Saint Jane Frances de Chantal

The obligation to follow her husband led her to live with him at his chât eau of Bourbilly. Th château de Bourbilly Jeanne's primary residence during her marriage. ere, she applied herself to regulating his household and restoring good order to her husband's estates, which had until then been left in the hands of stewards while the baron was at court or with the armies. The first reform she undertook was that of the servants. Convinced that example is better than precept, and in order to supervise them more closely, she decided to rise early in the morning, at five o'clock, as soon as they did. She led their prayers herself, and she wanted them all to be able to hear Holy Mass every day. To this end, she ordered that the foundation Mass which was to be said in the château's chapel, but which had not been said since the death of her mother-in-law, should be celebrated every day and early in the morning. In this way, everyone could hear it, even those who had to go to work in the fields. In the evening, before retiring, they would report on the work accomplished. Often, in the middle of the day, she would take her work and come to sew or spin near the servants, taking advantage of this moment to gently lift their coarse minds, through pious and amiable conversations, to the knowledge and love of God. On Sundays, she led them all to the parish Mass, and so that they could help sing the Credo more solemnly, she herself trained those who had beautiful voices. It sometimes happened that during this singing, which took place in the kitchens or barns, she could not contain her enthusiasm.

Saint Chantal had not only a soul too virtuous, but a mind too great to fall into excesses. Her attire, so modest before her marriage, became even more so afterwards. Finding herself in the country, and at the head of a large house, she abandoned the more precious garments of her youth, the silk dresses she had the right to wear as a noble lady, and dressed in the most common fabrics.

At the same time that she renounced vanity, she devoted herself to work. Her fingers, says a biographer, did not rest. When in the morning, after hearing Mass, she had visited the kitchens, the courtyards, and sometimes even the most distant farms, and given everything that master's eye which makes all things prosper, she was seen returning cheerful and graceful, and resuming her work. She only interrupted it out of necessity, when visitors came, and even then, it had to be that the rank of the persons obliged her; otherwise, she would have her little work table brought to her, and, after gracefully excusing herself, she would continue to work.

Her charity towards her neighbor appeared admirably during a great famine that afflicted the province. She herself gave bread and soup every day to a large number of the poor who came from six to seven leagues around to ask for charity, and she gave to the 'shamefaced poor' according to their needs. It sometimes happened that poor people, having received alms, would go around the château and then come a second time to ask her. She noticed it well; but she did not turn them away for that, saying to herself: 'My God, I beg continually at the doors of your mercy: what! would I wish to be refused the second and third time? You have endured my importunity a thousand times, why would I not wish to suffer that of your creature?' Thus, by a great miracle, her wheat and flour multiplied in her granary, and what would not have sufficed for her family was sufficient for six months for her and for an infinity of poor people whom she regarded as her own children.

Her gentleness and kindness were also very remarkable. When her husband had some peasants put in prison, she would secretly let them out at night and put them to sleep in a good bed; and in the morning, having sent them back to prison, she would work to procure their freedom from that lord. It is noted that in the eight years she was married, and the nine she remained a widow in the world, she hardly changed any servants. During the long journeys that M. de Chantal made to the court, she lived in a completely exemplary retreat: which so edified that wise lord that, wishing to take part in this blessing, he left the court entirely and the great advantages he could expect there from the king's good graces, so as never to leave his home again. He fell ill there in 1601, and, during this illness which lasted six months, he made, through the good advice of his wife, very holy reflections for his own perfection. Finally, having returned to convalescence, he was mortally wounded while hunting by a gunshot from an arquebus that one of his friends gave him by mistake. At the news of this accident, Jeanne ran up, weeping. Then, at the sight of her misfortune, her grief burst forth: 'Culpable imprudence! Unhappy Chazelles!' she cried. — 'Jeanne,' her husband said to her, pressing her hands in his, 'my dear Jeanne, this arquebus shot comes from higher up! Let us adore the designs of God, and may never a word of reproach be addressed to my dear cousin.' God granted the wounded man nine days to prepare for death; he confessed with the sentiments of the greatest piety and did not cease, until the last moment, to exhort his pious companion to perfect submission to the divine will. When the fatal moment arrived, and our Saint had received with her children the last farewell and the last blessings of the dying man, she was heard repeating the first cry of her grief: 'My God, may your always adorable will be accomplished in me in its full extent!' Then, showering her dear children with her most tender caresses, flooding them with her tears: 'I offer them to you, my God, be their father!'

Jeanne's grief was immense. When her husband's eyes were closed by death, she withdrew into the deepest solitude. Her castle did not seem deserted enough to her. She often escaped from it by stealth, and her only consolation was to go into a small wood not far away, to weep there at her ease. In vain did the ladies of the neighboring castles, in vain did her aunts and cousins from Semur come to Bourbilly to try to console her. She was touched and grateful; but in the evening, when she had returned to her room: "Ah!" she would say, "why will they not let me weep at my ease! They think they are relieving me, and they are martyring me." She would then fall to her knees, sobbing, and spend the night in tears. She had in her heart one of those wounds which, in great souls, never close. And yet it is from this misfortune that a new life will be born for her. She would draw from this pain, which she felt to excess but which she bore heroically, a strength, lights, a truly divine ardor, an absolute detachment from creatures, and finally that death to herself and that entire abandonment to God which made her, in His hands, the instrument of such great things.

