BERNIÈRES-LOUVIGNY, JEAN de. – French mystical writer, born at Caen in 1602, where he died on 3 May 1659. Devoted to good works from his youth and a member of the Company of the Blessed Sacrament founded at Caen by Baron de Renty (1645), he assumed its direction after the latter’s death (1649). He then abandoned his position as royal treasurer and withdrew to a house (“l’Ermitage”) next to the Ursuline monastery founded by his sister Giordana; he made it a kind of retreat house, a center of pious works and of an intense spiritual movement, in contact with the principal mystics of his time (Maria des Vallées, s. Giovanni Eudes, Enrico Boudon, Maria dell’Incarnazione, the missionary bishops de Laval and Lambert, etc.). Not content with taking an active part in all the religious foundations in Caen and its environs, he courageously supported the apostolic undertakings of Madame de la Peltrie in Canada (beginning by pretending to marry her in order to overcome the opposition that her family raised to her embarkation). He was one of the most remarkable figures of seventeenth-century French spirituality.
During his lifetime, de B. published nothing. The spiritual notes that he wrote or dictated (as well as 174 letters) were arranged and reworked by others after his death: Le chrétien intérieur, ou la conformité intérieure que doivent avoir tous les chrétiens avec Jésus-Christ (Rouen 1660 and Paris 1661; by 1670 it had already gone through twelve editions in Paris), edited by the Capuchin Ludovico Franc. d’Argentan, who produced a second volume in Rouen in 1677; Les œuvres spirituelles de M. de B.-L., ou conduite assurée pour ceux qui tendent à la perfection (Paris 1670), edited by Fr. Roberto di St-Gilles, of the Minims.
These writings of the pious layman were widely read in devout circles, more than the works of the great contemporary French mystics. They were translated into various languages, beginning with Italian: Il christiano interiore..., translated by Alessio Cenami, Venice 1668; Opere spirituali del sig. de B.-L., Todi 1676. But they were soon condemned by the Index (in 1666 Christiano interiore, in 1669 the French edition, in 1690 Oeuvres spirituelles, and in 1728 a new Italian translation), apparently because of exaggerated expressions or expressions that, having been written before the Quietist danger, seemed to favor II. The second part of Chrétien intérieur (1677) was not condemned, nor was Les pensées de M. de Bernières-Louvigny ou sentiments du chrétien intérieur sur les principaux mystères de la foi (Paris 1678). Le Règles des associés à l’enfance de Jésus, entered in the Index under his name, is not by him but by Guyon. Of the condemned works, only modern expurgated editions of his works are now available (Marseilles 1834, Lyons 1852–54, Paris 1867, etc.).