**BOURDALOUE, Louis.** - Jesuit, orator, born in Bourges on 20 August 1632, died in Paris on 13 May 1704. After several years of teaching philosophy and moral theology, he devoted himself to preaching, first in Amiens, Orléans, and Rouen, until he arrived in Paris in 1669, where he remained until his death, actively engaged not only in the direction of souls but also in the ministry of the word, which earned him the title of "preacher to kings and preachers." He delivered, before the court, five Lenten sermons and seven Advent sermons; he also gave many sermons for vestitions and religious professions, panegyrics, funeral orations, homilies on the Gospel readings for Sundays (*Domenicali*); sermons on feast days (*Mysteries*), instructions, exhortations, and spiritual exercises.
**His doctrine is that traditionally held by the Church. In the dogmatic field, there is no truth he did not treat with clear mastery, especially when, to combat errors or prevailing tendencies, he transformed himself into an excellent and profound controversialist. Famous are his sermons on faith, the Eucharist, the dead, devotion to the Virgin, against Protestant theories; on grace, predestination, Christian severity and the severity of penance, frequent communion against the Jansenists; on ordinary and active prayer against quietism. Against Gallicanism, he proclaims the infallibility of the Church and its universal power; yet, by remaining silent on the infallibility of the Pope and speaking cautiously of his indirect power over kings, he lends credence to the accusation that a shadow of Gallicanism tainted his doctrine (A. de Bil, p. 145). The field, however, where B. triumphed was moral theology, remaining unsurpassed in the analysis of the human heart, in the full knowledge of the wounds of conscience, in depicting the various characters of vice; as a supreme dialectician, he left his listeners no escape. Notable are his sermons on impurity, ambition, the thought of death, forced vocations, and the forgiveness of injuries. The success and extraordinary efficacy of his preaching were also greatly enhanced by his perfect oratorical technique: two exordia, one more general and the other descending to specifics; three points (exposition of doctrine according to Scripture and the Fathers, rules derived therefrom, comparison with current practice), each subdivided into three parts. This might give the impression of heaviness and mechanicity; yet B. knew how to handle his art with perfect balance, showing at the same time that he sought neither virtuosity nor applause, but was guided by a pure and transparent love for souls and their salvation. B. wrote nothing on ascetics; nonetheless, many passages in his moral sermons, or those for vestitions and professions, and above all his *Pensées* and the *Retraite*, offer an almost complete picture of Christian perfection and the various paths to attain it, even to the highest degrees. Yet, as an expert spiritual director, he warns against the facile confusion of ideas that may arise from the pretentious ambitions of inexperienced souls.
That he preached with his eyes closed is one of the many legends that arose around his life, as is the other that he directly reproached Louis XIV for his adultery, applying to him the words of Nathan: «Tu es ille vir» (C. M. Lauras, I, 208-10, 408-11).
**