The question that turned Geneva's most famous minister pale

ANNECY, Savoy, 1597 AD — On Easter Tuesday, April 8, 1597 AD, a young priest came into Geneva. He was Father Francis de Sales, the future St. Francis de Sales, and he was twenty-nine. Pope Clement VIII had sent him to find Theodore Beza, the most famous of the Calvinist ministers. He was to learn whether Beza could be won back to the Catholic Church.

Father Francis de Sales worked next door to Geneva, in the Chablais, on the south shore of Lake Geneva. Geneva was the strongest city of the Calvinists. Father Francis de Sales and his bishop were not allowed to live there, so the bishop ran his diocese from Annecy, in Savoy.

Beza had been John Calvin’s assistant in Geneva, and in 1564 AD he took Calvin’s place. In 1596 AD many people were saying that Beza was ready to return to the Church. Father Francis de Sales began to hope it was true.

So did another priest, a preacher on his way to Rome. The two agreed that the preacher would tell the Pope in person what people were saying. Then the Pope asked Father Francis de Sales to learn from Beza, face to face, what he really thought.

Never once alone

Through the first three months of 1597 AD, Father Francis de Sales went into Geneva again and again. Each time, he gave some other piece of business as the reason he had come. He called at Beza’s house every time, and he never once found him alone.

On Easter Tuesday he carried five hosts for Communion. They were in the silver pyx he used to take Communion to the sick. They were for Catholics living in Geneva who could not leave the city. At his inn he gave Communion to a servant girl with half of one of the hosts. Then he went on to Beza’s house. This time Beza was alone. Father Francis de Sales later told the Pope that Beza was “at first at least, easy enough to approach”.

A quarter of an hour of silence

Father Francis de Sales asked: “Sir, can one be saved in the Roman Church?” Beza said nothing. He went into his study and walked up and down there for about a quarter of an hour. He came back pale. He said that one could, and that the Roman Church was without doubt “the mother Church”.

Father Francis de Sales asked why, if that was so, the Calvinists had shed so much blood in France. Beza answered that the Catholic Church had wrong things that needed fixing. One of them, he said, was its teaching that people must do good works to be saved.

Father Francis de Sales answered from the Gospel of St. Matthew. In that passage, the people who are punished are sent into the fire because they did not give food to the hungry. Beza went red and started insulting Catholics. Then he said he was sorry and asked his visitor to come back often.

They had talked for three hours. The long visit worried the people waiting outside to see Beza. Word soon went round Geneva that a dangerous man had come into the city.

A heart of stone

On April 21, 1597 AD, Father Francis de Sales wrote to Pope Clement VIII from Annecy. He put the three hours into one sentence: “But at last, as I was leaving, after I had tried every way of drawing his real mind out of him and had moved every stone I could, I found his heart a stone: unmoved until now, or at any rate not properly moved; an old man grown old in evil days.” He told the Pope that Beza might be won back if they could meet more often and more safely. But, he wrote, “in a man of eighty there is danger in delay.”

Father Francis de Sales went back to Beza. Later that year he made Beza an offer in the Pope’s name. If Beza would leave Geneva, he would get four thousand gold crowns a year and twice the value of everything in his house. Beza sent Father Francis de Sales away: “Go, sir; I am too old and too deaf to be able to hear such words.”