Saint Chantal was therefore a widow at twenty-eight. After having had the rare happiness of meeting a husband worthy of her, she had been torn from his arms by a horrible accident. Of the six children with whom God, in eight years, had blessed her marriage, two had died in the cradle; four remained to her, a son five years old and three daughters even younger, the last being barely three weeks old. The widow's grief was thus increased by the mother's anxieties. The present was a burden to her because of its solitude; the future frightened her with its responsibility. These are those great sorrows of life to which nothing compares and before which all human consolations are powerless. God, who esteems a soul enough to impose such a heavy cross upon it, alone can also help it to carry it. He himself wipes away such tears; He alone heals such deep wounds. Jeanne did not take long to experience this. Consolations, unknown to souls who have not suffered, suddenly mingled with her most bitter pains. Vivid lights filled her mind. She felt great ardor to leave everything, since everything was withering and breaking so quickly, and to consecrate herself entirely to God.

Scarcely recovered from the first stupor into which one falls after such thunderous blows, she remembered the pious conversations of her husband during his last illness, and, moved by this tender memory, wishing to keep the great fidelity to him and to give the great love to God, she took a vow of perpetual chastity. Following this vow, she distributed to the poor the clothes of M. de Chantal and her own, those they had worn both of them in the days of their earthly union. She did not even keep the finery she had received at the time of her marriage, and gave it to the churches, no longer wanting, she said, any bridal gown other than that which is required to enter the wedding of the Lamb. It was also at this time that she made a vow to always use the work of her hands for the altars and for the poor; which was, in her eyes, a double and holy way of clothing Jesus Christ. The running of her house was reduced, and she dismissed a portion of her servants, after having rewarded them generously. She also regulated the use of her days, and the time that, to please her husband, she had been accustomed to give to hunting, games, and company, she resolved to use henceforth for prayer, reading, even more frequent visits to the poor and the sick, and above all for the education of her children.

To lead a life so completely consecrated to God, she felt the need of a director who could lead her through the paths of piety, which are always so difficult in the midst of the world. Her prayer, moreover, hitherto fervent but very simple, was becoming more elevated; she experienced a union with God whose intimacy astonished her; at certain moments, she felt herself carried away toward higher regions that she did not suspect. Miraculous visions mingled in her with ardent affections for God. She became alarmed, and understanding that it was impossible for her to advance without a guide along such paths, her only thought was to find a director; and, as she prayed to God earnestly to choose one for her who was filled with His lights and His love, He showed him to her in a vision, and said to her, without however declaring to her yet who he was: "Behold the man beloved of God and of men, into whose hands you must rest your conscience."

However, the sorrows of Saint Chantal did not cease to grow. Her health was failing. Her father, having learned this, wrote to her to blame her sharply for abandoning herself thus to her grief, reminding her that she owed it to herself to preserve her health for her four small children, and demanding that she leave Bourbilly and return, at least for a few months, to Dijon. He hoped for some softening of such a great mourning from the noises of the city and the company of her relatives. Jeanne left immediately, and returned to Dijon at the end of March 1602. She found there some of her childhood friends; and it was with them, in this circle of intimate friends, that she finished far from the world the first year of her widowhood. Those who have suffered much know how sweet is this half-solitude where only a few rare people penetrate who understand our sorrows, and in whose souls our groans always awaken an echo.

However, the vacations of the Parliament of Burgundy had begun, and President Frémyot, according to his custom, went to spend a few months at Thotes in Auxois; Saint Chantal left with her father and went to Bourbilly, where the care of her affairs, the harvests to be finished, and the grape ha président Frémyot Father of Jane de Chantal, president of the Parliament of Burgundy. rvests to be prepared called her. This inconsolable widow could not see again the places that were witnesses to her joys and her sorrows without shedding torrents of tears. All her attractions for a holier life also increased in solitude, with a more vivid desire to finally meet a director. One day when, in the chapel of Bourbilly, she was pouring out her soul in the presence of an image of the Blessed Virgin, and she was asking God to make her know His will, suddenly, at the moment when she was praying with the greatest attention, she saw herself surrounded by an innumerable multitude of virgins and widows, and she heard a voice from heaven which said to her: "Behold the generation that will be given to you and to my faithful servant; a chaste and chosen generation, and I want it to be holy." Jeanne understood nothing of this vision; but a sweet memory remained of it, which for some time diminished the bitterness of her pains.

In the meantime, she received a letter that she could not read without a tightening of the heart. Her father-in-law, the Baron de Chantal, who lived at the Château de Monthelon, a league from Autun, wrote to her that he was getting old, and that he wanted her to come and live with him. Jeanne, who knew the character of the old baron, the disorders of his house, and those even greater of his conduct, immediately foresaw the bitterness of the chalice she would be forced to drink. But the hope of snatching her father-in-law from evil and preparing him for a Christian death made her overcome all her repugnance. "Thus," says an old biographer, "she did not hesitate. She received this command by way of obedience, and, joining her heart to this cross, she went to live at her father-in-law's with her four children, to spend there a purgatory of about seven years and a half."

