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Spiritual Direction and Auricular Confession
Spiritual Direction and Auricular Confession Author:Jules Michelet Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. St. Francis of Sales and Madame de Chantal.—The Order of the Visitation. —Quietism.—Results of Religious Direction. St. Francis of Sales was ve... more »ry popular in France, and particularly in Burgundy, where there had remained, since the League, a strong leaven of religious zeal. The parliament of Dijon, invited him there to preach; He was welcomed by his friend, Andr£ Fremiot, who, at one time councillor of the parliament, had become archbishop of Bourges. The son of a president highly respected at Dijon, he was brother of Madame de Chantal, and great-uncle of Madame de Sevigne, her grand daughter. The biographies of St. Francis and Madame de Chantal, to make their meeting at this time romantic and marvellous, suppose, with very little probability, that they had never seen, and hardly heard each other spoken of. They had met each other only in their visions and eestacies. During Lent, when the saint preached at Dijon, he noticed her particularly above all the other ladies, and as he descended from the pulpit, he inquired—" Who is that young widow, who listened so attentively to the Word ?" " That," said the archbishop, " is my sister, the baronness de Chantal." She was then, (1604) aged thirty-two years. St. Francis was thirty-seven. She was, therefore, born in 1572, the year of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. She had, from her birth up, something of austerity, but was ardent and impetuous. When she was yet but six years of age, a Huguenot gentleman See the biographies of Madame de Chantal, by the Jesuit Fechet, and Bishop Maupas. See also her Letters, three volumes—unfortunately incomplete, published 1753. MADAME DE CHANTAL. 25 gave her some sweatmeats—she threw them in the fire. " Monsieur," she said, " see how the heretics will burn in hell, because...« less