Return to the index of "Other Women's Voices."
Updated 12-09-08
Jeanne Francoise Fremyot, Baronne
de Chantal /Jane Frances (1572-1641)
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"...WITHOUT THE LEAST DESIRE TO FIND CONSOLATION."
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Jeanne Francoise Fremyot was born into a non-noble but leading family of Dijon. Before she was two years old, her mother died; a year later, her father remarried. At 20, Jeanne was married to Baron Christophe de Rabutin-Chantal; he was eight years older than she and in serious debt. Jeanne administered his estates, cared for his dependents, and gave birth to six children, four of whom survived infancy. Two weeks after the birth of her last child in 1601, her husband was killed in a hunting accident.
To protect her children's inheritance Chantal agreed to live with her father-in-law, where she continued her work at the estates and among the poor. On a 1604 visit to her father, she met Francis de Sales, five years older than she and bishop of Geneva --- urbane and experienced in providing spiritual guidance to laywomen. They corresponded regularly and met occasionally.
In 1607 Chantal went to visit Francis at Annecy. There Francis proposed the establishment of a new religious community for women whose health and age made them unsuitable for the more rigorous traditional orders. They would take simple rather than solemn vows, focus on internal prayer rather than on the canonical office, eat and dress as the poor did rather than fast and wear a habit as traditional religious did. They would also leave their community to go out to visit and help the poor and the ill --- hence the group's name of Visitation.
Chantal herself would have preferred a more austere life, but her years of administrative experience at the estates of her husband and her father-in-law, together with her enthusiam for his vision, made Francis see her as the ideal foundress. Chantal convinced most of her family to approve her decision, although her teen-aged son (who would become the father of the Marquise de Sevigne) felt that she had abandoned him. In 1610, she and four other women moved into a house in Annecy; in the following year over a dozen professed their simple vows.
Although there was some criticism of the unusual nature of the community, all went smoothly until a second foundation was made in 1615, at Lyons. The archbishop there soon decided that the women at the Visitation should become nuns --- take solemn vows and live in strict enclosure. Francis tried to keep the community as he and Chantal had envisioned it, but he was unsuccessful; by the time papal approval was granted in 1619, the several Visitation houses had become a traditional order of enclosed nuns.
Since almost all of Chantal's extant writing is from after 1619, we don't know how she felt about claustration, but she and Francis worked with what they had: by the time of Francis' death in 1622, there were 13 foundations. Five years later, there were 28; when Chantal died in 1641, there were 86.
In 1616 Francis turned over almost all of the affairs of the Visitation to Chantal, while he continued his writing and preaching. She showed herself fully capable of establishing and supervising the foundations, but until his death she suffered from the loss of his companionship and his personal guidance. It is only after 1622 that her writings show her becoming self-reliant.
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from translations in print:
Letters
1627 deposition on Francis de Sales
Exhortations, conferences, and instructions
Information about secondary sources.
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1. Complete works (you can also download each work as a PDF file):
(a) A link to the text of a 1918 translation by the Sisters of the Visitation at Harrow, England: Selected Letters of Saint Jane Frances de Chantal, which gives 111 letters written between 1611 to 1641 (with "a few slight omissions").
(b) A link to the text of a 1852 collection of biographies, the first of which (about a fifth of the way down the page) is a translation of the 1659 Memoire sur la vie et les vertus de Jeanne-Francoise Fremyot de Chantal, by Chantal's secretary, Francoise-Madeleine de Chaugy; the work is hagiographic but includes many reports of Chantal's own words.
2. Excerpts of Chantal's writing from other translations:
(a) Lines from a 1616 letter to Francis on abandonment to God.
(b) Use your browser's search function to go to "Chantal" for a prayer composed in 1625 to be used by her brother, Andre Fremyot, Archbishop of Bourges, who had written to her about how to pray when he was busy with ecclesiastical affairs; the translation is by Peronne Marie Thibert.
(c) Go to Chantal for a quotation from her 1627 deposition given at the beginning of the canonization procedure for Francis de Sales, followed by lines addressed by Chantal to her nuns on loving one another; the translations are by Elisabeth Stopp.
(d) From an address given to the nuns on how to live in the New Year of 1630.
