La construcción de la identidad de los docentes

Across his ecclesiastical career, de Sales faced criticism for his gentle approach to Catholic spirituality. In the Chablais, fellow missionaries objected to the civility he showed Huguenots.95 _{The Capuchin friar,}

Chérubin de Maurienne, even complained to Church authorities in Rome that de Sales tolerated heresy.96 _{Critics of his Introduction charged that it}

lacked orthodox doctrine and ascetic rigor, prompting Benedictine abbot 89 _{Ibid., 166.} 90 _{Ibid., 237.} 91 _{Ibid., XVII, 279.} 92 _{Ibid., XVII, 280.} 93 _{Ibid., XIX, 91.} 94 _{Ibid., XVI, 75-6.}

95 _{Charles-Auguste de Sales, Histoire du bienheureux François de Sales (Lyon: La}

Bottière et Juillard, 1634),p.212.

96 _{Ibid., pp. 520-2; Fortunat Strowski, Saint François de Sales (Paris: Plon, 1928),}

111 Grégoire Tarrisse to forbid his monks from reading it and a certain Capuchin to burn it.97 _{When de Sales founded the Visitation, a religious}

community of women committed to douceur, therefore, he expected resistance. On the eve of the Visitation’s birth, he confided in Nicolas Polliens, a Jesuit friend, that he and the new community would come under fire. ‘I know that I will attract opposition’, de Sales asserted. Despite this anticipated criticism, de Sales remained confident: ‘I am not worried about this, for whoever did anything good without [opposition]?’98

Criticism indeed materialized after the founding of the Visitation in 1610. Certain critics denounced de Sales’s opposition to rigorous mortifications. The Wars of Religion demanded nothing less of Catholics, they felt, than combat against the body and sin. A letter of support from the Ignace Armand illustrates aspects of this critique. ‘Some say you have created a hospital rather than an assembly of devout women’, Armand wrote. He encouraged de Sales to dismiss such criticism as coming from ‘foolish minds’ that did not grasp the ‘mild life of Jesus’.99

Charges that the Visitation was a ‘hospital’ did not faze de Sales. A separate critique, however, troubled him, and ultimately prompted him to modify a critical dimension of the community. This criticism concerned the issue of enclosure. When de Sales first formed the Visitation, he established modified enclosure to allow Visitandines to perform works of mercy in Annecy. This active apostolate constituted an important part of de Sales’s vision of relationships of douceur. Having anticipated objections to religious women serving in public, de Sales had stipulated that, typically, only the older Visitandines would leave the convent and, ideally, minister to women, not men.100 _{In Annecy, which was located not in France but the}

Duchy of Savoy, no one objected to this arrangement. Indeed, Annecy’s inhabitants came to admire this pastoral ministry of de Chantal and the Visitandines.101

In the French Kingdom, where Catholic militancy held greater sway, however, the clergy did not tolerate nuns outside their convents. We

97 _{Louis Cognet, La Spiritualité Moderne: L’essor 1500-1650 (Paris: Aubier, 1966),}

p. 284; Jacques Bénigne Bossuet, Charles Frey de Neuville, Esprit Fléchier, and Louis Bourdaloue, Panégyriques de saint François de Sales (Paris: J.-J. Blaise, 1834),p. 109.

98 _{OEA, XIV, 194.}

99 _{Letter cited in de Chaugy, Sainte Jeanne, pp. 145-6.} 100 _{OEA, XIV, 207, XVI, 69.}

101 _{Jean-Pierre Camus, The Spirit of Saint François de Sales, trans. by C. F. Kelley}

112

must recall that the Wars of Religion touched off heightened concerns regarding sexual purity, with the sexuality of women, in particular, coming under increased scrutiny. As for religious women, they were expected to practice constant mortification and safeguard their virginity within their cloisters. The Carmelites, Ursulines, Capucines and other female orders in France, as we have seen, observed this enclosure quite strictly.

Denis-Simon Marquemont, archbishop of Lyon, emerged as the primary critic of the Visitation’s modified enclosure. In 1616, he had invited de Sales to found a Visitation house in Lyon. De Sales responded quickly, arranging for a new convent in the city. When the Lyon Visitandines emerged publicly to serve the community, however, Marquemont resisted, informing de Sales that this active apostolate had to cease. The open nature of the Visitation was ‘dangerous’, Marquemont explained, given the current religious and political turbulence in France. ‘Those [...] seeing a nun in the world and its affairs will be scandalized’, and this would only strengthen Protestant criticism of Catholicism.102

De Sales and Marquemont debated the matter for months. Marquemont insisted that the Visitation would never take root in the kingdom of France, unless de Sales imposed strict enclosure. He also counseled de Sales to transform the Visitation from a ‘congregation’ into a formal religious order with permanent, solemn vows. The sexual purity of religious women and the reputation of the Church loomed large in the mind of Marquemont. ‘Open doors’, he explained, create ‘sin and anxiety’ and the resulting ‘disorder and the shame’ would cause ‘scandal’.103

Despite great reservations, de Sales eventually acquiesced, making the Visitation a formal religious order with strict enclosure. He did so, however, on two conditions. First, de Sales explained to Marquemont, the Visitation would continue to forbid rigorous penances. Second, de Sales insisted that Visitandines would continue to receive laywomen for brief spiritual retreats.104 _{With these modifications, French prelates found the}

Visitation acceptable, while Rome recognized the community as an official religious order of the Catholic Church in 1618.

With strict enclosure, the Visitandines ceased all public ministries in Savoy and France. They also took solemn vows. De Sales disliked these changes yet, agreed to abide by them. Scholars have debated why de Sales

102 _{OEA,XXV, 164.} 103 _Ibid.

113 submitted to Marquemont’s demands, but little consensus has emerged.105

It seems likely, however, that de Sales’ acquiescence was rooted in his determination to promote the Visitation as a witness to Catholic douceur. De Sales had been engaged in his reform of militant Catholicism for two decades as a missionary, preacher, and spiritual director. Now the Visitation presented an unprecedented opportunity to expand his vision of Catholic renewal in a concrete, institutional fashion. Even in a modified form, the Visitation could still cultivate Christocentric douceur, thus renewing the Church. Simply put, de Sales accepted strict enclosure and formal vows to sustain his ever-expanding reform of militant Catholicism in the era of the French Wars of Religion.