Jeanne Francoise Fremyot, known as Sainte Chantal, was not closely
concerned with contemporary events. It is her personal development
rather than her connection with any public affairs which has value
and interest for a later generation. Her history is a supreme
assertion of the supernatural element in ordinary life. She was a
traveller who, starting on her journey with a clearly-marked and
time-worn route before her, found herself checked by the Touch that
is not human and turned to a way, very difficult and hard to find,
that led to a destination which she had not desired. There are
certain traditions regarding her which do more to stifle interest
than to inspire it. To some she appears as the type of devotee who
will sacrifice natural love and duty to a selfchosen avocation; to
others she is merely the shadow and echo of Francois de Sales, one
of the many saintly women presented in the literature of piety
whose individuality is impossible to separate from that of the
saints who gave them guidance and inspiration. Reference to actual
fact is sufficient to confute either of these impressions, but
there is another, less widespread but far more damaging, which
demands cloeer consideration. The life that had an ordinary
beginning in the surroundings of a provincial town and developed
amid the deeper responsibilities of a wife and mother and the
dignities of high position, progressed by gradual ascent to a plane
that is above the range of normal experience. The place of Ste.
Chantal is among the mystics, but she has suffered more than
ordinarily from the vagueness of thought that characterises much
which is said and written regarding mysticism. Again and again her
name has been coupled with that of Mme. Guyon, and the fact that
she never wrote for publication has left her memory defenceless
before a suggestion that misrepresents her utterly. Mme. Guyon was
exceptionally prolific as a writer, and her popularity among some
of the Protestant sects in England has brought her work within
reach of the ordinary reader; but whatever may be the view of the
individual regarding her character and doctrine, there is no
justification for confounding them with those of Jeanne de Chantal.
The positions of these two women are in fact diametrically opposed,
although to both the practice of prayer was the ruling object of
existence. The one regarded herself as highly privileged, as
exalted to a plane beyond the ken of ordinary humanity, and endowed
with a capacity for union with the Divine Will which emancipated
her from the laws by which human society is governed; the other
ranked herself as the least in spiritual order among her
associates, she had no glowing moments of achievement, and those
deep experiences which marked her in the eyes of others as chosen
by God to be tried and tested by the Divine Fire, increased her
self-abasement. I do not heed the suffering my fear is that I am
offending." That was her protest. As we follow Ste. Chantal to the
end of her earthly pilgrimage, we shall find that the farther she
penetrated into the mysteries of prayer the more habitual became
her attitude of humble supplication and the wider the distance that
divided her from the security of Mme. Guyon. There was nothing in
the teaching that emanated from Annecy that could have alarmed even
the timorous orthodoxy of Mme. de Main tenon, for the Foundress of
the Visitation was as suspicious of exotic devotionalism as any of
the critics of the Quietism of Saint-Cyr. "These wonderful things
that are so exalted and so spiritual are as a rule of doubtful
origin," she wrote, " and in particular, unless they are grounded
on humility, you may be sure they are unreal," Experience is the
only root from which can spring sound judgment on the things that
concern the spiritual life, and only the experienced accord due
reverence to the possibilities of that aspiration of the soul
towards God which we call prayer.
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