Three years after Calvin's death, François de Sales was born in Thorens Glières, a village halfway between Geneva and Annecy. In 1602, the year of the Escalade, this brilliant Catholic theologian was consecrated Bishop of Geneva, an office he would never assume in Calvin's City, given its denominational color. Author of the famous Introduction à la vie dévote, François de Sales was a great preacher and exerted a strong influence on the Catholic Church. Canonized, he is the patron saint of journalists and printers. He is said to have met Théodore de Bèze on several occasions in his old age, with the hope, according to legend, of bringing this central figure of the Reformation back into the fold of the Roman Church.

This lecture will explore this major contemporary figure in the history of the region in the early days of the Reformation. It will also address an original question: could François de Sales have embraced Protestantism?