Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T05:21:04.709Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The seventeenth-century English and Scottish reception of Francis de Sales’ An Introduction to a Devout Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2016

Mary Hardy
Mary Hardy*
Affiliation:
School of Divinity, History & Philosophy, King’s College, University of Aberdeen, AB24 3FX UK. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

St Francis de Sales’ devotional manual, An Introduction to a Devout Life (1609), had a complex but fascinating reception history in seventeenth-century England and Scotland. Collectively, the English-language editions in this century include two translations and, perhaps most interestingly, several reformed editions. It is curious that a post-Reformation, Tridentine Catholic work, written by a French bishop dedicated to converting Protestant ‘Heretiques,’ would appeal to both Catholics and Protestants alike. Most of the seventeenth-century English editions were published abroad in Douai, Paris, St Omer, and Rouen, places that were home to many English and Scottish exiled communities, both lay and religious. Two of the three reformed editions were published in England, evidence of the Introduction’s widespread readership and its importance to seventeenth-century English devotion. Finally, during James II’s reign two Catholic editions were openly published, one in England and the other in Scotland.

Keywords

English recusantsScottish penal CatholicsSt Francis de SalesReceptionAn Introduction to a Devout Life
Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , October 2016 , pp. 228 - 258
Copyright
© Trustees of the Catholic Record Society 2016. Published by Cambridge University Press 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Yamamoto-Wilson, John R., ‘The Protestant Reception of Catholic Devotional Literature in England to 1700,’ Recusant History (hereafter RH) 32,1 (2014): 72 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Some older works that examine the Protestant reception of Catholic works include Birrell, T.A., ‘English Catholic mystics in non-Catholic circles,’ The Downside Review (hereafter TDR) 94 (1976): 99–117 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blom, J.M., ‘A German Jesuit and his Anglican Readers. The Case of Jeremias Drexelius (1581–1632),’ in G.A.M. Janssens and F.G.A.M. Aarts, eds. Studies in Seventeenth Century Literature, History and Bibliography (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1984), 41–51 Google Scholar. More recent works include Von Habsburg, Maximilian, Catholic and Protestant Translations of the Imitatio Christi, 1425–1650 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011)Google Scholar and Walsham, Alexandra, ‘Wholesome Milk and Strong Meat: Peter Canisius’s Catechisms and the Conversion of Protestant Britain,’ British Catholic History 32 (2015): 293–314 Google Scholar.

3 Yamamoto-Wilson, ‘The Protestant Reception of Catholic Devotional Literature’: 69.

4 Stopp, Elisabeth, ‘Healing Differences: The Influence of St. Francis de Sales in England,’ in A Man to Heal Differences :Essays and Talks on St Francis de Sales (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 1997), 86 Google Scholar. This chapter of Stopp’s book is the first part of a two-part article with the same title. ‘Part I’ first featured in Salesian Studies 3 (1966): 26–45. ‘Part II,’ which is found in Salesian Studies 4 (1967): 39–46, deals with the eighteenth-century legacy of Sales’ Introduction in England, especially his influence on Bishop Richard Challoner, who published a new translation of the Introduction, and whose own work, The Garden of the Soul, was greatly indebted to the Introduction.

5 Stopp, ‘Healing Differences,’ 90–2; 104–7.

6 Ibid., 91.

7 Marceau, William, ‘Recusant Translations of Saint Francis de Sales’ TDR 114 (1996): 224 Google Scholar.

8 Ibid., 225. Like Stopp’s essays, Elfrida’s Dubois’ ‘Saint François de Sales en Angleterre,’ in Bordes, H. and Hennequin, J., eds. L’Unidivers salésien: Saint Francois de Sales hier et aujourd’hui. Actes du colloque international de Metz, 17–19 septembre 1992 (Paris: Champion-Slatkine, 1994)Google Scholar gives a general overview of Sales’ reception in England, both his Introduction and his other works, among both Catholics and Protestants, into the twentieth century. While both Stopp and Dubois cursorily mention Sales’ influence on Jeremy Taylor, Dubois had devoted an article to comparing the two authors popular works: ‘Saint Francis de Sales and Jeremy Taylor: Introduction a La Vie Devote and Holy Living. A Comparison,’ History of European Ideas 2 (1981): 49–63.

