A Confessor and His Spiritual Child: François de Sales, Jeanne de Chantal, and the Foundation of the Order of the Visitation

This was one of the earliest letters written by François de Sales to Jeanne de Chantal following their first meeting in 1604. After just a short period of acquaintance, a deeply emotional friendship had formed between them. De Sales’s love and admiration for his spiritual daughter were unstinting, and these sentiments were reciprocated. Such a relationship between a director and his directed was not unique in the history of the Catholic Church. Confessional relationships were a common feature of the Catholic Reformation when the post-Tridentine Church placed greater emphasis on the sacrament of penance and launched a newly trained profession of directors of conscience and personal confessors.² As Olwen Hufton pointed out, this is also a story about women: women, elite widows in particular, demonstrated an enthusiasm for the confessional experience that far outstripped that of their male counterparts.³ Thus a woman...