(e) About two-thirds of the way down the page of a biography of Chantal, several passages from her "instructions" (lectures given to novices) and from her "conferences" (comments made at informal gatherings, and written down by her hearers).
(f) Go to "Chantal" for her teaching on how to respond to "an affront or contradiction."
(g) A substantial collection of passages by Chantal from various writings (each paragraph is an independent quotation).
(h) Also from various works, brief pieces of advice on prayer.
(i) After a brief biography, two brief excerpts and an anecdote from De Chaugy's biography.
(j) A prayer of reliance on God.
3. Near the bottom of the page, two excerpts in French: a prayer (the original of that given just above) and a description of three methods of prayer.
4. Essays, etc.:
(a) A biographical essay by Marianne Dorman; at the bottom of the page is a contemporary portrait of the young Baronne de Rabutin-Chantal.
(a) Most of this 1997 lecture by Wendy M. Wright is on Francis de Sales, but see the section about two-thirds down the page, "Jane de Chantal and the Visitation." Wright includes her own translation of two passages from Chantal's letters to superiors of Visitation foundations (for more from Wright, see "In print").
(b) The second half of Elisabeth Stopp's introduction to her 1960 translation, St. Francis de Sales: Selected Letters, deals with the relation between Chantal and de Sales and with the foundation of the Visitation. (For information on a 1963 biography of Chantal by Stopp, see "Secondary sources.")
(c) A link to the text of Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie's 1881 biography, Madame de Sevigne; there see Chapter 2, "Grandfather and Grandmother," for an account of Chantal's life, including part of a letter by Chantal about her granddaughter. You can also download the entire book as a PDF file.
(d) Part of Henri J.M. Nouwen's preface to the 1988 selection, Francis de Sales, Jane de Chantal: Letters of Spiritual Direction (for excerpts from that selection, see "In print").
(e) The entry from the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia on the Visitation Order; the first part describes its foundation and early history; and at the same site, the entry on Chantal.
(c) A review by Mitylene Myhr of the 2007 essay collection, The Cloister and the World: Early Modern Convent Voices (for information on the book's treatment of Chantal, see "Secondary sources").
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In print
[Wendy M. Wright's book is a study of the spiritual relationship of Chantal and Francis de Sales, which she views against a background of earlier Christian male-female friendships. In the course of her study, Wright quotes from the few extant letters of Chantal to Francis and gives passages from unpublished contemporary documents. Unfortunately, the book has no index:]
Wright, Wendy M. Bond of perfection: Jeanne de Chantal &
Francois de Sales. New York: Paulist Press, c1985. (v, 254 p)
LC#: BX4655.2 .W75 1985; ISBN: 080912727X, 0971319901
Based on the author's thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California
at Santa Barbara.
Bibliography: p. 240-254
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"I am not able to restrain myself from writing to you."
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[After Francis' death in 1622, Chantal secured and burned most of the letters she had written to him; however, a few survived without her knowledge. In a 1614 letter, she described the fear of offending God that she has been unable to dispel, fear instilled by a harsh confessor after her husband's death. She also revealed her need for Francis' consolation:]
I am not able to restrain myself from writing to you this morning because I find I am more an impediment to myself than usual....
God's presence, which otherwise would give me unspeakable content, now makes me tremble and shudder with fear... And everything seems to have the power to destroy me. I am afraid of everything, apprehensive of everything. Not that I am frightened that I will be destroyed, for my own sake, but I am fearful of displeasing God. [p.156]
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"How deep the razor has cut!"
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[In 1616, they decided (at Francis' instigation) to limit their contact with one another --- even via mail --- so that each would turn to God alone. Chantal was willing to make the sacrifice, but later that year wrote to him:]
My God! my true Father, how deep the razor has cut! Can I remain in this feeling long? At least our good God, if he so pleases, will hold me firm in my resolution as I wish....
Oh God! How easy it is to leave what is outside ourselves. But to leave one's skin, one's flesh, one's bones and penetrate into the deepest part of the marrow, which is, it seems to me, what we have done, is a great, difficult and impossible thing to do save for the grace of God. To him alone the glory is due and may it be given forever.
