BERTHIER, GUILLAUME-JOSEPH. - French Jesuit, historian, publicist, and ascetical writer, b. at Issoudun on 7 Apr. 1704; entered the order in 1722; d. at Bourges on 15 Dec. 1784. He first taught humanities, philosophy, and theology. Charged with continuing the Histoire de l'Eglise gallicane of Fathers Longueval and Brumoy, he published the volumes XI-XII left by them, then volumes XIII-XVIII of his own composition (Paris, 1744-49). He interrupted this work to assume the
editorship of the periodical Mémoires de Trévoix (1745-62), in which he fought against Voltaire and the Encyclopedists. When the Society was suppressed in France, he became tutor to the sons of the Dauphin, the future Louis XVI and Louis XVIII; having left the kingdom with several of his fellow religious in 1764, he returned there in 1774.
He had devoted his last years to the composition of spiritual works, published after his death: Le Pautier traduit... avec des notes et des réflexions, 8 vols., Paris 1785, reprinted in Migne’s Cursus Scripturae Sacrae, XIV-XVI); Réflexions spirituelles, ibid. 1790, reprinted in 1811 and later under the title Œuvres spirituelles. In the latter works, of uncommon loftiness, noteworthy is the discreet yet firm defense of mystical authors (Lettre sur les œuvres de s. Jean de la Croix, Considérations sur la mort mystique, etc.). The Sulpician Lasausse extracted from them a Doctrine spirituelle du P. B., Paris 1797.