BOSSUET, JACQUES-BÉNIGNE. — Bishop, orator.
I. THE MAN
B. was born in Dijon on 27 September 1627 into a family of magistrates, and died in Paris on 12 April 1704. He studied at the Collège des Godrans, conducted by the Jesuits. At the age of eight he received the tonsure, and at thirteen he was made a canon of Metz. He went to Paris, to the Collège de Navarre, to study philosophy and theology. He was ordained a priest on 16 March 1651 and obtained his doctorate in theology on 16 May of the following year. Having completed his studies, he went to Metz to fulfil the duties of his canonry. He remained there, studying and preaching, until 1659, when his colleagues sent him to Paris. In the capital, the most brilliant period of his preaching began and lasted ten years. In September 1669 he was elected bishop of Condom, and the following year was appointed tutor to the dauphin; as a result of this appointment, he soon resigned the bishopric, and in September 1671 devoted himself entirely to the education of his royal pupil, for whom he composed literary and philosophical works, as well as the Discours sur l'histoire universelle. It was said that the fruits of his tutorship were very meagre, but this judgment does not seem fair, since the prince, somewhat indolent by nature, did not prove unequal to the tasks entrusted to him; moreover, he died before reigning and before he could show what he would have been capable of. During his residence at court, B. was elected a member of the Académie française on 8 June 1671. His conduct at court was worthy of a bishop; he knew how to admonish Louis XIV, obtained from him more than one victory over his passions, and contributed to the conversion of La Vallière and to the departure of Montespan.On 2 May 1681 he was elected bishop of Meaux, a see of no great importance but close to Paris, where the affairs of the Church of France often summoned the great bishop. In his diocese, he devoted himself tirelessly to the souls entrusted to his care. He preached frequently, directed many distinguished religious women, helped the poor, and promoted the publication of catechisms for everyone. But his activity extended beyond the limits of his jurisdiction. Like s. Augustine, whom he admired so greatly, from his episcopal see he spread the light of his teaching throughout the entire Church and worked for posterity. His funeral oration was delivered at Meaux by Fr. de La Rue.
An admirer of s. Vincent de Paul and an intimate friend of the abbé de Rancé, the restorer of Cistercian monasticism, he always lived as an exemplary priest, wholly devoted to his duties and to the interests of the Church.
II. THE ORATOR
Today there is general agreement in recognizing B. as the most perfect and eloquent of French orators. Endowed with an extraordinary memory, an enthusiastic reader of the Bible and of St. Augustine, familiar with other Fathers such as Tertullian and St. John Chrysostom, an indefatigable worker, and at the same time gifted with the talents of a poet and thinker, he continually disseminated the most sublime thoughts in the most natural and expressive form. His funeral orations are masterpieces in their own right, particularly those for Condé and for Henrietta of England.His preaching activity is usually divided into three periods. In the first, known as the Metz period, lasting until 1658, the subject matter is drawn from the innermost substance of dogma; the panegyric of St. Bernard, however, announces a broader manner. In the second, the Paris period (from 1659 to 1681), philosophical and moral concerns occupy a larger place: Providence, death, ambition. In the third period, that of Meaux, the homiletic genre predominates. We have 230 sermons (addresses) by B., though not all of them were written out in full.
III. THE CONTROVERSIALIST
1) The work for the union of the Protestants with the Catholic Church began in Metz, where B. came into contact with Protestants and first wrote a Réfutation du catéchisme du sieur Paul Ferry, ministre de la religion prétendue réformée (Metz 1655), and then an Exposition de la doctrine de l'Église catholique (ibid. 1671), which Leibniz called “all gold,” which enjoyed wide circulation and contributed greatly to the conversion of Turenne. In 1682 he published the Conférence avec M. Claude: an account of a debate on the authority of the Church with a Protestant minister. But B.’s major work against the Reformation was the Histoire des variations des Églises protestantes (2 vols., Paris 1688), in which he shows a sign of Protestantism’s error in the fact that it has continually changed its doctrines; and since the minister Jurieu had replied that change had always existed in Christianity, the bishop of Meaux published in 1692 a lengthy reply entitled Six avertissements aux protestants, to demonstrate the immutability of doctrine through the centuries. From 1692 to 1701 he occupied himself with the Lutheran theologian Molanus and the philosopher Leibniz with the union of the Protestants and the Catholic Church. It seems that the principal obstacle to union was the Council of Trent, which Leibniz always refused to accept. B.’s letters to Leibniz have been published in the works of both correspondents. For Pope Clement XI, B. wrote a report on the problem of union: De professor iens confessionis Augustanae ad repetendum unitatem catholicam disponendis.2) A shorter but more passionate controversy was that which B. had with the bishop of Cambrai, Fénelon, in the years 1697–99 over the affair of Quietism. As early as 1694, B. had been one of the participants in the conferences at Issy, held to examine the mystical ideas of Madame Guyon, at the conclusion of which 34 articles on the states of prayer were drawn up and signed also by Fénelon. To expound the doctrine, B. wrote an Instruction sur les états d'oraison and communicated the manuscript to Fénelon. Seeing that it attacked Guyon’s doctrine, Fénelon composed a book to defend it, Explicitation des maximes des Saints, which was published at the beginning of 1697, shortly before B.’s work. While the bishop of Cambrai was submitting his writing to the judgment of Rome, a tempestuous controversy broke out between him and the eagle of Meaux. B. published the famous Relation sur le quiétisme, in which, with mordant eloquence, he recounted the facts and branded the persons involved. Fénelon replied in the same tone. Writings and letters were exchanged furiously. On 12 March 1699, Innocent XII condemned Fénelon’s book of the Maximes. B. had won. It is nevertheless difficult to excuse him in this affair from every excess, both in his polemic against a bishop who had previously been his friend and in the doctrine itself, in which he restricts the scope of pure love of God too severely.
