Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne

BOSSUET, JACQUES-BÉNIGNE. - Bishop, orator.

I. THE MAN

B. was born in Dijon on 27 Sept. 1627 into a family of magistrates, and died in Paris on 12 Apr. 1704. He studied at the Collège des Godrans, run by the Jesuits. At the age of 8 he received the tonsure and at 13 he was made a canon of Metz. He went to Paris to the Collège de Navarre for the study of 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 fulfill the duties of his canonry. He remained there, studying and preaching, until 1659, when he was sent to Paris by his colleagues. In the capital there then began, and it lasted 10 years, the most brilliant period of his preaching. In Sept. 1669 he was elected bishop of Condom and the following year he was appointed tutor to the dauphin; as a result of this appointment he soon renounced the bishopric and in Sept. 1671 he devoted himself entirely to the formation of his royal pupil, for whom he composed literary and philosophical works and the Discours sur l'histoire universelle. It was said that the fruit of his tutorship was very meager, but this judgment does not seem just, since the prince, of a somewhat indolent nature, did not prove inferior to the tasks entrusted to him, and moreover he died before reigning and before being able to show what he would have been capable of. During his stay at court, B. was elected a member of the French Academy 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, 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 not very important, but close to Paris, where the affairs of the Church of France often summoned the great bishop. In his diocese, he wore himself out for the souls entrusted to him. He preached often, directed many chosen religious women, helped the poor, and oversaw the publication of catechisms for all. But his activity extended beyond the limits of his jurisdiction. Like St. Augustine, whom he so greatly admired, from his episcopal see he spread the light of his doctrine throughout the whole Church and labored for posterity. His funeral eulogy was delivered at Meaux by Fr. de La Rue.

An admirer of St. Vincent de Paul and a close friend of Abbot 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

It is now generally agreed that B. was the most perfect and the most 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, a tireless worker, and at the same time adorned with the gifts of the poet and the thinker, he continually disseminates the most sublime thoughts in the most natural and most expressive form. His funeral orations are so many masterpieces: particularly those for Condé and for Henrietta of England. It is customary to divide his activity as a preacher into three periods. In the first, called the Metz period, up to 1658, the subject matter is drawn from the most intimate substance of the dogmas; the panegyric of St. Bernard, however, announces a broader manner. In the second period, that of Paris (from 1659 to 1681), philosophical and moral concerns take a larger place: on Providence, on death, on ambition. In the third period, that of Meaux, the homiletic genre predominates. We have 230 sermons (allocutions) by B., though not all of them written out in full.

III. THE CONTROVERSIALIST

1) The work for the union of Protestants with the Catholic Church began at Metz, where B. found himself in contact with Protestants and wrote first 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 had a great diffusion and was of much service 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 great work against the Reformation was the Histoire des variations des Églises protestantes (2 vols., Paris 1688), where he shows a mark of error of Protestantism in the fact that it has continually changed its doctrines; and since the minister Jurieu had replied saying that change had always existed in Christianity, the bishop of Meaux published in 1692 a long rejoinder entitled Six avertissements aux protestants, to demonstrate the immutability of doctrines through the centuries. From 1692 to 1701 he occupied himself with the Lutheran theologian Molanus and with the philosopher Leibniz on the union of Protestants with the Catholic Church. It seems that the principal obstacle to the union was the Council of Trent, which Leibniz always refused to accept. B.'s letters to Leibniz have been published in the works of the one and the other correspondent. For Pope Clement XI, B. wrote a report on the problem of the union: De professoriens confessionis Augustanae ad repetendum unitatem catholicam disponendis.

2) A shorter but more impassioned controversy was the one B. had with the bishop of Cambrai, Fénelon, in the years 1697-99 over the affair of quietism. Already in 1694, B. had been one of the participants in the conferences of Issy, held to examine the mystical ideas of Madame Guyon, and at the end of which 34 articles on the states of prayer were drawn up and signed also by Fénelon. To set forth the doctrine B. wrote an Instruction sur les états d'oraison and communicated the manuscript to Fénelon. The latter, seeing that the doctrine of Guyon was attacked in it, composed a book to defend it, Explicitation des maximes des Saints, which was published at the beginning of 1697, a little before B.'s work. While the bishop of Cambrai submitted his writing to the judgment of Rome, a stormy controversy broke out between him and the eagle of Meaux. B. published the famous Relation sur le quiétisme, in which with mordant eloquence he narrated the facts and branded the persons. Fénelon replied in the same tone. Writings and letters were exchanged with fury. On 12 March 1699, Innocent XII condemned the book of the Maximes of Fénelon. B. had won. It is, however, difficult to excuse him in this affair from every excess, whether in the polemic against a bishop who had been his friend, or in the doctrine itself, in which he restricts too much the field of the pure love of God.