The year 1602 was drawing to a close when Madame de Chantal and her four children arrived at Monthelon. The old Baron de Chantal, before whom everything had to bow, had fallen under the dependence of a servant, without whose consent he would not have dared to make a mo Monthelon Place where Jeanne lived her widowhood under the guardianship of her father-in-law. ve, and who, having managed to dominate him, commanded as mistress in the castle. Scarcely arrived, the Saint, whose glance was at once so quick and so accurate, and who possessed in a superior degree the qualities of a mistress of the house, noticed that her father-in-law's property was being squandered. She tried to make an observation, but already the servant, dissatisfied with the arrival of our Saint, and fearing to be sent away by her, had prejudiced the old man's mind against his daughter-in-law.

Often insulted, even injured at the Château de Monthelon, Jeanne appeared greater and was even holier than when she was free and happy at Bourbilly. Solely occupied with her great work, the conversion of her father-in-law and that of his unworthy servant, she applied herself to overcoming them both by dint of gentleness. There were no steps or sacrifices that cost her anything in the hope of bringing them back to God. She even reached such a degree of heroism as to care for the children of this servant as her own, taking the trouble not only to instruct them, but sometimes to dress them, to comb them, to clean their clothes, and to render them with her own hands the most abject services.

It is not that it did not cost her much to accept such a humiliated life; all her blood revolted, especially in the beginning. She confessed that she was seized with the deepest indignation when she saw the children of this servant walking in the same rank as her own, and often being preferred to them. But she stifled these cries of nature, and to all the insolence she opposed only a gentle heart and a gracious face. Toward her father-in-law, it was the same conduct. She took advantage of every opportunity to do him good, and no violence was ever capable of diminishing her respect, nor of discouraging her patience. To this very high motive, which sustained her for seven years in this heroic life, was added another which gave her no less support. Naturally, she was a little haughty; she had drawn from her father's blood something proud and a little imperious that she wanted to stifle at any cost. The occasion seemed good to her to become humble by dint of humiliations. She succeeded beyond anything that can be said. It was in this harsh school, better than in the most severe novitiate, that God made her acquire that rare humility and that perfect obedience, which would soon make her, under the hand of Saint Francis de Sales, the instrument of such great things.

Full of these thoughts of humility, she performed, in the month of April 1603, an act of high importance. The world, in the seventeenth century, was still populated, as in the Middle Ages, by a crowd of young girls, widows, and married people who, held in the world by age or duties, associated themselves with the prayers and penances of the great religious Orders, accepted their Rule, office, spirit, and even a part of the habit, on the condition of sharing in their merits and good works, and, unable to go seek the monastery, called it in a way to them and introduced it into the domestic hearth. Two third orders were especially popular above all: that of Saint Dominic and that of Saint Francis. The first pushing souls more especially to penance, the second to humility and poverty. Jeanne preferred the latter, and had herself received into it on April 6, 1603.

In the year 1604, Saint Francis de Sales having com e to preach Lent in Dij saint François de Sales A model of gentleness to whom the venerable is compared. on, she went there to hear him; she recognized that this was that man cherished by heaven whom God had shown her, and who was to be her guide in the narrow paths of the spiritual life. The features of the preacher, his stature, even the clothes he wore, all reminded her of her former visions of Bourbilly; for his part, Saint Francis de Sales, to whom God had inspired the holy thought of founding the Order of the Visitation, and shown, in a similar vision, the lady he destined for the accomplishment of this work, recognized her during his sermon, and having addressed himself to André Frémyot, who had just been named to the archbishopric of Bourges: "Dear lord," he said to him, "would you know the young lady dressed as a widow, placed opposite the pulpit, and who was listening so attentively to the word of truth?" — "It is my sister, Monseigneur," he replied, "the Baroness de Chantal, whose virtues are incomparable. I hope that Monsieur my father will have the honor of presenting her to you." — "I shall be charmed to know her," replied the Bishop of Geneva.

Jeanne did indeed often have occasion to meet Saint Francis de Sales at her father's house. She therefore had holy conferences with him, and she profited marvelously from them to follow the attraction that the Holy Spirit gave her. She did not, however, take him entirely as her director yet; but she took him later during a trip she made to Saint-Claude, where this holy prelate happened to be; and, shortly after, being at Notre-Dame d'Etang, on September 2, 1604, she made her first vow to obey him; the following year she went to find him at Sales, where, in the ten days she stayed there, she received from his mouth admirable instructions for her conduct. From there she returned to Monthelon to her father-in-law's house, where she carefully practiced everything that had been ordered for her. She rose all winter at five o'clock in the morning without fire and without help, and in summer even earlier, then she set herself to prayer. Afterward she heard Mass, read the constitutions that her blessed director had given her, catechized and instructed her children and all the servants, and put good order into all her household. In the evening, she also assembled the whole house to perform prayer and the examination; and the world having retired, she continued still to converse with her God. She made her own bed and cleaned her room; and, so as not to lose time in doing her hair and dressing, she cut her hair and took habits even simpler and more modest than before: she followed in this the advice of the holy bishop, who, having asked her one day if she had the intention of remarrying: "Oh! for that, no," she had replied quickly. — "Then, Madame, take down the sign."

