I totally spaced my patron saint\u2019s feast day. Indeed, I might have gone all day without being any the wiser, but some friends posted clues to my Facebook wall. One, a video commemorating the fourth centennary of the founding of the Order of the Visitation, just made me go, \u201cMm. Very nice for the, er, Visitationists.\u201d The second, a Peter Maxish image of a bearded man cradling a dove, his bald dome lit by a halo, made me pull a facepalm.<\/p>\n
St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), Bishop of Geneva,<\/em> I remembered. Feast Day: January 24th. Mentor and confidant of St. Jeanne-Fran\u00e7oise de Chantal, founder of the Order of the Visitation.<\/em> <\/p>\n Theirs was one of the Church\u2019s great romantic friendships; the two were like Francesco and Chiara with shoes on. And I forgot.<\/p>\n Part of me hopes I can get away with saying, \u201cSorry, Monseigneur. I thought it was the 29th, honest. And I\u2019ve been so busy lately.\u201d But I would trust any man so discerning as Francis to recognize that as the flimsiest, sorriest excuse for an explanation. The sad fact is \u2014 like a girl from bygone times, eager to escape her parents\u2019 home by marrying \u2014 I chose him in haste, only to discover after the match became final that the two of us had nothing in common.<\/p>\n I thought I was on solid ground. Patron of writers? Check. Faint, cross-channel resemblance to Shakespeare? Check. Turbulent historical setting? Triple check: Francis was five during the St. Bartholomew\u2019s Day massacre, 31 when Henry IV signed the Edict of Nantes, and 43 when the good king was shivved to death by Ravaillac. Literary tie-ins? Not quite, but almost. Francis died in 1622, only three years before the action in Dumas p\u00e8re\u2019s Three Musketeers. <\/em> Though the fictional Aramis had a real-life model in Henri d\u2019Aramitz, Francis could have inspired the Church-minded musketeer just as well. According to hagiographers, the future bishop fought with rapier and poignard while a student at Padua. Though said to have fled the embrace of a grisette,<\/em> he did not \u2014 take note, Thomas Aquinas \u2014 threaten her with a fireplace poker. In that, the son of the Sieur de Boisy was true to his upbringing, a real gentleman.<\/p>\n Some time after standing before the altar in a white smock tagged with his name, I checked Francis\u2019 signature work, Introduction to the Devout Life,<\/em><\/strong><\/a> out of the diocesan library. Reading Introduction\u2019s<\/em> introduction, I got goose pimples. Positing a universal call to holiness 300 years before Vatican II, the man was well ahead of his time. Except he wasn\u2019t \u2014 the book went through several editions before the author\u2019s own death! Even the Roundheads over in England tucked in with a translation that had been \u201cpurged of Popish errors.\u201d By singlehandedly inventing middlebrow Christian inspiration, my patron was the Rick Warren of his day.<\/p>\n Then I dug into the text.<\/p>\n Reader, I found it all but unreadable. This is no fault of Francis\u2019; I just never developed a taste for the genre. Sitting through homilies makes me fidget, and Introduction<\/em> amounts to a homily, in five books. Francis addresses his fine words to someone he calls Philothea, or \u201cLover of God,\u201d a pseudonym for Madame de Charmoisy, whose correspondence with the author forms the basis for the text. That\u2019s fine, but \u201cPhilothea\u201d sounds like a girl\u2019s name. Every time I read it, I\u2019m tempted to say, \u201cAh. This is a private thing. I\u2019ll just leave you two alone.\u201d<\/p>\n Viewed with serene objectivity, it\u2019s a wise and witty book \u2014 I know that. Its value as counter-Reformatory propaganda is incalculable. At its publication, the diocesan clergy were noted for their ignorance, and the religious (rightly or wrongly) for soft living. The episcopacy\u2019s most visible symbol was the Duc de Richelieu \u2014 able and visionary, but far from a teddy bear. Knowing they could ignore these models and strive for sanctity on their own without going Calvinist must have come as an enormous relief to the laity.<\/p>\n But for me, I\u2019m afraid, serene objectivity is as unnatural an attitude to assume as the lotus position. When it comes to saints, I\u2019ve learned sadly, my instincts are those of a fanboy: I go for the spectactular, the dramatic and the bloody. These instincts led me \u2014 via Chesterton \u2014 to the original St. Francis. Now that<\/em> was the stuff. Fran\u00e7ois engaged Calvinist leader Theodore Beza in dialogue; Francesco challenged the Muslim ulema<\/em> of Damietta to a trial by ordeal. There\u2019s no contest. If I were the tame Savoyard, I\u2019d resent having to share a name with the wild Umbrian.<\/p>\n In our own day, there are a number of Catholics \u2014 I\u2019m thinking Randall Terry and Alan Keyes \u2014 who would leap into the nearest fire only too happily, given assurance the video would go viral. Let\u2019s just say that if they went into schism, I\u2019d be praying for their return in the tone Willy Wonka adopted<\/strong><\/a> when warning Mike Teavee. But the fanboy\u2019s headspace offers little room for realism. Behavior that looks tiresome or exhibitionistic in the here and now makes good copy when set long ago, in a galaxy far away. And that, I suppose, is the bottom line: I like saints whose stories read like good fiction, and for that reason, seem to demand no more literal a reading.<\/p>\n Read like a news item, the story of Maria Goretti is nothing but ghastly. It should turn any thinking person into a helicopter parent, and I mean a helicopter with a minigun. Considered at more than a century\u2019s remove (and from a position of male privilege), it\u2019s got mythic and literary valence out the wazoo. Sandro and Marietta look like Apollo and Daphne divided by Raskolnikov and Sonya, the remainder being that guy from \u201cBallad of Reading Gaol.\u201d Kathryn Harrison reminds readers<\/strong><\/a> that Joan of Arc was \u201cuncouth,\u201d but also that \u201cHer enemies spoke of clouds of butterflies following in her wake.\u201d Well, uncouth is fine \u2014 I was once a big Gretchen Wilson fan \u2014 but it\u2019s the butterflies (and the voices) that make her story into material fit for a comic book.<\/p>\n