BOURDALOUE, LOUIS. – Jesuit, preacher, born at Bourges on 20 August 1632, died at Paris on 13 May 1704. After several years of teaching philosophy and moral theology, he devoted himself to preaching, first at Amiens, Orléans, and Rouen, until, having arrived in Paris in 1669, he remained there until his death, assiduously engaged not only in the direction of souls but also in the ministry of the word, which earned him the title of “preacher of kings and king of preachers.” Indeed, before the court he delivered five Lenten series and seven Advent series; he also delivered many sermons for religious vestitions and professions; panegyrics, funeral orations, homilies on the Sunday Gospels (Domenicali); sermons on feasts (Misteri), instructions, exhortations, and gave spiritual exercises.
His doctrine is that traditionally held by the Church. In the dogmatic field there is no truth that he did not treat with clear mastery, especially when, in order to combat the errors or prevailing tendencies, he became 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 proclaimed the infallibility of the Church and its universal power; but, remaining silent concerning the infallibility of the Pope and speaking cautiously of his indirect power over kings, he laid himself open to the accusation that his doctrine contained a trace of Gallicanism (A. de Bil, p. 145). The field, however, in which B. triumphed was morality, remaining unsurpassed in the analysis of the human heart, in his complete knowledge of the wounds of conscience, and in depicting the various characters of vice; supremely dialectical, he left his listeners no avenue of escape. His sermons on impurity, ambition, the thought of death, forced vocations, and the forgiveness of injuries are especially noteworthy. His perfect oratorical technique also contributed greatly to the success and extraordinary effectiveness of his preaching: two introductions, one more general and the other descending to particulars; three points (an exposition of the doctrine according to Scripture and the Fathers, the rules deriving from it, and comparison with current practice), each divided into
three parts. This may give an impression of heaviness and mechanism; but 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 specifically ascetical; nevertheless, many passages of his moral sermons, or of those for vestitions and professions, and above all his Pensées and the Retraite, offer an almost complete picture of Christian perfection and of the various paths for attaining it, up to the highest degrees. Yet, as an experienced spiritual director, he warned against the facile confusion of ideas that may arise from the presumptuous ambitions of inexperienced souls.
That he preached with his eyes closed is one of the many legends that arose around his life, like the other according to which he directly addressed Louis XIV concerning his adultery, applying to him Nathan’s words: « Tu es ille vir » (C. M. Lauras, I, 208-10, 408-11).