My true father, what if, lacking your permission to enjoy the consolation I take in our exchange, I do not reclothe myself at all? I seems to me that I must no longer make or have any thought, affection or desire except those that have been prescribed for me.
I close by giving you a thousand good nights and by telling you what has occurred to me. It seems to me that I see the two portions of our spirit as only one abandoned and surrendered to God. So be it, my very dear Father. [pp.168-69]
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"Ah, can't you draw a few words from your heart for me?"
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[From a 1621 letter to Francis from Paris, where Chantal had been for two years, establishing a new foundation. She had not seen him for those two years although he had been in Paris. She saw him briefly once more before his death, but they would never again speak "heart to heart":]
It's not that anything of importance has happened since I saw you and I don't know if this [letter] isn't actually a temptation. You can judge. For I don't have anything new to tell except about my responsibilities where I feel as though I commit so many faults through my lack of prudence, charity, zeal, care and good example. However, I think about and confess only the particular faults that I am aware of. This does not cause me any anxiety but I hope someday to look thoroughly at it all with you....
You say you have no news to send? Ah, can't you draw a few words from your heart for me? Because it's so long since you have said anything to me. Dear Jesus, what a consolation to speak heart to heart one day! [p.185]
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[This selection, translated by Peronne Marie Thibert, includes 7 letters written by Francis to Chantal (1604-12) and 55 letters from Chantal (1616-41) to religious, friends and family. The introduction by Wendy M. Wright and Joseph F. Power describes the letters' Salesian spirituality; the notes and bibliography are useful. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Francis de Sales, Jane de Chantal: letters of spiritual direction
/ translated by Peronne Marie Thibert; selected and introduced
by Wendy M. Wright and Joseph F. Power; preface by Henri J.M.
Nouwen (Classics of Western spirituality) . New York: Paulist
Press, c1988. (xii, 296 p.)
LC#: BX2349 .F694 1988; ISBN: 0809129906, 0809104083
Bibliography: p. 267-271. Includes index
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"Heavens, dear, she must be awfully busy!"
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[From a 1617 letter, from Chantal's monastery at Annecy, to a Visitation superior at Montferrand, on one of the novices. Chantal laughs, but give her counsel:]
And so, you say, this widow has a strong will, shows great concern about her health, has a mind full of excuses, and a desire to know everything. Heavens, dear, she must be awfully busy!
That is why, in my opinion, you should talk at length to her, all the while trying to bring about her healing by gradually showing her her weaknesses, without upsetting her. [p.237]
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"In all such matters you must remain very free."
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[In a 1619 letter from Paris, to a superior at Grenoble. Chantal had accepted strict enclosure, but she continued to resist outside interference:]
We must show great respect to the confessors and do all that we can reasonably to satisfy them, honoring God in them.
However, we must not be subject to them in such matters as procuring preachers, having Masses said, receiving holy communion from persons of repute or others whom we may want to please, or to confess ourselves to such persons when it seem suitable. In all such matters you must remain very free, for such decisions rest completely with you. This is what the Rule and our customs specify. [p.239]
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"This is how things should be."
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[Chantal's views on marriage were those of her period. Her own marriage had been arranged by her parents; she had arranged the marriage of one daughter and would now do the same for the other, the 21-year-old Francoise. The wording of this 1620 letter to Francoise suggests that the daughter had expressed considerable reservations about the arrangement; Baronne de Chantal, however, had none:]
Darling, since M. de Toulonjon is free for eight or ten days, he is hurrying off to see you to find out first-hand whether you think he is suitable or not. He hopes his personality will not displease you. As for me, frankly, I find nothing to find fault with in him; in fact, I could wish for nothing more....
I'm certainly very happy that your relatives and I arranged this marriage without you, for this is how things should be, and, dearest, I want you always to follow my advice....
True, M. de Toulonjon is about fifteen years older than you, but, darling, you will be much happier with him than with some rash, dissolute, young fool like the young men of today....
I beg you, dear, accept him graciously, and be assured that God who has been mindful of you will not forget you if you abandon yourself to His tender care, for He guides all those who place their trust in Him. [pp.210-11]
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"Since you are my daughter, you are expected to be circumspect."
