CAUSSADE, JEAN-PIERRE de. – French Jesuit and spiritual writer, born on 7 March 1675 in the diocese of Cahors, died at Toulouse on 8 December 1751.
He entered the Society at Toulouse in 1693 and was first a professor and then, after 1715, a preacher in various cities; he resided at Nancy, outside his province, in 1729–30 and returned there to direct the House of Spiritual Retreats from 1734 to 1739. His relationships as spiritual director with several Visitandines of Nancy gave rise to his writings. He was rector at Perpignan (1741–43) and Albi (1744–46).
He personally published only one work: Instructions spirituelles en forme de dialogue sur les divers états d'oraison, suivant la doctrine de M. Bossuet, évêque de Meaux (Perpignan 1741; various abridged reprints, except for one complete edition at Avignon in 1825; complete reprint edited by H. Bremond under the title: Bossuet maître d'oraison, Paris 1931).
The author’s intention is clear: since many people’s aversion to anything suggestive of mysticism claims to rely on Bossuet’s authority, he wishes to clarify Bossuet’s true position. A first series of dialogues therefore illustrates Bossuet’s struggle against false Quietist mysticism, while a second series systematically gathers the great bishop’s instructions on mystical prayer, the conduct to be followed in it, and especially the trials that accompany II.
But the great fame of Fr. de C., that of a doctor—one might say the classic doctor—abandonment (v.) to the will of God, is recent and rests upon a work that was not written by him in the form in which it is known. Around 1860, Fr. Henri Ramière was shown a manuscript treatise on the interior life, composed, though without much discernment, from extracts of the copious letters of spiritual direction written by Fr. de C. to Visitandine nuns. Having discovered the central ideas of these writings, Ramière reclassified and coordinated the extracts in accordance with them, corrected certain dangerous passages with slight alterations and explanatory notes, and published the work under the title: L'abandon à la Providence divine, envisagée comme le moyen le plus facile de sanctification (Paris 1861).
He divided it into two parts: the first, more general, on the practice of the virtue of abandonment in God, beneficial for all the faithful; the second, on the state of total abandonment, intended for souls called by God to this special path of sanctification. Because of the consolation it brought to troubled souls, the work met with immediate success, which also made an abridged edition necessary (first part only, Paris 1863). In the meantime, the Visitandines had been able to give Fr. Ramière further letters from Fr. de C., relating for the most part to the same subject. Consequently, in the fifth edition (1867), Ramière added to the treatise, which was left in the same form, two series of letters: the first (47 letters) on esteem for and practice of the virtue of abandonment and the obstacles to its practice; the second (85 letters, vol. II) on the interior trials of souls called to the state of abandonment. He also prefaced vol. II with a “discourse by the editor on the foundations and true nature of the virtue of abandonment, to explain and defend the doctrine of Fr. de C.” In this new form, the book was reproduced in numerous reprints and translations; by the 21st edition (1928), 78,000 copies had already been printed in French, a remarkable circulation given the austerity of the subject, making it one of the spiritual books of widest influence in the nineteenth century. A more critical edition of de C.’s letters would nevertheless be extremely useful, both because other texts are now known and, above all, because Ramière, concerned solely with the doctrine, substantially reworked the form, omitting extensive passages that did not fit his plan, as well as all chronological and biographical information. Restoring the letters to their concrete and personal context would remedy one of the most well-founded criticisms directed against the book. Indeed, although its doctrine of abandonment, based on the teachings of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Bossuet, and principally St. Francis de Sales, is far removed from Quietist errors, and although Ramière’s interpretation of it is theologically irreproachable, there nevertheless remains an inconvenience inherent in the book’s very origin: directions and responses given for a particular case and justified by quite specific needs or circumstances are generalized into a treatise for everyone; its reading may therefore be dangerous for anyone who forgets this. Fr. M. Olphe-Galliard announced in 1939 that he had undertaken the work of preparing such an edition.