Chrysostom of Saint-Lô (French: Jean-Chrysostome de Saint-Lô; born Joachim Bellot; c. 1594 – 26 March 1646) was a French Third Order Regular Franciscan friar, preacher, spiritual director, and mystical writer associated with the seventeenth-century Norman movement of interior spirituality centred on Jean de Bernieres-Louvigny and the Hermitage of Caen. Modern scholarship has identified him as one of the earliest and most important figures in the current later associated with Bernières, Jacques Bertot, Madame Guyon, and François Fénelon.[1]
Chrysostom of Saint-Lô | |
|---|---|
Jean-Chrysostome de Saint-Lô | |
| Born | Joachim Bellot c. 1594 |
| Died | 26 March 1646 Caen, Normandy, Kingdom of France |
| Alma mater | Jesuit college at Rouen |
| Occupations | Franciscan friar, spiritual director, mystical writer |
A preacher and spiritual director of considerable reputation in Normandy, Chrysostom exercised a formative influence upon Bernières and the circle gathered around the Ermitage of Caen. His teaching stressed abandonment to God, interior recollection, self-renunciation, contemplative passivity before grace, and continual inward prayer. Although later writers sometimes associated aspects of his spirituality with currents later accused of Quietism, modern scholarship has generally distinguished his doctrine from the more radical passivism condemned by ecclesiastical authorities in the late seventeenth century.[2]
Life
editJoachim Bellot was born at Saint-Lô in Normandy around 1594.[3] He studied at the Jesuit college in Rouen before entering the Third Order Regular of Saint Francis at Picpus in 1612, reportedly against the wishes of his father.[4] He took the religious name Jean-Chrysostome de Saint-Lô.
The early restoration of the Third Order Regular in France, especially under Vincent Mussart, formed an important background to his vocation.[5] According to later accounts, the lay ascetic Antoine Le Clerc de La Forest played a decisive role in directing Bellot toward the religious life and introducing him to a more interior form of spirituality.[6]
Chrysostom became known throughout Normandy as a preacher and spiritual director. He eventually settled at Caen, where he exercised wide influence among clergy, religious communities, and devout laity.[3] In 1634 he was elected provincial superior of the French province of the Third Order Regular, and after the reorganization of the order became provincial of the Norman-Breton province of Saint Yves in 1640.[7]
Among those associated with his direction were Jean de Bernières-Louvigny, Bernières’s sister Jourdaine de Bernières, Catherine de Bar, Jacques Bertot, and figures connected with the missionary and contemplative circles of seventeenth-century France.[8] Bernières later regarded Chrysostom as his principal spiritual father.[9]
He died at Caen on 26 March 1646.[3]
Spiritual teaching
editChrysostom’s spirituality centred on inward recollection, detachment from self-will, abandonment to divine providence, and loving attention to God in simplicity and silence. His writings and reported counsels emphasized what later French spiritual writers called désoccupation—the emptying of the soul of self-centred activity in order to remain receptive before God.[10]
He taught that advanced prayer involved a progressive purification of the faculties and an increasing passivity before divine action, though he did not advocate the abandonment of moral effort, sacramental life, or ecclesiastical obedience.[11] In his direction of Bernières, Chrysostom advised perseverance through periods of interior darkness and discouragement, recommending that one remain quietly before God without forcing discursive meditation.[12]
At the same time, his spirituality combined severe asceticism with pastoral moderation. He reportedly encouraged care for bodily health, external works of charity, and fidelity to ordinary duties during periods of spiritual desolation.[13]
Modern scholars have situated Chrysostom within a broader current of seventeenth-century French interior spirituality influenced by Franciscan spirituality, Carmelite spirituality, Rhineland mysticism, and the wider French School of Spirituality.[14]
Relationship with Jean de Bernières
editChrysostom is chiefly remembered for his spiritual direction of Jean de Bernières-Louvigny, the Norman lay ascetic and founder of the Hermitage of Caen. Under Chrysostom’s influence, Bernières embraced a more intensely contemplative and interior spirituality marked by humility, poverty, recollection, and abandonment to grace.[15]
The Hermitage of Caen, which became a major centre of contemplative, charitable, and missionary activity, was established largely under Chrysostom’s inspiration.[16] Through Bernières and his disciples, Chrysostom’s influence extended beyond Normandy into wider networks of French Catholic spirituality.