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[And a little later in the same year, on the plans for the wedding. If her mother's view didn't suffice to sway Francoise's plan for a wedding dress, the view of "ladies of rank" and "ladies at court" might:]
As to your rings, M. de Toulonjon is very busy about them and wants to have lots of precious stones from Paris sent to me so that I may buy as many as I like for you. I would prefer that you not buy any at all, for, frankly, dear, ladies of rank here no longer wear them; only the townswomen do....
For my part, I hope my Francon will not be swept off her feet by all this. My reputation would be at stake, for since you are my daughter, you are expected to be circumspect and to conduct your affairs wisely and prudently....
Moreover, you shouldn't have a wedding dress made; today that appears ridiculous among both the ladies at court and the gentry. Besides, I want you to have a quiet wedding; and I want you to trust me in this. [pp.211-12]
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"...these external signs of imaginary holiness in me."
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[Even during her lifetime Chantal came to be seen as a saint by her fellow nuns. In 1627 she wrote to the superior at Rumilly:]
Dearest, here is the money for the new habit which you sent me, and please, send me back the one which our Sisters kept. There is nothing that bothers me more than their attachment to these external signs of imaginary holiness in me. These are the traps which the devil puts in my way to make me stumble into the bottomless pit of pride. I am already weak enough, and enough of a stumbling-block to myself, without anyone adding another....
If only our Sisters would treat me as I deserve to be treated before God, then I would have some hope of becoming, through these humiliations, what they imagine me to be. But to be presented with continual temptations to vanity is intolerable. [p.254]
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"...faithful, simple surrender, spoken softly, effortlessly...."
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[One of Chantal's spiritual advisees was a worldly nobleman who had become a priest and was now engaging in austerities so severe that he had become ill. In a 1634 letter, Chantal sums up her (and Francis') method of prayer:]
What God, in his goodness, asks of you is not this excessive zeal which has reduced you to your present condition, but a calm, peaceful uselessness, a resting near Him with no special attention or action of the understanding or will except a few words of love, or of faithful, simple surrender, spoken softly, effortlessly, without the least desire to find consolation or satisfaction in them. [p.194]
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"There are persons who keep an eye on us in this matter."
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[Making new foundations and supervising older ones meant that Chantal had to travel extensively; there were those who saw this as a violation of enclosure. In 1639 she wrote to the superior at Thonon, who had asked Jeanne to come to that house:]
Beside the fact that your house doesn't need my presence, it wouldn't be right for me to leave so abruptly when I have already been gone so long. Besides, we must be careful not to go out without real necessity. There are persons who keep an eye on us in this matter. [p.255]
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1627 deposition on Francis de Sales
[Elizabeth Stopp has translated the deposition given by Chantal in 1627 at the beginning of the canonization procedure for Francis de Sales. Chantal had been given a list of 55 questions some months before, she had written out her answers and read them to four judges and a scribe from behind a grille in her monastery at Annecy; it took 40 hours over 6 days. The scribe wrote down her words; then she read and signed his document. Also included in the book is a letter written by Chantal to a Cistercian monk a year after Francis death. Stopp's introduction and notes are helpful, as is the index:]
St. Francis de Sales: a testimony by St. Chantal; newly edited
in translation with an introduction by Elisabeth Stopp. London:
Faber, 1967. (3-181 p. 2 plates)
LC#: BX4700.F85 C53
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"I could not make up my mind...."
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[Testifying about Francis, Chantal tells much about herself and the early Visitation. From her testimony on Francis' demonstration of the virtue of charity:]
I further declare... that a lady of quality who had led a bad life wanted to hide herself away in one of our monasteries. I asked our Blessed [Francis] what he thought about this and he said, "It's no use asking me, because I'm always in favor of charity"....
At one time a novice in our monastery, a lay sister, got it into her head that she wanted to be a choir sister and wear the black veil. I could not make up my mind to grant this request and I asked our Blessed what he thought about it. "Where they fail in humility," he answered, "we must make up for it by our charity." [pp.66-67]
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"Influential people said openly that it was a crazy scheme."
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[On Francis' fortitude. The chief criticism of the new foundation had been that it was not as physically demanding as were the established orders, that its members were simply fashionable ladies pretending to be nuns:]
...[Fortitude] applies even more to his founding of the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary, on which he entered without any resources and putting his trust solely in the inspiration of divine providence. That is why he used to say that God made the order out of nothing at all, as he made the world.
