November 12, 2020
This article traces St. Francis de Sales’ use of the Song of Songs, a series of poetically passionate love songs found in the Hebrew Bible, to explore in culturally “fitting” (or bienséant) terms the relationship between God and the human soul in his Treatise on the Love of God. I examine de Sales’ appropriation of this quintessential text of the so-called “Orient” of his time, with particular attention to the theologian’s vivid elaboration of the physical, sensate female body, her powerful desire, and her active participation, through both words and physical expression, in a sensual love relationship intended to parallel that of the human soul with God.