St. Francis de Sales's Spirituality of the Crèche - Franz von Sales

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8 ICSS NEWSLETTER Figure 2.4. Albert Flamen, Emblem XXXII, in Adrien Gambart, La vie symbolique du bienheureux François de Sales, evesque et prince de Genève comprise sous le voile de 52 emblèmes . . . (Paris, 1664). Photo: Saint Joseph’s University Press. Here Gambart provides a graphic image that is the visual counterpart of Francis’s verbal image of the Infant Jesus in the manger as the magnet of hearts. The emblem’s pictura shows a large heart-shaped magnet, held by a hand in the clouds, that draws up a chain of smaller hearts The motto reads: Magnes amoris amor, “The magnet of love is love”; and the verse, L’amour sert luy-mesme d’Aymant,/Pour tirer le cœur de l’Amant, “Love itself serves as a magnet/To draw the lover’s heart,” playing on the French word for magnet, aymant, something that loves. Gambart’s method of presenting Francis’s life and virtues through the medium of images and symbols is very much in keeping with the saint’s symbolic thinking and metaphorical expression—a point underscored by the use of Francis’s own images for many of the book’s emblems. In the prose text accompanying the emblem, Gambart acknowledges the original source of this image in Francis, while at the same time redirecting it to the saint himself, as the emblem’s title makes clear: Son amour cordial et plein d’attraits, “His heartfelt and most attractive love.” previous year to a nun, Francis further unpacks the latter theme. For our purposes, this text also brings together several themes already touched upon—being close by the manger to learn from the Infant Jesus, who loves humanity with abandon and suffers for that love, who wants nothing more than to draw our hearts to His own, and who ardently desires our progress in virtue. It is good for you to be close to this sacred manger, where the Savior of our soul teaches us so many virtues by His silence. How much He tells us by saying nothing! Our own heart should be kindled by His little heart panting with love for us. See how lovingly He has written your name in the depths of His divine heart as He lies on the straw for your sake, longing lovingly for your progress. . . . A magnet attracts iron, amber attracts straw and hay: now whether we are hard in heart as iron or feeble and helpless as straw we should follow the attraction of this sovereign little Infant, the real magnet of hearts. 27 Concluding Thoughts The Vincentian priest, Adrien Gambart (1600-68), served as confessor to the Visitation monastery in the faubourg Saint- Jacques in Paris for over three decades. In preparation for Francis’s canonization (1665), Gambart published in 1664 his emblem book, La vie symbolique du bienheureux François de Sales (The Life of St. Francis de Sales in Symbols). This book reveals Gambart to be a perceptive commentator on, and creative interpreter of, Salesian spirituality. Gambart’s method of presenting Francis’s biography and virtues through the medium of images and symbols is very much in keeping with the saint’s symbolic thinking and metaphorical expression—a point underscored by the use of Francis’s own images for many of the book’s emblems. As Gambart points out in the book’s dedicatory letter to the Visitandines of the faubourg Saint-Jacques monastery, this method also highlights the correspondence between Francis’s profuse use of similitudes and Christ’s method of teaching by images and parables. 28 In Gambart’s book, we find a graphic image that is the visual counterpart of Francis’s verbal image of the Infant Jesus as the magnet of hearts. Emblem XXXII pictures a large heart-shaped magnet, held by a hand in the clouds, that draws up a chain of smaller hearts (Figure 2.4). The motto reads: Magnes amoris amor, “The magnet of love is love”; and the verse, L’amour sert luy-mesme d’Aymant,/Pour tirer le cœur de l’Amant, “Love itself serves as a magnet/To draw the lover’s heart,” playing on the French word for magnet, aymant, something that loves. 29 In the accompanying prose text, Gambart acknowledges the original source of this image in Francis, while at the same time redirecting it to the saint himself, as the emblem’s title makes clear: Son amour cordial et plein d’attraits, “His heartfelt and most attractive love.” This heart-shaped magnet, which attracts and draws up after itself all others, is the symbol of the heartfelt love of our saint, who was in his lifetime and still is a true magnet, as he himself says of our Savior in His Nativity. 30