She usually fasted on Fridays and Saturdays; but she was always so ingenious in mortifying herself in her eating, that the meal was a cross and a very harsh penance for her. Her affection for the poor grew at every moment. One day she met three of them who looked very healthy. She had no money on her to give them alms; but so as not to turn them away, she gave them, for the three of them, a gold ring that she had taken from her husband's finger at his death, and which for that reason was very dear to her. At the same time, she was seized with a great sense of the presence of God. She threw herself at the feet of these poor people and kissed them. When she rose, they had disappeared, without anyone being able to know where they had gone. From then on, she remained so enamored of the poor that she made a vow never to refuse alms when asked for the love of God. Not content with this vow and the one she had previously made to always work for the poor, she took even greater care to visit them in their hovels. She went there every day, even during the excessive heat of summer or amidst the snows of winter. Upon leaving the castle, she would say to the people accompanying her, to excite their faith and her own: "We are going to visit Our Lord on Mount Calvary, or in the Garden of Olives, or at the Holy Sepulcher," diversifying the stations in order to provide divine nourishment for her piety every day.

When sickness was added to poverty, Saint Chantal's charity became even more respectful and tender. She had a small, secluded room at the castle where she kept waters, ointments, and remedies that she prepared herself for the poor. Before going out, she would equip herself with the remedies she thought she might need; and, upon arriving at the side of the sick, she would wash their wounds with her own hands, remove the pus and corrupted flesh, and dress them with care and devotion. She would then make their beds, sweep their rooms, and sit with them for a few moments; then, after wiping their faces if they had a fever, she would bid them farewell with such an affectionate air that one would have said it was a mother who had just cared for her child. She also took care to assist those who were in their agony, and to prepare and bury the dead. And when someone died in her absence, they would go as soon as possible to warn her, because, the peasants said, "burying the deceased is a right that Madame has reserved for herself."

She had spare clothes that she lent to the most needy, and yet she would take their rags, clean them, mend them neatly, and return them in better condition. Among the sick she assisted, there were two in particular who exercised her charity in an extraordinary way. One was a poor young man from Autun, completely covered in leprosy and ringworm, who was found lying in the hedges near her castle. She took him into her home and rendered him all the duties she would have rendered to her own child; finally, she assisted him at his death and sent him, like Lazarus, into the bosom of Abraham: after which she buried him with her own hands. The other was a woman who had such a horrible cancer on her face that she was completely disfigured to the point of causing horror. Our Saint lavished the most tender care upon her: to moderate her, it required the absolute prohibition of her father, who feared that she might contract this ailment and communicate it to her children.

While she was thus revealing every day, in acts of such beautiful devotion, the greatness of her love for the poor, a trip she took to Bourbilly suddenly called her to an even greater heroism. It was towards the end of September. She had just arrived at Bourbilly to oversee the grape harvest when dysentery suddenly broke out in the village, and soon there were a great number of dead and dying. Our Saint, moved with pity for these poor sick people, who lacked everything, immediately consecrated herself, with a truly divine ardor, to their service. Every morning, before the break of dawn, and after having made her hour of mental prayer, she would go to visit all the sick, bring them remedies, and clean their filth. She would then attend Mass, after which she would return to serve the sick in the most distant houses. In the evening, she would make a second visit to all the houses in the village, and upon returning, she would ask for an account of the day's work and the state of her property; for her devotions never made her less vigilant in preserving and increasing the wealth of her children. It often happened that in the evening, at the moment she returned exhausted from fatigue, they would come to fetch her to assist a dying person, and she would spend the night on her knees at the foot of his bed, praying with him, serving him like a mother, and exciting him to die holily. Seven weeks passed in this way, during which there was not a day when she did not wash and bury three or four corpses with her own hands.

She finally succumbed. Fever and dysentery soon reduced her to such a state that her life was despaired of. In this extremity, she had a letter written to her father-in-law to ask for his forgiveness and to entrust her four little orphans to him; after which, abandoned to the holy will of God, she offered Him the sacrifice of her life. But the hour had not yet come. One night, being at the very end, at the moment when everyone expected her to enter her agony, she was inspired to make a vow to the Blessed Virgin; and immediately life was restored to her. She therefore rose, and, after putting her affairs in order, she mounted her horse and went to Monthelon. She was received there with a joy difficult to describe by her four little children, who had done nothing but cry since the letter announcing her illness had been received, and even by her father-in-law, who could not console himself at the thought of losing her; for, despite the persecutions she had received at the castle of Monthelon, she was regarded and held there as a Saint. On the other hand, as soon as they knew she had arrived, the inhabitants of Monthelon ran in great numbers, not knowing how to express their joy. Women and children crowded around her, kissing her hands, and the poor blessed God for having returned their mother to them.

However, Saint Chantal's children were beginning to grow up, and the older they got, the more one saw their mother's solicitude grow; she did not leave them day or night; she worked with tireless zeal to form their minds, their hearts, and their consciences; feeling that they no longer had a father, she transferred to them all the love she had had for him; she covered them with a tenderness that is perhaps one of the most admirable wonders, but until now the least noticed, of a life so fertile in wonders. An inconsolable wife, even after six years of widowhood, she wept every day of her life, despite her complete detachment from all things, for the husband she had loved so much. In vain she consecrated herself to the service of God with all the impetuosity of her nature; in vain she poured out upon the poor all the tenderness of which her heart was capable; nothing could veil in her soul the ever-present image of her departed husband. She kept for him a tender, deep, and persevering love. Far from destroying the affections of the wife and mother, the love of God rejuvenates and vivifies them: and thus is revealed to us this ineffable mystery, that detachment is not insensibility, and that the true hearts of wives, mothers, and daughters are the hearts of Saints.