3) Regarding B.’s position on Jansenism, one point is certain: he condemned the five propositions and always maintained that they were the soul of Jansen’s Augustinus. As early as 1665, he tried, though in vain, to overcome the obstinacy of the nuns of Port-Royal; and in his final years he intervened in the affair of the celebrated “case of conscience” to maintain the necessity of an internal assent to the truth of the dogmatic fact, namely, that the five propositions were Jansen’s. On the other hand, he endeavored to find Quesnel’s Réflexions morales orthodox; but it should be noted that he did so before the condemnation of the book, with the intention of defending Cardinal de Noailles, who had approved Quesnel’s book, and that in the end he demanded a considerable number of corrections. Unlike his nephew, the future bishop of Troyes, he was therefore not a Jansenist, although he displayed a certain rigidity of doctrine in questions concerning the distribution of grace and a somewhat excessive severity on certain points of morality, as appears, for example, in his Traité de la concupiscence.
4) In the question of Gallicanism, however, he was unable to master his environment and his age. It is true that his Gallicanism was quite moderate; at the assembly of 1682, he drafted the four famous articles in order to prevent more radical positions, and, moreover, both in the first draft, which the assembly modified, and in the explanations he gave of them, he reduced the powers of councils over papal decisions to very little. At the opening of the assembly, he spoke magnificently on the unity of the Church; yet he never admitted the pure and simple, that is, personal, infallibility of the Roman Pontiff.
5) When Richard Simon published, in 1693, his Storia critica dei principali commentatori del Nuovo Testamento, B. found in it little deference toward the Holy Fathers, and especially toward St. Augustine, and took up his pen to refute the work. He left the work incomplete, however, and it was subsequently published only in 1763 by Leroy; indeed, the final chapter, the thirteenth, was not printed until 1862, through the efforts of Lachat. The book, entitled Défense de la tradition et des saints Pères, is full of excellent theology and remains always useful for consultation, especially for understanding St. Augustine. Perhaps the author was here and there too severe toward criticism, whose rights he restricts excessively; but the modernists greatly exaggerated this defect, and, against B., exalted Simon almost as the father of biblical criticism, as though Maldonado, Arias Montano, and Sixtus of Siena had lacked critical sense.
IV. THE APOLOGIST
B. keenly felt the need to defend the faith, not only against heretics, but already against unbelievers. In his sermons this concern is often very marked; he strives especially to bring out the work of Divine Providence, as though he foresaw the deism of the following century. The same idea appears in the philosophical works written during his tutorship: De la connaissance de Dieu et de soi-même, Traité du libre arbitre, in which he follows chiefly s. Agostino. In his Discours sur l'histoire universelle, the work he also wrote for the dauphin and preferred to all his others, the second part is an apology against Spinoza and against those who deny Revelation; the third is a philosophy of history, in the light of the idea of Providence. Again for his royal pupil, he composed a political work, Politique sirée d'après les propres paroles de l'Écriture Sainte, in which he sets forth the duties of princes, and at the same time the grandeur of their mission as instruments of Providence; he insists on the distinction between temporal power and spiritual power and declares himself in favor of absolute monarchy.V. L'AUTORE SPIRITUALE
From his reflections on the sacred texts there resulted (although they were published only after his death) the fine works entitled: Méditations sur l'Évangile, Élévations sur les mystères. B. wrote many letters of spiritual direction, a good number of which have been preserved. Four splendid letters on Jesus Christ and the Church were addressed in 1659 to Alix Clerginet and are entitled in the editions: Lettres à une demoiselle de Metz; among his minor works we may cite the Discours sur l'acte d'abandon, L'oraison de simplicité, La vie cachée en Dieu, De la meilleure manière de faire oraison. He proposes a solid, moderate, traditional doctrine, truly inspired by reading the Sacred Scriptures.Carlo Boyer
BOSSUET, JACQUES-BÉNIGNE. — French theologian, nephew of the great bishop of Meaux, born at Dijon on 15 December 1664, died in Paris on 12 July 1743. On 7 March 1716 he was appointed bishop of Troyes. In his diocese he introduced quite a few innovations in a Jansenist direction, since he was an ardent follower of the doctrines of Port-Royal: thus he published a Messale (1726), which provoked fierce controversy, and a decree (1729) against the office of s. Gregorio VII inserted into the Roman Breviary by Benedict XIII (25 September 1728).
He also published some unpublished works of his uncle, which gave rise to bitter debates. Among these we may recall: Defensio declarationis clevi gallicani, whose complete edition (2 vols. in-4) appeared only in 1745, that is, after the death of B.; Elevation à Dieu sur les mystères de la vie chrétienne (2 vols., Paris 1727); Méditations sur l'Évangile (4 vols., there 1730–31). He resigned the bishopric of Troyes in 1742 and retired to Paris. — Vedi Tav. CXVI.