9 Bawcutt, N.W., ‘A Crisis of Laudian Censorship: Nicholas and John Okes and the Publication of Sales’ An Introduction to a Devout Life in 1637,’ The Library 1 (2004): 407 Google Scholar.

10 Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Ryan, John K., ed., (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1953), xxv Google Scholar. For this section I have chosen to use Ryan’s translation which is ‘based upon the traditional translations of John Yaworth [sic] and the English priests of Tournai College and upon the text of the original French work as established by Dom. B. Mackey in the definitive Annecy edition. The attempt has been made to give a complete and accurate English rendition’ (Editor’s Introduction, xiii). The ‘traditional translations’ Ryan refers to are the two that are produced during the seventeenth century, which are analysed in this article.

11 Brémond, Henri, A Literary History of Religious Thought in France: From the Wars of Religion Down to Our Own Times, trans. K.L. Montgomery, 3 vols (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1928), 1: 15 Google Scholar.

12 Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life (1953), xxv–xxvi.

13 Ibid., 3.

14 Janelle, Pierre, The Catholic Reformation (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1963), 199 Google Scholar.

15 Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life (1953), 9.

16 Ibid., 75–6.

17 Ibid., 52.

18 The Canons and Decrees of the Sacred and Ecumenical Council of Trent, trans., Rev. J. Waterworth (London: Dolman, 1848), 77.

19 Ibid.

20 Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life (1953), 83–4.

21 Ibid., 99.

22 Stopp, A man to heal differences, 25.

23 Ibid.

24 Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life (1953), 196.

25 Ibid., 7.

26 Norman, Edward, Roman Catholicism in England from the Elizabethan Settlement to the Second Vatican Council (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 1 Google Scholar.

27 Bossy, John, The English Catholic community, 1570–1850 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1975), 11 Google Scholar.

28 McLain, Lisa, Lest We Be Damned: Practical Innovation & Lived Experience Among Catholics in Protestant England, 1559–1642 (London: Routledge, 2004)Google Scholar, chapter five.

29 Watts, John R., ‘Roman Catholicism in Scotland: Late Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries,’ in Colin MacLean and Kenneth Veitch, eds. Scottish Life and Society: A Compendium of Scottish Ethnology, 14 vols, 12, Religion (Edinburgh: Birlinn Ltd, 2006), 153 Google Scholar; Aveling, J.C.H., The Handle and the Axe: The Catholic Recusants in England from Reformation to Emancipation (London: Blond & Briggs Ltd., 1976), 191–192 Google Scholar; Mullet, Michael, Catholics in Britain and Ireland, 1558–1829 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 71 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walsham, Alexandra, Catholic Reformation in Protestant Britain (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 244 Google Scholar.

30 Miola, Robert, ed., Early Modern Catholicism: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 33 Google Scholar.

31 Blom, J.M., The Post-Tridentine English Primer (The Netherlands: Catholic Record Society, 1982), 34 Google Scholar.

32 Saward, John, Morrill, J., Tomko, M., eds. Firmly I Believe and Truly: the Spiritual Tradition of Catholic England, 1483–1999 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 134 Google Scholar.

33 Blom, Post-Tridentine English Primer, 3.

34 McClain, Lest We Be Damned, 249.

35 Burgess, Glenn, Wymer, R., Lawrence, J., eds. The Accession of James I – Historical and Cultural Consequences (Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006), xiii CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Ross, Allan, St Francis de Sales and the Introduction to the Devout Life (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd., 1925), 40 Google Scholar. Ross does not give source for this story. This same story is quoted, without reference, by other authors, including Dubois and Stopp.

37 Milton, Anthony, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought 1600–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pss, 1995), 32 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 According to Elisabeth Stopp, Dom Mackey (the editor of Sales’ works) identified ‘I.Y.’ as a ‘John Yaworth, O.S.B., by others, on insufficient evidence, as John Yakesley or John Yates.’ A Man to heal differences, 90. All other authors refer to ‘I.Y.’ as Yakesley or Yaxley.

39 de Sales, Francis, An introduction to a devovte life Composed in Frenche by the R. Father in God Francis Sales, Bishop of Geneua. And translated into Englisg [sic], by I.Y. ([Douai:] Iohn Heigham, 1613)Google Scholar, the epistle dedicatorie

40 Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 13; 14.