He was very unfavorably criticized, opposed and even laughed to scorn because of this new idea; many influential people said openly that it was a crazy scheme, and some even said so to his face. He said that where there was a chance of spiritual profit we must not be afraid of ridicule and insult.... [p.77]
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"The Blessed gave in."
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[And on Francis' humility. Perhaps it would have been more accurate to speak of his "pragmatism"; Francis worked very hard to prevent the imposition of strict enclosure, until he saw that he could not succeed against the political influence of the Archbishop of Lyons and others:]
He very much wanted our institute to stay just a simple congregation and not be turned into an order, a matter on which the illustrious Cardinal Bellarmine agreed with him; but the late Archbishop of Lyons so insistently urged the other view that the Blessed gave in and agreed to establish us in the rule of St. Augustine, writing as follows: "I will look to God's providence and put aside my own wishes; I will say no more but submit to your judgement and counsel." [pp.84-85]
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Exhortations, conferences, and instructions
[This is "in the main" (p.iii) a reprint of an anonymous 1888 translation of the first French collection of Chantal's religious works by the nuns at Annecy. It contains 59 "exhortations" (addresses given at formal meetings of the nuns) delivered between 1625 and 1634; 74 "conferences" (answers to question or remarks made at informal gatherings) between 1524 and 1641; and 23 "instructions" given to novices between 1627 and 1633. Chantal's words were recorded by the listening nuns; reasonable accuracy is assumed by the editors, who compared parallel passages from various manuscripts and found them "almost identical" (p.3):]
Saint Jane Francis Fremyot de Chantal: her exhortations, conferences,
and instructions / translated from the French edition printed
at Paris in 1875. Westminster, Md.: Newman Bookshop, 1947. Rev.
Ed. (xix, 478 p.)
LC#: BX890 .C37 1947
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"I cannot preach."
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[Two years after Francis' death in 1622, Chantal took over
the "spiritual conferences" that he had held with the
nuns, but she never felt herself equal to his effectiveness as
a speaker. The opening of one conference:]
You are ever wishing me to preach to you, Sisters, and I cannot
preach; I greatly prefer coming to ask among you the alms of
a little fervor as I answer your questions. [p.244]
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"...this Institute within the reach of our littleness."
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[From an address to the nuns, on the novelty of their form of life:]
The other Religious Orders have all a great esteem for their Institute. Each thinks that his is the greatest, and does so with very good intention, because all are indeed great.
But, as to us, we must esteem ourselves to be the least and the lowest, as being the last comers in the Church of God. Yes, Sisters, we are the least..., not that we we are for that to think meanly of our manner of life, for we ought to love and cherish it as a very particular grace which God... has shown in calling us to it, giving us this Institute within the reach of our littleness.... [p.91]
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"Oh, all those who are on their knees are not praying!"
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[From an informal discussion, on the desired simplicity of their devotion:]
Oh, all those who are on their knees are not praying!...
The setting of the mind on God is the most useful occupation that the Daughters of the Visitation can have. They are not to trouble themselves about the considerations, conceptions, imaginations, and speculations of others, although they should honor them as the things of God and which lead to God Himself: it is enough for them to be with God in the simplicity of their hearts. [p.257]
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"I... tormented him so, that at last I used to... make him
get out of bed."
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[Chantal occasionally used stories of her own married life to make her point. In 1629, on how God reaches out to the soul:]
There occurs to me on this subject a similitude, which is somewhat amusing, my dear Daughters. I remember that Monsieur de Chantal was very fond of lying in bed of a morning; I, having to look after the affairs of the house, was obliged to rise early to give all my orders.
When it began to be late, and I had gone back to the bedroom, making noise enough to awaken him, so that Mass might be said in the chapel, and afterwards the remaining affairs might be seen to, I became impatient. I went and drew the bed curtains and called to him that it was late, that he must get up, that the chaplain was vested and was going to begin Mass; at last, I used to take a lighted taper and held it before his eyes, and tormented him so, that at last I used to awaken him and make him get out of bed.
What I mean to tell you, by this little story, is that our Lord does the same with us. [p.276]
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"...answer them boldly."
