Saint · Early modern
St. Jane Frances de Chantal
1572–1641 · Salesian
Canonized 1767 by Clement XIII; co-foundress with St. Francis de Sales of the Visitation of Holy Mary.
A Burgundian baroness and mother of four, widowed at twenty-eight when her husband was shot in a hunting accident, Jane put herself under the direction of Francis de Sales in 1604 and with him founded the Visitation at Annecy in 1610, for widows and women too frail for the austere orders. The first sisters visited the sick, but the Archbishop of Lyon required enclosure and the founders accepted it. She led some eighty houses through decades of interior darkness, taught her sisters a prayer of “simple surrender” of oneself into God's hands, and spoke of a “martyrdom of love” in giving up one's own will.
Why he matters: She is Francis de Sales's equal partner and the proof that his gentle spirituality could found a lasting order, and a patron of widows, parents and those who pray in dryness.
Reading
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Francis de Sales, Jane de Chantal: Letters of Spiritual DirectionSt. Francis de Sales and St. Jane de Chantal (trans. Péronne Marie Thibert, VHM), 1988 · Their letters to each other and hers to her sisters; the best way in.
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Treatise on the Love of GodSt. Francis de Sales · Book IX on holy indifference was written with her trials in mind.
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Bond of Perfection: Jeanne de Chantal and François de SalesWendy M. Wright, 1985 · A study of their friendship and its spirituality.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each question the test asks.