Francis’s contemporaries emphasized the importance of learning the lessons of the crèche. But few, if any, equaled Francis is this regard, as he embodied and became a living image of the divine love for each and every person that is revealed and made visible by the Infant Jesus in the manger. By allowing this Jesus to live in him, Francis became a magnet who drew and continues to draw hearts to God through the attractiveness of his heartfelt love that is palpable in his spiritual legacy: his writings, and the Visitation Order, together with the religious congregations and institutes dedicated to the service of the Church in the modern world by living and spreading Salesian spirituality. NOTES Joseph F. Chorpenning, O.S.F.S. 1. Œuvres de saint François de Sales, Édition complète, 27 vols. (Annecy: J. Niérat, 1892-1964), 9:460 (hereafter Œuvres complètes). 2. On the various Visitation monasteries in Annecy (the “Galerie” [1610-12], the first monastery [1612-1793], the second monastery [1634-1793, presently the motherhouse of the Sisters of St. Joseph], and the current monastery), see La Visitation d’Annecy et l’Ordre de la Visitation Sainte-Marie: 400 ans de vie et d’histoire (Annecy: Monastère de la Visitation, 2010). 3. Rudolf Berliner, “The Origins of the Crèche,” Gazette des beaux-arts 30, 6th ser. (Dec. 1946): 249-78, at 251. 4. Matthew Powell, OP, The Christmas Crèche: Treasure of Faith, Art & Theater (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1997), 70. 5. Berliner, 251. 6. Ibid., 250. 7. Ibid., 251-52. 8. Ibid., 252. 9. The Christmas Sermons of Bl. Guerric of Igny, trans. Sr. Rose of Lima, with an essay by Thomas Merton (Abbey of Gethsemani, 1959), 59. 10. John of Caulibus, Meditations on the Life of Christ, trans. and ed. F. X. Taney, Sr., A. Miller, OSF, and C. Mary Stallings-Taney (Asheville, NC: Pegasus Press, 2000), 38. 11. See, e.g., Denise Despres, Ghostly Sights: Visual Meditation in Late- Medieval Literature (Norman, OK: Pilgrim Books, 1989), 19-54, and “Memory and Image: The Dissemination of a Franciscan Meditative Text,” Mystics Quarterly 16/3 (Sept. 1990): 133-42. 12. Philip Sheldrake, “Imagination and Prayer,” The Way 24/2 (1984): 92-102, esp. 97. 13. Frank Paul Bowman, “Devotional writing,” in The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French, ed. Peter France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 237-39, at 238. 14. Introduction, Part 2, chap. 4: Saint François de Sales, Œuvres, eds. André Ravier and Roger Devos, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), 85-86 (hereafter Œuvres). 15. Powell, 95. 16. Philip Conisbee, Mary L. Levkoff, and Richard Rand, The Ahmanson Gifts: European Masterpieces in the Collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1991), 79-82. 17. L’Art du XVII e siècle dans les Carmels de France, ed. Yves Rocher, exh. cat. (Paris: Musée du Petit Palais, 1982), 61. 18. Treatise, Preface: Œuvres, 348. 19. I am deeply grateful to Dr. Josette Malbert-Curtil for bringing this painting to my attention, as well as for sharing her insightful commentary on it that formed part of her recent doctoral thesis, Mémoire et patrimonie: Les representations de saint François de Sales dans les églises et chapelles des Pays de Savoie (1594-1965), Université Pierre Mendès, Grenoble, 2010. 20. Œuvres complètes, 9:457, 459-60. 21. Jacques Le Brun, “La dévotion à l’Enfant Jésus au XVII e siècle,” in Histoire de l’enfance en Occident. 1. De l’Antiquité au XVII e siècle, ed. D’Egle Becchi and Dominique Julia (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1998), 402-431, esp. 408-10; Charles J. Healey, SJ, Christian Spirituality: An Introduction to the Heritage (New York: Alba House, 1999), 290. 22. Exhortation III. Pour le troisième samedi de l’Avent: “Sur les anéantissements du Verbe éternel en sa venue ici-bas”: Ste. Jeanne- Françoise Frémyot de Chantal, Sa vie et ses œuvres, 8 vols. (Paris: Plon, 1874-79), 2:167-68. 23. Wendy M. Wright, Heart Speaks to Heart: The Salesian Tradition, Traditions of Christian Spirituality Series (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2004), 65. 24. Treatise, Book 1, chap. 15: Œuvres, 395. 25. Treatise, Book 2, chap. 8: Œuvres, 431. 26. Treatise, Book 2, chap. 8: Œuvres, 433. 27. Lettre MCDXCVIII, A une religieuse, c. 6 Jan. 1619: Œuvres complètes, 18:334-35. 28. Adrien Gambart’s Emblem Book: The Life of St. Francis de Sales in Symbols, a facsimile edition with an introductory study by Elisabeth Stopp, ed. by Terence O’Reilly, with an essay by Agnès Guiderdoni- Bruslé (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2005), 45-48; facsimile, unnumbered pages. For Gambart’s biography, see ibid., 17-19. 29. Ibid., 112-13; facsimile, 124. 30. Ibid., facsimile, 125. = ICSS NEWSLETTER 9
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St. Francis de Sales's Spirituality of the Crèche - Franz von Sales

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