Binet, Étienne

BINET, ÉTIENNE. - Ascetical writer, b. at Dijon in 1569, d. at Paris in 1639. He entered the Society of Jesus in Italy at Novellara in 1590; having returned to France in 1603, he was rector at Rouen and Paris, and three times provincial. A friend of St. Francis de Sales and of St. Jane Frances de Chantal, who found his spirit "singularly akin in solid devotion to that of monsignor" of Geneva, he may be considered among the Jesuits as the type of the so-called "devout humanism."

Of his numerous writings (more than 40), one must cite La pratique solide du saint amour de Dieu (Mons 1623), L'entrée royale de Jésus-Christ au monde (Rouen 1631, and it seems already in 1623, the very year of Bérulle's masterpiece on the state and the grandeurs of Christ), Des attraits tout puissants de Jésus-Christ (Paris 1631). He also wrote a series of lives of saints, models for the different classes of persons, and translated from the Italian the famous Compedio intorno alla perfezione (Rouen 1620) of the Milanese Isabella Bellinzaga. The little treatise Quel est le meilleur gouvernement, le rigoureux ou le doux? (Paris 1636) is purely Salesian in inspiration. B. is distinguished by his optimism; he takes care to console, to present piety as the source of true happiness; notable in him are affective outpourings, the abundance of biblical images and reminiscences, the familiar and concrete tone.

Edmondo Lamalle