41 The author has not been able to find any bibliographical information concerning Ann Roper. Pearl Hogrefe has demonstrated that the relationship between the Ropers and the Mores existed long before the marriage between William Roper and Margaret More joined the two families in 1521. ‘Sir Thomas More’s Connection with the Roper Family,’ Modern Language Association 47 (1932), 529. In fact, between 1553–58, William Roper composed a hagiographical biography of Thomas More which circulated in manuscript form until it was eventually published in 1626. Miola, Early Modern Catholicism, 31.

42 Sales, An introduction to a devovte life (1613), the epistle dedicatorie.

43 Ibid.

44 Mullet, Michael neatly summarises this debate in Catholics in Britain and Ireland, 1558–1829 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), 1–26 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 McClain, Lest We Be Damned, 238.

46 Ibid., 151.

47 Dr. John Thaulerus was a fourteenth-century Dominican friar.

48 Stopp, Elisabeth, ‘The Influence of St. Francis de Sales in England, Part II,’ Salesian Studies 4 (1967): 41 Google Scholar.

49 Allison, A.F. and Rogers, D.M., The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English Counter-Reformation between 1558 and 1640, Volume 2 – Works in English (Hants: Scolar Press, 1994), 173 Google Scholar.

50 de Sales, Francis, An introduction to a devovte life Composed in Frenche by the R. Father in God Francis Sales, Bishop of Geneua. And translated into English by I.Y. (Iohn Heigham, 1614)Google Scholar, ‘The Communication of Doctovr Thaulervs with a poore beggar.’

51 Miola, Early Modern Catholicism, 271.

52 For bibliographic information of these editions see the appendix.

53 Stopp, A man to heal differences, 90.

54 Mellinghoff-Bougerie, ‘Four Centuries of Editions of the Introduction,’ 4.

55 Bossy, English Catholic Community, 49.

56 Ibid., 49.

57 Sharpe, Kevin, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 306 Google Scholar.

58 For an older, but more detailed discussion on George Conn, his influence on Charles, and his reception in London see Albion, Gordon, Charles I and the Court of Rome: A study in 17th Century Diplomacy (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd., 1935), 117–426 Google Scholar.

59 John Heigham (c. 1568–1634) and John Wilson were ‘prominent figures in the recusant book trade in the first decades of the seventeenth century.’ Heigham started out in Douai as a translator, publisher, and bookseller of English recusant books. Blom, Post-Tridentine English Primer, 39; 60. Heigham was responsible for publishing at least three of the first English editions of Sales’ Introduction.

60 Walsham, Catholic Reformation in Britain, 258.

61 Stopp, A man to heal differences, 92.

62 Sales, An introduction to a devovte life (1613), 31.

63 de Sales, Francis, A New Edition of the Introduction to a Devout Life, (n.p. [London] 1669), 3–4 Google Scholar.

64 Chambelland, Jules, ‘St. Francis de Sales and His Portraits’ trans. Alexander T. Pocetto, Annales Salesiennes (1937), 5 Google Scholar.

65 Sales, A New Edition of Introduction (1669), A summary of the author’s life.

66 Ibid.

67 Kleinman, Ruth, Saint Francois de Sales and the Protestants (Geneva: Librairie E. Droz, 1962), 82 Google Scholar.

68 Sales, A New Edition of Introduction (1669), the preface.

69 Ibid.

70 Sales, A New Edition of Introduction (1669); the epistle dedicatorie.

71 Ibid.

72 Bossy, English Catholic Community, 280.

73 Ibid., 78.

74 Blom, Post-Tridentine English Primer, 41.

75 de Sales, Francis, An Introduction to a Devout Life (London: Henry Hills, 1686)Google Scholar.

76 Corp, Edward T., A Court in Exile: The Stuarts in France, 1689–1718, with contributions by Edward Gregg, Howard Erskine-Hill and Geoffrey Scott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 251 Google Scholar.

77 The Fifth Sermon Preach’d before the King and Queen, in Their Majesties Chappel at St. James’s, upon the Feast of S. Francis Sales Jan. 29 1685/86. By the Reverend Father Dom. Ph. Ellis, Monk of the Holy Order of S. Benedict, and of the English Congr. Chaplain in Ordinary to His Majesty (London: Henry Hills, 1686), 21–2.

78 The Memoirs of King James II. Containing an account of the transactions of the last twelve years of his life: with the circumstances of his death. Translated from the French original (London: D. Edwards, 1702), 6.