However, it was easier for her to forget the world than to make it forget her. She was still young; she had a beautiful name, a great fortune, admirable qualities of mind and heart, great external attractions, with I know not what perfection that virtue adds to beauty. Thus, hardly a year passed that she was not sought after and asked for in marriage. In the year 1606 especially, it was strongly discussed. To the first advances, she replied clearly that one should no longer think of it, that the thing was impossible. Fifteen days later, to finish this matter, she came to Dijon to see President Frémyot, and she had to withstand the most painful assaults; but nothing could shake her resolution. A little later, the insistence began again. All of our Saint's relatives entered into a league, and it was resolved to take her consent by storm. Monsieur the President Frémyot employed by turns prayers, tears, and orders, which martyred our holy baroness. One day in particular, the assaults were so long and so painful that it seemed to the poor heart of this holy widow that she was going to succumb. Then, escaping from the assembly of her relatives, she went up to her room, threw herself on her knees, prayed for a long time with torrents of tears, and finally decided to accomplish an act she had been thinking about for a long time, she armed herself with a bodkin, heated it in the fire, uncovered her chest, and traced in deep letters the name of Jesus on the spot of her heart, to mark that she was decidedly renouncing any alliance other than that of Jesus Christ. The iron entered so deeply that she no longer knew how to staunch the blood that flowed abundantly from this heroic wound. She then dipped a quill into her blood and wrote again her vows and the renewed promise to consecrate herself solely to the pure love of God.

At the same time that she engraved the name of Jesus upon her heart as a sign of absolute consecration to God, she began to experience greater attractions to leave everything, to abandon the world and her family, and to withdraw into solitude. Her desires for religious life, still vague in 1605 and more precise in 1606, suddenly became very vivid and ardent in 1607.

God reserved her for the establishment of the Order of the Visitation. It would be too long to recount all the circumstances of this great undertaking, the sentiments that God gave her to prepare her for such an important design, the lights and the ardor with which He filled her, and the paths He opened for her to prepare its execution. The project was decided upon in Annecy, during two different trips she made there to see Saint Francis de Sales and to confer with him. He first proposed other already established congregations, which she could enter, in order to test her resignation; but, seeing her submissive to everything, he finally opened to her this new establishment that Divine Wisdom had inspired in him. She therefore renewed her vows in his hands; and, while waiting for the time to form a community to arrive, she returned to her father's house in Dijon. The demon, who foresaw the great number of souls that the Order of the Visitation would take from him, neglected nothing to hinder this holy enterprise.

Before leaving for Annecy, she married her eldest daughter, Marie-Aimée de Chantal, to the Baron de Thorens, Bernard de Sales, brother of Saint Francis de Sales; she entrusted the care of her son to President Frémyot, her father; she embraced all her servants and gave them generous gifts: she also performed, while passing through Autun, many pious actions, among others vows to Saint Bernard and to Our Lady of Etang, which she fulfilled immediately. She passed through Dijon again, where her whole family was gathered at her father's house, in order to console and care for him at the moment of the much-dreaded separation. Emotion gripped every heart; the generous woman suffered a martyrdom that God alone judged, but which her tear-filled eyes betrayed despite herself. Celse-Bénigne de Chantal, her son, noticing her distress and hoping no doubt that she was shaken, threw himself at her feet, conjuring her to let herself be overcome by so much affliction, and, as his mother took a step out of the parlor to go and embrace her father, he lay across the door saying: "Well! Mother, if I cannot hold you back, at least you will pass over the body of your son." At these words, she felt her heart break, and, no longer able to sustain the weight of her sorrow, she stopped and let her tears flow freely. A holy ecclesiastic, who was witnessing this heartbreaking scene, fearing that the Saint might falter at the supreme moment, said to her: "What, Madame, can the tears of a child shake you?" — "No," replied the Saint, smiling through her tears; "but what would you have me do, I am a mother!" And, with her eyes to heaven, like a new Abraham, she passed over the body of her son.

Our Saint threw herself at her father's knees and asked for his blessing: "My God," he cried, "it is not for me to fight any longer what you have decided: I acquiesce with all my heart, and I immolate to you this daughter who is as dear to me as Isaac was to your servant Abraham." He then blessed her, raised her up, embraced her, and said to her: "Go then, my daughter, where God calls you, and let us both stop the flow of our just tears, to make a more complete homage to the divine will, and also so that the world may not be scandalized by seeing our constancy shaken." It is thus that, in these holy souls, nature was conquered and grace won a brilliant triumph.

Jeanne arrived safely in Annecy on April 4, Palm Sunday, and she was received there with joy by everyone. Sain t Fran Annecy Central city of his episcopal ministry. cis de Sales bought a house in the suburbs for her and her community; and on June 6, 1610, he gave her the veil and at the same time gave it to two young ladies commendable for their birth and piety, namely: Marie-Jacqueline Favre, daughter of the learned Antoine Favre, first president of Savoy; and Charlotte de Bréchard, from an illustrious family of Burgundy. He named the holy foundress Superior, and she performed her first duty by reading to her new daughters the constitutions she had received from the hand of this holy director, which the Church calls admirable for their wisdom, discretion, and suavity. Their number multiplied during their novitiate, and it soon rose to ten, most of whom, however, were of weak constitution and infirm. Poverty was the first treasure of their house, and they felt its effects through the deprivation of the necessities of life; but God performed miraculous multiplications to feed and sustain his spouses. At the end of the year, Jeanne-Françoise renewed her vows, and the other two made theirs for the first time. These were nevertheless still only simple vows, and poverty itself was not one of them, but only chastity and obedience, without any obligation of enclosure; on the contrary, these fervent religious sisters went out to visit the sick and render them all kinds of assistance with marvelous charity.

