteful, and emotional displeasure. Many people are greatly at fault in this way. When overcome by anger they become angry at being angry, disturbed at being disturbed, and vexed at being vexed. By such means they keep their hearts drenched and steeped in passion.52
De Sales discussed sadness with more nuance than with anger and fear, teaching that it sometimes had a role in spiritual development. It was appropriate, for instance, to feel sad for someone suffering or one’s own sins.53 De Sales also affirmed the healing effects of crying. On the topic of
tears, he told a friend that, ‘it is marvelous how much this liquid is just right for all sorts of heartache’.54 However, when sadness became chronic,
resulting in sorrow, it produced more bad effects than good. Sorrow, he explained, led to all manner of emotional and spiritual troubles:
Sorrow disturbs and upsets the soul, arouses inordinate fears, creates disgust for prayer, stupefies and oppresses the mind, deprives the mind of prudence, resolution, judgment, and courage, and destroys its strength. In a word, it is like a severe winter which spoils all the beauty of the country and weakens all the animals.55
De Sales sometimes associated sorrow with evil. Though he generally attributed little power to the Devil, de Sales did claim that Satan welcomes human despair: ‘The evil one is pleased with sadness and melancholy because he himself is sad and melancholy [...] hence he desires that everyone should be like himself’.56 De Sales also taught that the Devil could
use sorrow to manipulate souls by making evil seem agreeable and virtue undesirable.
De Sales urged Catholics to abstain from sorrow as best as they could. ‘Give at every moment your heart to our Savior’ and be done with ‘melancholy’ and ‘despondent devotion’, he urged one counselee.57 He
advised another to ‘soften [her] displeasure’ and leave ‘excessive sadness’ 52 Ibid., 166. 53 Ibid., 314 54 Ibid., XIII, 134. 55 OEA, III, 314 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., XIII, 59.
81 to those who have no ‘hope’.58 De Sales taught that the devout person must
strive for calm and confidence, even in the midst of sorrow: ‘If you find yourself feeling heavy, sad, and somber, do not fail nonetheless to remain in peace’.59 De Sales did not exempt his own mother from this counsel.
After Madame de Boisy had refused a new pair of shoes, claiming she would not live long enough to wear them, de Sales instructed her to ‘detach [herself] from’ such ‘base affections and thoughts’, and to take up ‘ones better and more agreeable to Our Lord’.60
A SPIRITUALITY OF TRANQUILITY, COURAGE, AND JOY