79 Pious Sentiments of the late King James II of Blessed Memory. Upon Divers Subjects of Piety. Written in his own hand, and found in his cabinet after his death (London, 1704), 2.

80 de Sales, Francis, An Introduction to a Devout Life. The Last Edition. ([Edinburgh: Holyrood Press, James Watson] 1687)Google Scholar.

81 MacKechnie, Aonghus, ‘The Earl of Perth’s Chapel of 1688 at Drummond Castle and the Roman Catholic Architecture of James VII,’ Architectural Heritage 25 (2014): 116 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82 Cowan, W., ‘The Holyrood Press, 1686–1688,’ Edinburgh Bibliographic Society 6 (1904): 87 Google Scholar.

83 Sales, An Introduction to a Devout Life (1687), dedicatory epistle.

84 Ibid.

85 Ibid.

86 White, Helen C., English Devotional Literature, Prose, 1600–1640 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1931), 21 Google Scholar.

87 Doelman, James, King James I and the Religious Culture of England, (Montrose: Standard Press, 1970), 15 Google Scholar.

88 Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 10.

89 Ibid., 173.

90 Ibid., 176.

91 Barbour, Reid, Literature and Religious Culture in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 2–4 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

92 Ryrie, Alec, Being Protestant in Reformation Britain, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 286–287 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

93 Ibid., 288.

94 White, English Devotional Literature, 46.

95 Ibid., 78.

96 Miola, Early Modern Catholicism, 27.

97 White, English Devotional Literature, 98.

98 de Sales, Francis, An Introduction to a devout Life: Leading to the way of Eternity (London, 1616)Google Scholar, dedicatory epistle.

99 For example, Andrewes, Lancelot, A Manual of the private devotions and meditations of the Right Reverend Father in God Lancelot Andrews (London: Moseley, 1670)Google Scholar.

100 de Sales, Francis, An Introduction to a Devout Life […] translated and reformed from the errors of the Popish edition (London, 1701)Google Scholar, ‘Of the Rise and Progress of Spiritual Books in the Romish Church.’

101 von Habsburg, Maximilian, Catholic and Protestant Translations of the Imitatio Christi, 1425–1650: From Late Medieval Classic to Early Modern Bestseller, (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 141 Google Scholar.

102 Sales, An introduction to a devovte life, (1614), 40.

103 Sales, An Introduction to a devout Life (1616), 29.

104 Quoted in Bawcutt, ‘A Crisis of Laudian Censorship,’ 406.

105 I, Charles, ‘A Proclamation for calling in a Book, entituled, An Introduction to a Deuout Life; and that the same be publikely burnt’ (London: Robert Barker, 1637)Google Scholar.

106 Bawcutt, ‘A Crisis of Laudian Censorship,’ 404.

107 Towers, Suellen M., Control of Religious Printing in Early Stuart England (Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2003), 224 Google Scholar.

108 Bawcutt, ‘A Crisis of Laudian Censorship,’ 408.

109 Stopp, A man to heal differences, 107.

110 Harmsen, Theodor, ‘Dodwell, Henry (1641–1711),’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7763 Google Scholar, accessed 5 December, 2015.

111 de Sales, Francis, An Introduction to a Devout Life containing especially, a prudent method for spiritual closet-exercises, and remedies against the difficulties ordinarily occurring in the conduct of a pious life, Fitted for the use of Protestants, Henry Dodwell, ed., (Dublin, 1673)Google Scholar, preface.

112 Ibid., 120.

113 Sales, An Introduction to a Devout Life (1686), 29–30.

114 Sales, An Introduction to a Devout Life (1673), 22.

115 Sales, An Introduction to a Devout Life (1701), ‘Of the Rise and Progress of Spiritual Books in the Romish Church.’

116 Ibid.

117 Ibid.

118 Ibid.

119 In the third part, the chapter numbers skip from thirty-nine to forty-one on account of removing the chapter ‘Of the honestie and chastitie of the marriage bed.’

120 Sales, An Introduction to a Devout Life (1701), ‘Of the Rise and Progress of Spiritual Books in the Romish Church.’

121 Stopp, A man to heal differences, 86.

122 Saward, Firmly I believe and truly, 246.

123 Rev. Goulburn, Edward M., ‘St. Francis de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life ,’ in Companions for the Devout Life (London: John Murray, 1875), 56 Google Scholar.