Treatise on the Love of God

For the rest some men of note in various places have signified to me that certain little books have been published simply under the first letters of their author's name which are the same as mine. This made some believe that they were my works, not without some little scandal to such as supposed thereby that I had bidden adieu to my simplicity, to puff up my style with pompous words, my argument with worldly conceit, and my conceptions with a lofty and plumed eloquence. For this cause my dear reader, I will tell you, that as those who engrave or cut precious stones, having their sight tired by keeping it continually fixed upon the small lines of their work, are glad to keep before them some fair emerald that by beholding it from time to time they may be recreated with its greenness and restore their weakened sight to its natural condition,—so in this press of business which my office daily draws upon me I have ever little projects of some treatise of piety, which I look at when I can, to revive and unweary my mind.

However, I do not profess myself a writer; for the dulness of my spirit and the condition of my life, subject to the service and requirements of many, would not permit me so to be. Wherefore I have written very little and have published much less, and following the counsel and will of my friends I will tell you what I have written that you may not attribute the praises of another's labours to him who deserves none for his own.

It is now nineteen years since that, being at Thonon, a small town situated upon the Lake of Geneva, which was then being little by little converted to the Catholic faith, the minister, an adversary of the Church, was proclaiming everywhere that the Catholic article of the real presence of our Saviour's body in the Eucharist destroyed the symbol and the analogy of faith (for he was glad to mouth this word analogy not understood by his auditors, in order to appear very learned; and upon this the rest of the Catholic preachers with whom I was pressed me to write something in refutation of this vanity. I did what seemed suitable, framing a brief meditation upon the Creed to confirm the truth: all the copies were distributed in this diocese where now I find not one of them.

Soon afterwards his Highness came over the mountains, and finding the bailiwicks of Chablais, Gaillard and Ternier, which are in the environs of Geneva, well disposed to receive the Catholic faith which had been banished thence by force of wars and revolts about seventy years before, he resolved to re-establish the exercise thereof in all the parishes, and to abolish that of heresy, and whereas on the one side there were many obstacles to this great blessing from those considerations which are called reasons of State, and on the other side some persons as yet not well instructed in the truth made resistance against this so much-desired establishment, his Highness surmounted the first difficulty by the invincible constancy of his zeal for the Catholic religion, and the second by an extraordinary gentleness and prudence. For he had the chief and most obstinate called together, and made a speech unto them with so lovingly persuasive an eloquence that almost all, vanquished by the sweet violence of his fatherly love towards them, cast the weapons of their obstinacy at his feet, and their souls into the hands of Holy Church.

And allow me, my dear readers I pray you, to say this word in passing. One may praise many rich actions of this great Prince, in which I see the proof of his valour and military knowledge, which with just cause is admired through all Europe. But for my part I cannot sufficiently extol the re-establishment of the Catholic religion in these three bailiwicks which I have just mentioned, having seen in it so many marks of piety, united with so many and various acts of prudence, constancy, magnanimity, justice and mildness, that I seemed to see in this one little trait, as in a miniature, all that is praised in princes who have in times past with most fervour striven to advance the glory of God and the Church. The stage was small, but the action great. And as that ancient craftsman was never so much esteemed for his great pieces as he was admired for making a ship of ivory fitted with all its gear, in so tiny a volume that the wings of a bee covered all, so I esteem more that which this great Prince did at that time in this small corner of his dominions, than many more brilliant actions which others extol to the heavens.

Now on this occasion the victorious ensigns of the cross were replanted in all the ways and public places of those quarters, and whereas a little before there had been one erected very solemnly at Annemasse close to Geneva, a certain minister made a little treatise against the honour thereof, which was a burning and venomous invective, and to which therefore it was deemed fit to make answer. My Lord Claude de Granier, my predecessor, whose memory is in benediction, imposed the burden upon me according to the power which he had over me, who beheld him not only as my Bishop but also as a holy servant of God. I made therefore this answer, under the title: Defence of the Standard of the Cross, and dedicated it to his Highness, partly to testify unto him my most humble submission, and partly to render him some small thanksgiving for the care which he took of the Church in those parts.

Now lately this Defence has been reprinted under the prodigious title of Panthalogy, or Treasure of the Cross: a title whereof I never dreamed, as in truth I am not a man of that study and leisure, nor of that memory, to be able to put together so many pieces of worth in one book as to let it deserve the name of Treasure or Panthalogy, besides I have a horror of such insolent frontispieces:

A sot, or senseless creature we him call,

Who makes his portal greater than his hall.

In the year 1602, were celebrated at Paris, where I was, the obsequies of that magnanimous prince Philip Emanuel of Lorraine, Duke of Mercœur, who had performed so many brave exploits against the Turks in Hungary that all Christianity was bound to conspire to honour his memory. But especially Madam Mary of Luxembourg, his widow, did for her part all that her heart and the love of the deceased could suggest to her to make his funeral solemn. And because my father, grandfather, and great grandfather had been brought up pages to the most illustrious princes of Martigues her father and his predecessors, she regarded me as an hereditary servant of her house; and made choice of me to preach the funeral sermon in that great celebration, where there were not only several Cardinals and Prelates but a number of princes also, princesses, marshals of France, knights of the Order,²⁰ and even the Court of Parliament in a body. I made then this funeral oration and pronounced it in this great assembly in the great Church of Paris, and as it contained a true abridgment of the heroic feats of the deceased prince, I willingly had it printed, at the request of the widow-princess, whose request was to me a law. I dedicated this piece to Madam the Duchess of Vendôme, as yet a girl, and a very young princess, yet one in whom were very clearly to be recognized the signs of that excellent virtue and piety which now adorn her, and which show her to be worthy of the bringing forth and educating by so devout and pious a mother.

While this sermon was in the press, I heard that I had been made Bishop, so that I came here to be consecrated and to begin residence. And at first there was pointed out to me the necessity of instructing Confessors on some important points. For this reason I wrote twenty-five instructions, which I had printed to get them more easily spread amongst those to whom I directed them; since then they have been reprinted in various places.

20. Of the Holy Spirit. (Tr.)