BREMOND, HENRI. - Writer, b. at Aix-en-Provence on 31 July 1865, d. at Artège d’Asson on 17 Aug. 1933. Having entered the Society of Jesus in 1882 and completed his studies in England, he was sent in 1889 to Paris as a contributor to Études. He soon earned a reputation as a refined and penetrating writer and as an excellent critic of literary and religious subjects (*L'inquiétude religieuse. Aubes et lendemains de conversion*, 1st series [Paris 1901]; *Âmes religieuses* [ibid. 1901]; *L'enfant et sa vie* [ibid. 1902]; *Le bienheureux Thomas More* [ibid. 1903]). In 1904 he left the Order but continued his literary activity intensively. In 1923 he was elected a member of the Académie Française (cf. *Documentation catholique*, II [1924], 1411–25, 1603–18).
Besides his collaboration, from 1905 onward, with the *Annales de philosophie chrétienne*, he published a very large number of works; the principal ones are: *Newman, Essai de biographie psychologique* (ibid. 1906), *Gerbert* (ibid. 1907), *Gerbert, dernières conférences d’Albéric d’Assise* (ibid. 1907), *La prose mystique au XVIIe siècle* (ibid. 1908), *Apologie pour Fénelon* (ibid. 1910). The much more extensive work to which he devoted the best of his energies, though he did not complete it according to his original plan, is the *Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France, depuis la fin des guerres de religion* (2 vols., ibid. 1915–33). In the intervals between volumes there appeared: *Prière et poésie* (ibid. 1926), *L’abbé Tempête: Armand de Rancé et la réforme de la Trappe* (ibid. 1926), *Introduction à la philosophie de la prière* (1929), *Bossuet, maître d’oraison* (ibid. 1931).
An undisputed master of style, he commanded his pen so as to bring out all the most captivating nuances, yet he provoked many controversies because of his ideas and the way he conceived certain points of spiritual theology (petitionary prayer, pure love, the various methods of prayer, the different ascetical exercises, the value of certain external norms, which he declared intolerable fetters on the soul’s flight and instead saw as brakes against a plunge into ruin). Even in his *Histoire* he exaggerated the idea of a violent and sometimes irreconcilable struggle between pure prayer and anti-mystical, i.e., ascetical, prayer; rather than adhere to the data supplied by documents and weave an exact and objective history, he preferred to reconstruct life using only those traits he deemed most revealing, abbreviating quotations, sometimes distorting their meaning, and injecting into his characters much of his own personal psychology. A humanist and intuitive psychologist, but neither an exact nor a learned theologian and metaphysician, he liked, as he put it, to orchestrate the magnificent texts that the old spiritual writers provided him.
He nevertheless retains the great merit of having rekindled an interest in mystical questions and of having revealed, through the charm and power of his style, the magnificent treasures of life and sublime love of God contained in works that were esteemed only for their pious rhetoric and judged devoid of originality or soul.
It should not be overlooked that his work *L’abbé Tempête* was judged unjust and offensive, and that his *Sainte Jeanne Chantal* (Paris 1913) was placed on the Index on 5 May of the same year.