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[In 1631, one monastery's confessor had ordered the nuns not to say a prayer that was in their Book of Customs. Chantal was not about to let that occur again. In 1632:]
What, Sisters, are you weathercocks, that you thus let yourselves be turned about at the wish of others, and because of what they come and say to you?... Whatever they come and say to you, look at your Rules, your Directories, and your Customs, and keep to that....
If someone comes to the parlor and says: "Do not this or that, in this way, or that such a thing must not be done," answer them boldly: "Our Rules and our Book of Customs order us to do so;" or else say nothing, but go on as usual, without yielding in anything of your Customs. [pp.322-23]
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"I myself inclined much more to the side of rigor and austerity."
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[It had been her own illness that made Chantal see the value of Francis' plan to provide a place for those unable to stand the rigors of the older orders. In 1633:]
This good and kind Pastor [Francis] had indeed the Spirit of God when he said: "This congregation is principally for the infirm...."
God permitted at the beginning of the Congregation, six weeks after it had been founded, that I should be attacked by great illnesses, without which it would have been very difficult to establish the Institute in the gentleness of rule in which it now is, and I said sometimes: "My God! Thou art indeed provident and very merciful to treat me thus in order to accomplish more easily Thy designs, viz: that these houses should serve for the retreat of the infirm; and I myself inclined much more to the side of rigor and austerity, in which perhaps I corresponded more to nature than to grace." [p.324]
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"Ask for nothing, and refuse nothing."
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[In 1641, shortly before her death, Chantal spoke of dependence on God, quoting a saying of Francis de Sales:]
I think, Sisters, nothing places us in more perfect self-renunciation, and in greater dependence on God, than the practice of those few words: "Ask for nothing, and refuse nothing." To them we must attach ourselves in the smallest occurrences.
If we are in the infirmary, they will perhaps not serve us to our taste; they will give us broth too salted or too bitter, or something else that will not be to our liking. Let us profit by these little occasions, let us accept them from God's hand....
I remember some words of my father, when I went to take leave of him before entering into religion; after some words of endearment, he raised his eyes to heaven, and said: "It is not for me, O Lord, to penetrate the secrets of Thy adorable Providence; be it done unto this my daughter according to Thy eternal designs." This was indeed a truly Christian saying. [pp.390-91]
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[Elizabeth Stopp's biography of Chantal is rather hagiographic, but in treating of the whole life it gives information not in the above books. It also gives Stopp's translation of excerpts of Chantal's writing not available elsewhere. See especially pp. 232-33, which quote a document written in 1637 for her superior (in confidence, she thought!); it describes the doubts about her faith that apparently lasted much of her religious life:]
Stopp, Elisabeth. Madame de Chantal: portrait of a
saint. Westminster, Md., Newman Press, 1963 [c1962]. (272 p.
illus.)
LC#:BX4700.C56 S7
Includes bibliography
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[This collection includes Elizabeth Rapley's essay, "'Un tresor enfoui, une lampe sous un boisseau': Seventeenth-Century Visitandines Describe Their Vocation," which looks at how the Visitation nuns of the mid- and later 1600s saw the purpose of their lives. The essay's title quotes part of a question a contemporary asked Francis de Sales, about why he was wasting his time creating a group that would be only "a hidden treasure, a light under a bushel." Passages quoting Chantal and others are not translated, but their meaning is usually made clear in the context. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
The cloister and the world: early modern convent voices /
guest editor, Thomas M. Carr, Jr (EMF, studies in early modern
France; v.11). Charlottesville, [Va.] : Rookwood Press, c2007.
(267 p.)
LC#: PQ230 .E48 v.11; PQ241 .C56 2007; ISBN: 1886365644
Includes bibliographical references
[May also be catalogued as Vol. 11 of EMF: ISSN:1064-5020]
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[Patricia Ranft's study speaks only briefly of Chantal (pp.114-17)
but is worthwhile on the nature of the relationship between Chantal
and Francis. (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
Ranft, Patricia. Women and the religious life in premodern
Europe. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. (xvi, 159 p.)
LC#: BX4220.E85 R36 1996; ISBN: 0312124341
Includes bibliographical references (p. [133]-151) and index
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Updated 12-09-08