A man of the Renaissance, Saint Francis de Sales was a curious mind, open to discoveries of his time. With his friend, Antoine Favre, he founded the Florimontane Academy to to offer intellectual training to as many people as possible: early evening classes in astronomy, history, law, science… A few years later, in 1617, he supports a professor from the Annecy college who teaches the theses of Copernicus, then taken up by Galileo.
In his ministry as bishop, he will have the concern, in spite of weak means, of the training of priests. A student in Annecy, then in Paris and Padua, François de Sales received training exceptional for its time. At the age of 23, while studying law in Padua, he wrote a rule of life that will guide him during his student life. In a text with an astonishing title, “Sleep exercise”, he gives himself some subjects for meditation, including the following lines. ( “Sleep exercise or spiritual rest” Edition of Annecy, volume XXII, p. 35)” I will stop in admiration of the beauty of the reason that God has given to man, so that enlightened and taught by his marvelous splendour, I hate vice and loves virtue. Follow the brilliant light of this divine torch, since the use of it is given to us to see where we should set foot. Ah! if we allowed ourselves to be led by it, seldom would we trip , hardly would we ever get hurt”
. Also François de Sales castigates the pedantry of the one who proudly displays his knowledge. Some “for a dash of science want the world to honor them as if everyone should learn from them and hold them as masters (…). All this is extremely vain, foolish and unpleasant. And the glory that one draws from such things is just as vain, futile and foolish” (IVD III.4).On the contrary, knowledge should encourage us to more modesty and humility. “Study always more and more in a spirit of diligence and humility” he wrote to a student (EA XXI, p. 11).
He is representative of Salesian thought: these few lines of the young François de Sales contain in germ what it will develop during all his life. Since the Age of Enlightenment, we are often tempted to oppose God and man, to dissociate faith and reason… as if the valorization of one had to come at the expense of the other. Francis of Sales would not recognize himself in such an opposition: for him, reason – like the whole of our being – is a gift from God. “Natural reason is like a good tree that God would have planted in us. Its fruits can only be good. Of course, compared to fruits of grace, those of this tree are very little. But, for all that, they are not nothing, since God appreciated and rewarded them from this world” (TAD XI.1).
The desire that man has to know, to seek and understanding the world he inhabits is good. But what is reason? This faculty of knowing and understanding is not to be confused with rationalism for which only reason gives access to the truth of the world. To eyes of François de Sales, reason goes hand in hand with admiration and the heart: when one is surprised of the beauty of a thing, we desire to know it better; and when we love it, we enter into a more accurate and deeper knowledge. It is not enough to seek the truth; it is still necessary to admire and love it. Human reason and intelligence are not intended only for accumulation ever greater knowledge, but to lead an upright life: reason is given to man so that “he hates vice and loves virtue”. If the man seeks to understand who he is and what is the world around it, it is not only for the love of knowledge and science, but to discern how he should conduct his life.
Doubtless François de Sales would sign today these lines of the Second Vatican Council: “The intelligent nature of the person finds and must find its perfection in wisdom. This one attracts with force and sweetness the spirit of the man towards the search for and love of truth and goodness; the man who feeds on it is led from the world visible to invisible. More than any other, our time needs such a sage.