M. Frémyot, father of Mother Jeanne-Françoise, died at that time, and as this death brought a great change in her family, Saint Francis de Sales wished for her to make a journey to Dijon and to her lands, in order to settle affairs and provide for the rest of her children. She made this journey with the same recollection and the same exactitude in all her exercises as if she had been in her monastery; she set everything in order with such prudence, equity, and gentleness that there was no one who did not recognize that she was led by the Holy Spirit. Being ready to leave to return, she had a rapture during Mass, where God inspired her to promise by vow to always do what she would know to be the most perfect and the most pleasing to His divine eyes; and Saint Francis made no difficulty, when she had spoken to him, in giving her permission, because he recognized the admirable purity of her heart, and that she had no other desire than to please her heavenly Spouse.

Being in her religious house, she applied herself with a new zeal and courage to the relief of the poor, neglected and abandoned in their illnesses; she gained a doctor for them, and went, with her veil lowered, with a companion, into their attics and cottages to relieve them. Her daughters did the same according to her order, and they were seen with edification passing through the streets, laden with remedies, food, and linen for the sick. Nothing was more astonishing than the courage of the Saint in dressing their wounds, cleaning their filth, mending their clothes, and pulling them from the dirt where she sometimes found them as if buried. Often the hearts of her daughters recoiled; but she had become so accustomed to these exercises that she did them without any repugnance. She received great graces from heaven there, and Our Lord rewarded her Himself for what she did for Him in His suffering and afflicted members. Her primary care was to have them receive the sacraments, in order to procure for them a good death, and a great number are indebted to her for not having died without these aids and for having made, in this extremity, a penance that they had not wanted to do during their lives.

Immediately after the foundation of her Order, Saint Chantal became very infirm, and she was attacked by illnesses so extraordinary that the doctors understood nothing of them; they were forced to say that she was more ill from the violence of the love of God, which consumed her, than by any alteration of her body; she endured all these evils with an invincible strength and with such abandonment of herself that she was no more troubled by them than if she had been in full health; and furthermore, she never lost her freedom for the functions of the spirit, and, in her greatest languors, she did not cease to apply herself generously to the service of her daughters. Thus it can be said that she was all her life the servant of her houses; she commanded nothing without giving the example; she lowered herself to the vilest ministries of her community; nothing was too low for her, for her humility and her love had no bounds. The number of her nuns having increased, they moved, in 1612, into a large house located in the city. This change did not take place without many oppositions and setbacks; but their constancy prevailed over all the artifices of the evil spirit.

However, God having called from this world the Baron de Chantal, father-in-law of our religious, she was obliged to make another trip to Monthelon, to untangle the affairs of his succession, which the poor management of that housekeeper, of whom we have spoken, had extremely tangled: she went there, and she prevented, by her prudence, great disputes that were about to arise: but what is admirable is that, far from chasing away shamefully this wicked servant, from whom she had received such bad treatment, she on the contrary showered her with benefits and had her dine at her table, like one of her friends.

Scarcely had she returned to Annecy, when Cardinal de Marquemont, Archbishop of Lyon, wrote to Saint Francis de Sales, to have some of his daughters in his archiepiscopal city. The Saint judged it appropriate to send the Mother there with four others. She went there, occupied a house, and received novices there, among others Madame d'Auxerre who was its founder. The Cardinal himself performed the ceremony of the blessing of the house and the taking of possession. We must not omit here one of the most extraordinary events: As they wanted to use for this establishment some letters patent that the King had given for a convent of nuns of the Presentation, which had not succeeded, scarcely had they taken them to write 'Visitation' on them, than it was found that the finger of God had already written there the words that were desired: Congregation of the Visitation of Holy Mary. This house was not exempt from the trials ordinary to new foundations. The relatives of Madame d'Auxerre, the founder, having seized her goods out of spite that she was using them for this good work, the holy Mother sometimes saw herself in great want. One day, when she did not even have bread for her community, she had a Pater Noster said, to ask God for their daily bread, and at that very hour a stranger rang at the door, and handed Madame de Chantal a package, saying to her: "Madame, the one who sends you this alms asks you to pray for him". Then, he withdrew without wanting to answer any questions. The package contained eighty gold crowns.

In her extreme poverty, the house had only a tin chalice. Our Saint begged the divine Savior to take as much care of Himself as He took of His spouses, and to give Himself a silver chalice. The next day, a new stranger brought the community a gilded silver chalice. After nine months, she returned to Annecy, leaving her dear companions in Lyon with seven novices. It was then that His Excellency the Cardinal de Marquemont advised Saint Francis de Sales to erect his Congregation into a religious Order, with the three solemn vows and enclosure.

He received this advice as having come from heaven; he made the Constitution for it, and the holy Mother, who had already privately made a vow of poverty, made it solemnly with the other two vows: which all these dear daughters also did. A short time later, she fell into such a great renewal of her ailments that she was forced to stay in her room. This prevented her from assisting in person at the foundation of the convent of Moulins, which His Excellency the Cardinal of Lyon and the Marshal of Saint-Géran procured for her Congregation; but she recovered soon after, by an extraordinary stroke of divine goodness.

