In his short book, Thomas A. Donlan offers a new interpretation of François de Sales's spirituality, arguing that the Savoyard saint developed a piety that was the opposite of a theology of violence that had been prevalent in early modern French Catholicism. The life of the titular bishop of Geneva overlapped with the duration of the French Wars of Religion: de Sales was born in 1567 and died in 1622, while one chronology of the wars dates them from 1562 to 1629. The saint's alleged progress from an ardent supporter of the militancy of the war period to the theology of douceur (gentleness, sweetness) could therefore shed light on significant processes and changes in French spirituality. Juxtaposing expressions of militancy with de Sales's numerous invocations of a kinder, softer piety, Donlan suggests that previous interpretations of de Sales's theology, which presented him as a devout humanist, a Tridentine reformer, and as a Counter-Reformation missionary, have failed to comprehend his innovative and even pioneering role in the transition from one form of Catholicism to another. With de Sales, nonviolent religious culture replaced a violent one, and aggression and hatred gave way to charity and compassion.

Donlan offers close readings of some of de Sales's spiritual letters and sermons, emphasizing de Sales's importance as a spiritual director of men and women, both lay and religious. He also analyzes de Sales's best-selling treatise of 1609, Introduction to the Devout Life, a book that offered a systematic introduction to piety for laypeople. Less attention is devoted to de Sales's other devotional treatise, On the Love of God (1616). Donlan reads this complex and mystical treatise as an implicit attack on the violent zeal of the Ligue and a call for a spiritual reform, which it certainly was. But it was much more. Among other things, it was a guide to moderation in pursuing contemplation, a major concern of the early decades of the seventeenth century.

In all of these works, Donlan identifies the same themes that, together, form not merely a style but a spiritual vision of morality and anti-violence. Whereas other contemporary theologians viewed God as a judge who ought to be feared, and invited believers to practice violence against heretics and violent acts of religious mortifications and penance against their very bodies and selves, de Sales, according to Donlan, promoted a “competing approach” (3), namely a piety of peace, tranquility, and charity. De Sales's God is love, affection, and tenderness; he is a mother and a consoler rather than an angry, punishing father.

Donlan's spiritual biography of de Sales is an important contribution to the English literature on French spirituality. I am not sure, though, whether the more general argument—namely, that with de Sales a page was turned in French piety and interpersonal and relational devotion replaced a spirituality of violence—does justice to the richness of French early modern Catholicism. Nor does it take into account developments within Catholicism in other parts of Europe. As Donlan himself acknowledges, there is little in de Sales's spirituality that had not been presented already in the Dutch School of the devotio moderna, in Thomas à Kempis's Imitation of Christ of the 1420s, and in, above all, Ignatius of Loyola's and other early Jesuits’ writings. De Sales was a student of the Jesuits, and the Society of Jesus itself absorbed new trends in Italian, Rhenish, and, of course, Spanish devotional languages and practices. In other words, de Sales participated in an outburst of Catholic spiritual creativity whose origins were pan-Catholic and multifaceted. Consolation was a key term not merely in de Sales's mission and spirituality but in a Jesuit religiosity that was anything but anti-militant. Peacemaking, mercy, and pastoral care, as well as the cultivation of interpersonal relations with laypeople characterized the age and not only de Sales's religiosity. Pace Donlan, violent preaching against heretics, the promotion of practices of charity, and a call for moderation did not exclude each other in early modern Catholicism. Militancy and ascetic practices were not the opposite of relational bonds (8) and consolation of troubled souls (63).

What Ignatius of Loyola advocated, and de Sales then adapted, was moderation, not the promotion of “gentle, pastoral, and charitable zeal as superior to one of spiritual, psychological, and physical combat” (3). Excess, not any of the practices or words themselves, was what needed to be moderated. Juxtaposing these tendencies and experiences, as Donlan does, presents de Sales's spirituality as more one dimensional than it actually was, and credits the saint with a radical break from tradition that he would have undoubtedly rejected.