3) On B.'s position regarding Jansenism, one point is certain: that he condemned the five propositions and always maintained that they are the soul of Jansenius's Augustinus. Already in 1665, he sought, though in vain, to overcome the obstinacy of the nuns of Port-Royal; and in his last years he intervened in the affair of the celebrated "case of conscience" to maintain the necessity of an internal adherence to the truth of the dogmatic fact, namely that the five propositions are those of Jansenius. On the other hand, he strove to find orthodox the Réflexions morales of Quesnel; but it is to be noted that he did so before the condemnation of the book, with the intention of defending the cardinal of Noailles, who had approved Quesnel's book, and that in the end he asked for a good number of corrections. Contrary to his nephew, the future bishop of Troyes, he was therefore not a Jansenist, despite the fact that he showed a certain rigidity of doctrine in the questions of the distribution of grace and a somewhat excessive severity in some points of morals, as appears, for example, in his Traité de la concupiscence.

4) In the question of Gallicanism, on the other hand, he was unable to master his environment and his time. It is true that his Gallicanism is quite moderate; in the assembly of 1682, he drafted the four famous articles in order to prevent more radical attitudes, and moreover, both in the first redaction, which the assembly modified, and in the explanations he gave of it, he reduced to very little the powers of councils over papal decisions. He began magnificently at the opening of the assembly on the unity of the Church; however, he never admitted the pure and simple, that is personal, infallibility of the Roman Pontiff.

5) When Richard Simon published, in 1693, his Histoire critique des principaux commentateurs du Nouveau Testament, B. found in it little deference for the Holy Fathers and especially for St. Augustine, and took up his pen to refute this work. He left the work incomplete, however, and it was published only in 1763, by Leroy; indeed the last chapter, the thirteenth, was not given to the press until 1862, through the work of Lachat. The book, entitled Défense de la tradition et des saints Pères, is full of excellent theology and always useful for consultation, especially for the understanding of St. Augustine. Perhaps the author has here and there been too severe toward criticism, whose rights he limits too much; but the modernists have greatly exaggerated this defect, and against B. they have exalted Simon almost as the father of biblical criticism, as if Maldonatus, Arias Montano, Sixtus of Siena had lacked critical sense.

IV. THE APOLOGIST

B. felt keenly the need to defend the faith, not only against heretics, but already against unbelievers. In his sermons this concern is often very vivid; he strives especially to bring out the work of Divine Providence, as if he foresaw the deism of the following century. The same idea appears in the philosophical works written during his time as tutor: De la connaissance de Dieu et de soi-même, Traité du libre arbitre, in which he follows mainly St. Augustine. In his Discours sur l'histoire universelle, the work he also wrote for the dauphin and which he preferred to all his others, the second part is an apologetic against Spinoza and against the deniers of 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 tirée d'après les propres paroles de l'Écriture Sainte, in which he sets out the duties of princes, and together the greatness 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. THE SPIRITUAL AUTHOR

From his reflections on the sacred texts there resulted (though published only after his death) the beautiful works entitled: Méditations sur l'Évangile, Élévations sur les mystères. B. wrote many letters of direction, a good number of which have been preserved for us. 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 short treatises we may mention the Discours sur l'acte d'abandon, L'oraison de simplicité, La vie cachée en Dieu, De la meilleure manière de faire oraison. He sets forth a solid, moderate, traditional doctrine, truly inspired by the reading of Sacred Scripture.

Carlo Boyer
BOSSUET, JACQUES-BÉNIGNE. - French theologian, nephew of the great bishop of Meaux, b. at Dijon on 15 Dec. 1664, d. at Paris on 12 July 1743. On 7 March 1716 he was appointed bishop of Troyes. In his diocese he introduced not a few innovations in a Jansenist direction, since he was an ardent follower of the doctrines of Port-Royal: thus he published a Missal (1726), which aroused strong controversy, and a decree (1729) against the office of St. Gregory VII inserted into the Roman Breviary by Benedict XIII (25 Sept. 1728).

He also published certain unpublished works of his uncle, which gave rise to bitter debates. Among these we recall: Defensio declarationis cleri gallicani, whose complete edition (2 vols. in-4) came out only in 1745, that is, after B.'s death; Elevation à Dieu sur les mystères de la vie chrétienne (2 vols., Paris 1727); Méditations sur l'Évangile (4 vols., ibid. 1730-31). He renounced the bishopric of Troyes in 1742 and retired to Paris. - See Pl. CXVI.

Settimio Cipriani