Almost all those who have written concerning the devout life have had chiefly in view persons who have altogether quitted the world; or at any rate they have taught a manner of devotion which would lead to such total retirement. But my object is to teach those who are living in their own households, and whose calling obliges them to a social life, so far as externals are concerned. And so I have shown them that a true stedfast soul may live in the world untainted by worldly breath, finding a well-spring of holy piety amid the bitter waves of society, and hovering amid the flames of earthly...

Devout life does not require withdrawal from the world. This was the central insight of Saint Francis de Sales, a 16th-century priest whose Introduction to the Devout Life has not gone out of print in almost four centuries. Francis served the church at a dangerous time in a dangerous place: during the Reformation, in Calvinist areas of France, when celebrating mass was punishable by death. He was a popular minister and a prolific letter writer whose correspondence was cherished for its clear and direct instruction in the ways of piety. The book collects passages from many of those letters,...

St. Francis de Sales is widely regarded as one of the greatest spiritual advisors in the history of the Church, and we have drawn from his letters the wisest advice for those prepared to take the next step on their spiritual journey.

This is a photographic reprint of the original to insure faithfulness to the original. THE following Treatise is the message or teaching of S. Francis de Sales to the Calvinists of the Chablais, reluctantly written out because they would not go to hear him preach. The Saint neither published it nor named it. We have called it "The Catholic Controversy," partly to make our title correspond as nearly as possible with the title "Les Controverses," given by the French editor when the work was posthumously published, chiefly because its scope is to state and justify the Catholic doctrine as...