She then lost M. and Mme de Thorens, her son-in-law and her daughter, who died very Christianly. She felt a sharp pain as a mother, but she submitted entirely to the orders of God, as His faithful spouse. As soon as this trial was finished, God sent her another, namely a fever so violent that they were already despairing of her life.

She shared in this state in the fear of death that Our Lord had in the Garden of Olives; but she overcame it by an admirable resignation. Saint Francis de Sales, who knew how much she was still necessary to his Congregation, made a vow for her to Saint Charles Borromeo, and applied some of his relics to her; and by this means she recovered her health in a moment.

It was not to rest, but to work and to extend her Congregation in the places that divine Providence would mark out for her: she extended it, in fact, first to Grenoble, then to Bourges, then to Paris and to Dijon. She suffered great pains and very harsh setbacks everywhere, and in Paris itself she saw herself reduced with her daughters to such great poverty that, having neither comfortable lodging, nor furniture, nor provisions, they suffered much from hunger and cold there, and were obliged to sleep on bundles of sticks, in an attic where they sometimes found themselves covered in snow in the morning. But her patience and her perfect trust in God placed her above all these evils. During this time, other foundations of her Institute were being made elsewhere, such as in Orléans, Nevers, Valence, and Belley; it was a mystical vine that extended its branches on all sides with a surprising blessing. After she had made that of Dijon, for which she left M. Favre as superior, she went to Lyon, in 1622, where she happily found Saint Francis de Sales. She said to him with some sort of eagerness: "My Father, my heart has great need of being seen by yours". The Saint repressed this ardor at that very hour: "What", he said to her, "are you still there? Do you still have desires?" She lowered her eyes, answered nothing, and suffered that instead of speaking to her of what she wished, he spoke to her only of the affairs of her Congregation.

She then went to Belley, and it was in this city that she learned of the death of this heavenly man, who was more than a father and a mother to her. Her constancy and her resignation in this terrible blow were admirable: she wept for some time, but without trouble, and all her occupation was to adore the decrees of divine Providence, which disposes of us when it pleases Him and in the manner that suits Him. From Grenoble, she had heard a voice that said to her: "He is no more"; but she had interpreted it as the death and mystical annihilation of the holy prelate. She received his body at Annecy with all the pomp and respect that such a precious relic deserved, and she took particular care to collect his books, his sermons, and his letters, to communicate them to the public, and, by this means, to embalm the whole Church. The nuns of Annecy assembled in the Chapter before her arrival, and elected her as their perpetual superior; but she renounced this nomination, and would not suffer in her Congregation any election other than for three years, nor any continuation in the same house other than for a second triennium. She then convened, at the same place, the principal Mothers of the Institute, and she gathered with them everything that their holy founder had said or written for the formation of their Order: she composed a Customary from it, which she later accompanied with clarifications for a perfect understanding, both of the same Customary and of the Rules and Constitutions.

It would be too long to follow the Saint in all the journeys she undertook to found new monasteries, to describe the heroic actions she performed there, the supernatural assistance she received there, and the patience with which she endured all the oppositions that were encountered there. She went for this to Chambéry, to Tournon, to Remilly, to Besançon, and to Pont-à-Mousson. She also passed through Turin, capital of Piedmont, and she made the journey to Paris three more times. She was honored everywhere as a Saint. Persons of the highest quality hastened to lodge her in their homes, and received all the more consolation from it, as one saw in her a living image of all the virtues of Saint Francis de Sales.

The Archbishop of Bourges, the former Bishop of Belley, and other commissioners appointed by the court of Rome to conduct the canonization process of Saint Francis de Sales, were gathered on the day of the Assumption in the year 1627, in the parlor of the Visitation. Our Saint had come there: "My Mother," the Bishop of Geneva said to her, "we have news of the war; a fierce clash has taken place on the Île de Ré! Before going there, the Baron de Chantal went to confession, he heard Holy Mass, he received Communion..." — "And he is dead, Monseigneur?" she added. The prelate burst into tears and could not answer. The Saint fell to her knees, her tears flowing abundantly; she took her crucifix, kissed it with love, and, after giving vent to her grief: "My Redeemer, I accept your blows with all the submission of my soul, and I pray you to receive this child into the arms of your infinite mercy. I thank you for having taken him from me while he was fighting for the religion of his fathers, and for having granted him the honor of sealing with his blood the fidelity that his ancestors have always kept to the Church." She also lost, almost one after another, the Baroness de Chantal, her daughter-in-law, M. de Toulongeon, her other son-in-law, M. de Bourges, her brother, and several of the first Mothers of her Congregation. "These are many deaths," she said again with tears in her voice, "or rather many pilgrims hastening to go to the eternal home: receive them, my God, into the arms of your mercy!" At each of these painful losses, especially that of her children, the Saint, after making an act of resignation to the will of God, became silent and dejected for several days, "having a heart very sensitive to the losses of those she loved."

