Francis de Sales was Bishop of Geneva during the Counter-Reformation, but he is remembered chiefly as a spiritual director of extraordinary patience and gentleness. He wrote that one catches more flies with a spoonful of honey than with a barrel of vinegar, and lived the principle.
His Introduction to the Devout Life (1609) was revolutionary: spiritual depth, he insisted, is for all Christians — the merchant and the mother as much as the monk. The book remains a classic of practical piety, and Francis is the patron saint of writers.