Wednesday, January 6, 2021

"Anxiety is the greatest evil that can befall a soul except sin." God "commands you to pray, but He forbids you to worry": a St. Francis de Sales-St. John Vianney pastische

     I was able to find the first sentence in St. Francis de Sales.  Searching for the source of the second, which does not follow the first in the Introduction to the devout life, I stumbled upon this 22 May 2017 post by Fr. Horton of Fauxtations, which confirmed what I had suspected, namely that I might want to look for it in St. John Vianney.  But though Fr. Horton interprets this as a quotation from a homily, I have yet to find it outside of the 1861 Vie by Monnin that he cites (which is to say, in the four volumes of the standard 1883 edition of the Sermons (which, however, I've only searched in Google Books, not read)), where, it should be noted, it occurs more in passing than in the context of a treatise on anxiety specifically.

Anxiety is the greatest evil that can befall a soul except sin.
"With the single exception of sin, anxiety is the greatest evil that can happen to a soul" (trans. John K. Ryan).

     St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the devout life 4.11 (Anxiety), translated, with an Introduction and Notes, by John K. Ryan (New York:  an Image Book, Doubleday, 1989 [1972]), 251 =Introduction à la vie devote, 1st 1609 edition, 2.40 =vol. 3 of the standard 1892-1964 Visitation Annecy edition, p. 133*; definitive 1619 edition, 4.11 =vol. 3, p. 311 (for an "Ordre de l'édition définitive comparé avec celui de l'édition princeps," go here; for an "Ordre de l'édition princeps comparé avec celui de l'édition définitive," go here):

"L'inquietude est le plus grand mal qui arrive en l'ame, excepté le peché."

The Pléiade edition of 1969 (p. 272) places an accent aigu over the first e:

"L'inquiétude est le plus grand mal qui arrive en l'ame, excepté le peché."

God commands you to pray, but He forbids you to worry.


"il vous commande la prière, mais il vous defend l’inquiétude."
He requires prayer [of] you, but . . . forbids you anxiety.

     Though I have tried some searches on vol. 3 (those two editions of the Introduction) alone, like Fr. Horton I have not yet looked for a version of the second half of the quotation in all 27 volumes of the standard 1892-1964 Visitation Annecy edition of the Œuvres de Saint François de Sales present in (unlike the Hathi Trust Digital Library) Gallica.  I don't think it's there, but I suppose it could be.

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