A greater figure—perhaps the greatest of all figures in the history of Savoy—is that of St. Francis de Sales. It is a little difficult to speak of him without appearing to stir the embers of theological disputation. But the effort must be made, since he is much too notable a man to be passed over; and the task may be made easier by the fact that he is a Catholic of whom Protestants speak well, even though they have to recognize in him one of the most damaging of their opponents. They respect his character even in the act of examining his propositions; they perceive that it was just because his character was so admirable that he was able to do the cause of the Reformation so much harm.

He combined qualities which, in that age, were rarely found conjoined, being at once a gentleman and a scholar, a man of saintly humility, and yet of energy and courage. Such men were scarce in both religious camps. The Reformers had their share of virile vigour, and the best of them were among the most learned men of their time; but, on the whole, they lacked good manners and 'sweet reasonableness.' Their methods were often violent, and their speech was often coarse. They upset altars and smashed stained-glass windows, and threw sacred images into the rivers, and, as we have seen, 'crowned Roman Catholic priests with cow-dung.' Their vocabulary, too, was scurrilous, as was natural, seeing that many of them had risen to eminence in their church from some very humble rank in life. They lacked the grand style in theology, and one could find excuses for calling them vulgarians.

No doubt there was more of the grand style among their Catholic opponents, but they also fell short in many ways of the Christian ideal. Many of them were dissolute debauchees. The case of Æneas Sylvius, already cited, shows that the most cynical immorality was not incompatible with the highest ecclesiastical advancement, and, indeed, it is notorious that the loose lives of ecclesiastical dignitaries did more than their unscriptural doctrines to discredit the Church of Rome and make the Reformation possible. There were prelates of whom it could truly be said that they spared neither men in their anger nor women in their lust; and even among those whose reputation was sweeter, there were a good many who would have passed a very bad quarter of an hour if haled before Calvin's Consistory and cross-examined. Even if they had passed the moral standards, they would have been found guilty of luxury and arrogance. They were unduly addicted to purple and fine linen, and made no pretence to live a simple life.

On each side, however, there were exceptions, exempt from the characteristic faults of their parties, and these, even in that age of vehement polemics, were able to recognize and appreciate one another. On the Protestant side there was M. de BÈze—the 'gentleman reformer,' as he has been called—who, drawing a useful inspiration from the memories of his unregenerate days, was able to speak affably with his enemies in the gate. On the Catholic side there was St. Francis de Sales, whom the study of the Humane Letters had indeed humanized, who was transparently sincere, and who, by the charm of his character, disarmed antagonism. In an age in which men of all religious opinions (and of none) lived in daily peril of torture and the stake, each of these two men believed that the other was honestly mistaken, and would have liked to be his friend.

Judged by the historical results of his principal achievement, St. Francis can hardly escape condemnation as a maker of mischief and a stirrer-up of strife. To him, and to him alone, was due the triumph of the Counter-Reformation in Chablais. If he had declined that missionary enterprise, or failed in it, the Duke of Savoy would not have been encouraged to make the treacherous attempt upon Genevan independence known as the Escalade. That plot was actually laid at Thonon, at a meeting held to celebrate and rejoice over St. Francis de Sales' apostolic achievements. He must have known of it; he was in a position to protest against it; he does not appear to have done anything of the kind. It went forward, and Spanish soldiers were hired to cut Genevan throats in the name of the Church of St. Peter. There we have cause and effect—a saintly man interfering with freedom of thought, and so bringing, not peace, but a sword.

That is the summing-up of the matter which impartial logic compels; but, somehow or other, it does not much interfere with the friendliness of one's feelings towards St. Francis de Sales. The rude logic of events did not correspond to any syllogism in his mind. The narrowness of his outlook was that of his country and his age; the sweetness of his temper was his own. He loved his erring brothers, as he considered them, and his concern was for the salvation of their souls. He did disinterestedly, and at great personal sacrifice, the duty which he conceived to lie nearest to him; he did it like a soldier, who must not reason why, and with a serene and lofty courage.

The courage of missionaries has often, it is true, been the subject of exaggerated eulogy. Courage is no uncommon human quality; and it is doubtful whether good men are, on an average, any braver than bad men. It is not only the soldier who, as a matter of course, takes risks quite equal to those of the missionary. The brigand, the highwayman, and the beach-comber, to say nothing of the terrorist, who is generally an atheist, also do so; and, these things being so, much of the talk about the heroism of Christian heroes is almost indecently vainglorious. Yet, even when all the necessary deductions have been made, there remains something singularly fascinating in the courage of St. Francis de Sales.

He was not by nature pugnacious, as was, for example, Farel, who took an Irishman's delight in a row, and considered that it was all in the day's work when he was fustigated by women, or dragged up and down the floor of a church by the beard. His tastes, on the contrary, were refined, and his inclinations were for the life of the cloister or the study. He went into the wilds of Chablais—and it was really a wild country in those days—because he had been called and chosen, and because there was work to be done there which he was considered specially capable of doing. Men with guns took pot-shots at him in the dark places of the forests; and he once spent a whole winter's night in a tree-top, while a pack of hungry wolves howled at him from below. Such adventures were repugnant to his gentle and sensitive nature; but he faced them and persevered, year after year, until at last his pertinacity was rewarded. More as a tribute to his unique personality than to his arguments—which, of course, were only the commonplaces of Catholic apologetics—Chablais surrendered to the Church. Even though one wishes that Chablais had held out, one cannot help regarding its evangelist as a sympathetic figure. Pope Alexander VII. canonized him in 1665.