God exalted her merit through miraculous actions. M. de Granieux, being overwhelmed by a continuous headache, came to see her: she placed her hand on the pain and he was healed at that very hour. Fire having broken out at the home of Mademoiselle de Saint-Julien, she implored the help of heaven, and, at the same instant, it was extinguished. While in Orléans, she delivered a sister from a side ailment that had been considered incurable. In Paris, she healed another sister of a paralysis that made her face quite deformed, and a lady who was very ill was also found to be healed there after placing her hand in hers. Passing through the home of her daughter de Toulongeon, she found her grandson in danger of death; she prayed for him, and he returned to health. She worked hard to have inquiries made for the canonization of Saint Francis. The commissioners came to Annecy for this purpose and had the tomb of this blessed prelate opened on August 4, 1632. The body was found perfectly preserved, although it had been buried for ten years. The commissioners had expressly forbidden touching the holy body. Mother de Chantal nevertheless obtained permission to veil the face of the holy bishop with white taffeta, and humbly expressed the desire to kiss his hands: this was granted to her. Bowing her head then, she asked one of the commissioners to place this venerated hand upon it. They acquiesced to this new desire: at that instant, in the sight of all, the hand extended of its own accord, rested on the head of Saint Chantal, and pressed it firmly, as if to show her a paternal tenderness. The veil with which the Saint's head was covered is still kept at the monastery of Annecy as a relic. One day while she was praying, she heard a voice that said to her: "Look at God, and let Him act," and, another time, she received notice from heaven to read a passage from the works of Saint Augustine.

She had been in contact in Paris, on the occasion of the foundations she had gone there to estab lish, with Saint Vinc saint Vincent de Paul Superior General of the communities of the Visitation in Paris. ent de Paul. She appointed him as superior general to her nascent communities and obtained his agreement to send some priests of the Mission to Annecy.

Finally, the time approached when the Saint was to receive the reward for so many labors and for the purest and most perfect virtues. She was nearing her seventieth year; the strength of her body was diminishing, yet her mind had lost none of its vigor and activity. She was obliged to go and visit the community of Moulins, where the Princess des Ursins, widow of Duke Henri de Montmorency, who had just paid with her head for the crime of having drawn the sword of the first Christian baron against the flag of his sovereign, had taken refuge. From there, she was called to Paris by Queen Anne of Austria, who honored her with her confidence.

On December 2, 1641, she resumed the road to Moulins, where s he was Moulins Place of the saint's death. welcomed with more happiness than ever. On the 8th, she was struck by a violent inflammation of the chest: she understood that it was the signal of her deliverance. Following the example of Saint Francis de Sales, she desired to have a Father of the Society of Jesus to assist her in her final moments. She made her general confession to Father de Lingende with complete freedom of spirit. On the 11th, after having received the holy Viaticum, she had a letter written under her dictation to all the superiors of the Order, a sort of spiritual testament, in which she recommended to her dear daughters humility, simplicity, detachment, the spirit of union, and the observance of the Rules. She signed this letter, declaring that she had nothing more to say. On the 13th, around eight o'clock in the morning, she received Extreme Unction with happiness. Toward evening, she sank noticeably; the prayers for the dying were said, to which she responded with as much calm as fervor. At seven o'clock, Father de Lingende, seeing the moment arriving, said to her: "Come now, my dear mother, here is the Bridegroom who comes: do you wish to go to meet him?" — "Yes, oh! yes, my father... I am going... Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!" The beautiful soul of Saint Chantal flew away while pronouncing for the third time this sweet name of Jesus.

She was seventy years old, thirty-two of which she had spent in her Congregation. Her face did not change at all, and it remained as beautiful after her death as it was during her life. We shall not pause here any longer to offer her eulogy. So many heroic actions, so many glorious enterprises for the advancement of the honor of God, so many foundations made by her own hand or through her care, and what is even more remarkable, this surprising propagation of her Order since her passing, and above all this eminent piety and this zeal for regular observance which are maintained there on all sides without any alteration or slackening, complete it much better than we could ever do.

Numerous miracles followed the death of Saint Jane Frances de Chantal. We have reported some of those she performed during her life. Five miracles having been recognized, attested, and proven juridically, she was beatified by Benedict XIV on November 13, 1751, and canonized on August 17, 1767, by Cle ment XIII, w Clément XIII Pope who granted indulgences for the cult of Saint Gregory. ho fixed her feast day on August 21.

## CULT AND RELICS.

The body of the Saint remained exposed to the veneration of the faithful in the church of the Visitation in Annecy until 1793. At that time, Messrs. Burquier, Amblet, Rochette, and Ruleydieu removed her coffin and that of Saint Francis de Sales to protect them from sacrilegious hands. Upon the restoration of worship in 1804, Mgr de Mérinville, Bishop of Geneva and Chambéry, performed the recognition. In 1806, these precious remains were recognized again by Mgr de Sales, who solemnly had the shrine of Saint Francis de Sales placed in the cathedral of Annecy, and that of Saint Chantal in the church of Saint-Maurice in the same city.

In 1826, under Mgr Thiollez, who had re-established (1824) a monastery of the Visitation in Annecy, the holy relics of the illustrious founders were transported with the greatest pomp into the church of this convent, in the presence of Their Majesties the King and Queen of Sardinia, several prelates, the de Sales family, and an immense gathering of ecclesiastics and people.

Devotion to Saint Jane Frances is still vibrant, especially in Savoy, where it is passed down from generation to generation. Numerous graces obtained through her merits testify every day to how great and powerful before God is she who was able to leave everything and sacrifice everything to obey His voice.

The monastery of the Visitation in Nevers possesses the heart and the two eyes of Saint Chantal.

We have used, to complete this biography, the History of Saint Chantal, by Abbé Bougand.