Later traditions traced lines of influence from the Ermitage to Jacques Bertot, Madame Guyon, Pierre Poiret, François Fénelon, the Benedictine abbess Catherine de Bar, and missionary circles connected with New France, including François de Laval and the early church of Quebec.[17]
Works
editSeveral spiritual writings and conferences attributed to Chrysostom circulated in manuscript during and after his lifetime. His best-known work is:
- L’École du saint amour de Dieu
Other collections associated with him include spiritual counsels, meditations, and ascetical treatises preserved under titles such as:
- Divers traités spirituels et méditatifs
- Divers exercices de piété et de perfection
Much of his teaching was transmitted indirectly through the writings of Bernières, Bertot, and later editors rather than through critical editions of his own works.[18]
Legacy
editTwentieth- and twenty-first-century scholars have increasingly identified Chrysostom as a foundational figure in a distinct current of French interior spirituality sometimes described as the École du cœur (“School of the Heart”).[19] According to this interpretation, the movement was not a formal institution or theological school but a network of spiritual relationships centred on contemplative prayer, inward transformation, and experiential knowledge of God.
His influence extended through the Ermitage of Caen into missionary and devotional networks reaching New France, the Paris Foreign Missions Society, and later traditions of Catholic and Protestant interior spirituality.[20]
Although some earlier polemical writers retrospectively associated Chrysostom and the Caen tradition with Quietism because of their language concerning passivity and inward silence, more recent historians have generally regarded such classifications as historically imprecise.[21]
See also
editReferences
edit- ↑ Dominique Tronc and Murielle Tronc, Une école du cœur: Bernières, Bertot, Guyon (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2023), pp. 17–36.
- ↑ Patricia A. Ward, Experimental Theology in America: Madame Guyon, Fénelon, and Their Readers (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2009), pp. 23–26.
- 1 2 3 Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique, vol. 2 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1953), cols. 722–724.
- ↑ Dominique Tronc and Murielle Tronc, Une école du cœur, pp. 29–31.
- ↑ Dominique Tronc and Murielle Tronc, Une école du cœur, p. 28.
- ↑ Dominique Tronc and Murielle Tronc, Une école du cœur, pp. 28–29.
- ↑ Dominique Tronc, “Une filiation mystique : Chrysostome de Saint-Lô, Jean de Bernières, Jacques Bertot, Jeanne-Marie Guyon”, Dix-septième siècle, no. 218 (2003), pp. 95–116.
- ↑ Dominique Tronc and Murielle Tronc, Une école du cœur, pp. 31–34.
- ↑ Jean Orcibal, La spiritualité de Jean de Bernières (Paris: J. Vrin, 1961), pp. 44–49.
- ↑ Jean Orcibal, La spiritualité de Jean de Bernières, pp. 44–49.
- ↑ Patricia A. Ward, Experimental Theology in America, pp. 23–24.
- ↑ Dominique Tronc and Murielle Tronc, Une école du cœur, pp. 33–34.
- ↑ Jean Orcibal, La spiritualité de Jean de Bernières, pp. 51–53.
- ↑ Dominique Tronc and Murielle Tronc, Une école du cœur, pp. 17–27.
- ↑ Jean de Bernières-Louvigny, Le chrétien intérieur, ed. Jean Orcibal (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1960), introduction.
- ↑ Dominique Tronc and Murielle Tronc, Une école du cœur, pp. 34–36.
- ↑ Patricia A. Ward, Experimental Theology in America, pp. 21–29.
- ↑ Jean Orcibal, La spiritualité de Jean de Bernières, pp. 40–56.
- ↑ Dominique Tronc and Murielle Tronc, Une école du cœur, pp. 9–17.
- ↑ Dominique Tronc and Murielle Tronc, Une école du cœur, pp. 34–36.
- ↑ Patricia A. Ward, Experimental Theology in America, pp. 23–26.
Further reading
edit- Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique. Vol. 2. Paris: Beauchesne, 1953.
- Orcibal, Jean. La spiritualité de Jean de Bernières. Paris: J. Vrin, 1961.
- Tronc, Dominique. “Une filiation mystique : Chrysostome de Saint-Lô, Jean de Bernières, Jacques Bertot, Jeanne-Marie Guyon”. Dix-septième siècle, no. 218 (2003), pp. 95–116.
- Tronc, Dominique, and Murielle Tronc. Une école du cœur: Bernières, Bertot, Guyon. Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2023.
- Ward, Patricia A. Experimental Theology in America: Madame Guyon, Fénelon, and Their Readers. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2009.