CAMUS, JEAN-PIERRE. - Bishop and prolific polygraph, b. in Paris on 3 Nov. 1584, d. there on 25 Apr. 1652. He first embraced the magistracy and for a long time placed himself at the school of Montaigne, whose influence in method and style he always retained thereafter, even when, having left the bar, he entered the ranks of the clergy. He immediately distinguished himself by his eloquence; therefore Henry IV proposed him as bishop of Belley. There he was, in fact, consecrated on 30 Aug. 1609, by dispensation on account of his too young age of 25, by St. Francis de Sales, of whom he thereafter always lived as a faithful disciple, permeating himself with his example and his doctrine. In 1629 he renounced the bishopric and received in exchange the abbey of Aulnay in Normandy; but soon tiring of that life of rest, he was for a short time vicar general at Rouen, whence he passed to Paris, to the hospice of the Incurables, determined to devote himself entirely to the relief of the poor. He would have been bishop of Arras, on the proposal of Louis XIV, had he not died before the arrival of the bulls.
His works number more than 200; among them are counted 40 novels, which he wrote for the young, whom he noticed to be passionately fond of reading love novels, in order to lead them gradually from human love to divine love. The plot is well conducted with attractive scenes, sometimes ingenuous and sometimes indiscreet, at times even bold; with this peculiarity, that the author uses them to polemicize, in matters of ascetics, against the religious for their defects, their attachment to money, their claim that perfection was reserved only to them, while C. insists that it belongs to all Christians; whence heated polemics on both sides. He confirms the same ideas in another form also in his sermons and ascetical works, which treat a little of all subjects, according as polemics inflame them. Of these the work that is still known is the Esprit du bienheureux François de Sales (6 vols., Paris 1639-41; later reduced into one volume by Collot [Paris 1727], reprinted several times), where to the thoughts of the holy Doctor C. mingles his own, develops, comments, so that one may say with Bremond that in the work we have « a François de Sales camusine ».
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