Ulteriori informazioni
Excerpt from Practical Piety
In 1610, St. Francis de Sales founded the order of Nuns of the Visitation. He designed this institution for women who, either from their advanced age, their poverty, or their ia firm health, might not be able to undertake the austerities of other orders, but who nevertheless were called to the religious life. To the direction of the Order much of the saint's time was subsequently devoted, and to it we owe a large proportion of his spiritual writings, as profitable to the secular as they are to the religious reader. The most valuable passages of them will in fact constitute a considerable part of the following pages. As very great bodily austerities, from the nature of the institution, were inadmissible in his plan, St. Francis wished that his reli gions should make up for them by continual slight mortifi cations, and by incessant denial of their wllls. The two vir tues of humility and meekness formed the basis of the rule. In the practice of the virtues, he said, let humility be the source of all the rest; let it be without bounds; make it the reigning principle of all your actions. Let an unalterable meekness and sweetness in all events by habit become natural to you. The first superioress of this order was the holy widow, St. Jane Frances de Chantal; and the formation of the character of that saint, as also the marking out for her the exalted career by which divine Providence intended to turn her wonderful holiness to the best advantage, may be said to be one of the greatest of the works of St. Francis de Sales. So abundantly did the Order of the Visitation receive the benedictions of the Lord, that in the year 1655, that of the canonisation of its holy founder, after it had been established only forty-five years, there were no less than one hundred and thirty houses of the institute in different parts of Europe.
It is beyond the purposes of this sketch to enter into any detailed history of the episcopate of St. Francis, though of no other saint are there more abundant or more interesting records.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
