CAUSSADE, JEAN-PIERRE de. - French Jesuit, spiritual writer, b. 7 March 1675 in the diocese of Cahors, d. at Toulouse on 8 Dec. 1751.
Having entered the Society at Toulouse in 1693, he was first a professor and then, after 1715, a preacher in various cities; he resided at Nancy, outside his province, in the years 1729-30 and returned there to direct, from 1734 to 1739, the House of spiritual retreats. His relations as spiritual director with several Visitandine nuns of Nancy gave occasion for 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 a complete one at Avignon 1825; complete reprint edited by H. Bremond under the title: Bossuet maître d'oraison, Paris 1931).
The author's intent is manifest: since the aversion of many to anything that smacks of the mystical claims to rely on the authority of Bossuet, he wishes to clarify his true position. A first series of dialogues thus illustrates Bossuet's struggle against the 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 it.
But the great fame of Fr. de C., that of a doctor, one might say classical, of abandonment (v.) to the will of God, is recent and rests upon a work that was not drafted by him in the form that is known. Around 1860, a manuscript treatise on the interior life was presented to Fr. Henri Ramière, composed, but without much discernment, from extracts of the copious direction letters of Fr. de C. to Visitandine nuns. Discovering the central ideas of these writings, Ramière reclassified and coordinated the extracts in function of them, remedied certain dangerous passages with slight retouchings and explanatory notes, and brought the work to light under the title: L'abandon à la Providence divine, envisagée comme le moyen le plus facile de sanctification (Paris 1861).
He had divided it into two parts, the first more general, on the practice of the virtue of abandonment in God, salutary for all the faithful, the second on the state of total abandonment, destined for souls called by God to this special way of sanctification. Because of the comfort it brought to afflicted souls, the work met with immediate success, which also made necessary an abridged edition (first part only, Paris 1863). Meanwhile the Visitandines had been able to communicate to Fr. Ramière other letters of Fr. de C. relating for the most part to the same theme. Therefore, in the fifth edition (1867), Ramière added to the treatise, left in the same form, two series of letters, a first (47 letters) on the esteem and exercise of the virtue of abandonment and the obstacles to its practice, a second (85 letters, vol. II) on the internal trials of souls called to the state of abandonment. He also prefaced vol. II with a « discourse of the editor on the foundations and the true nature of the virtue of abandonment, to explain and defend the doctrine of Fr. de C. ». Under this new form, the book was reproduced in numerous reprints and translations; with the 21st ed. (1928) 78,000 copies had already been printed in French, a very notable circulation given the austerity of the subject and one that makes it one of the spiritual books of widest influence in the 19th century. It would nevertheless be very useful to have a more critical edition of de C.'s letters, both because other texts are now known, and above all because Ramière, looking solely to the doctrine, reworked the form considerably, omitting long passages that did not fit into his plan, and all the chronological and biographical data. By restoring the letters to their concrete and personal context, one of the most well-founded criticisms made of the book would be remedied. In fact, if its doctrine of abandonment, resting on the teachings of St. Ignatius of Loyola, of Bossuet and principally of St. Francis de Sales, is far removed from Quietist errors, and if the interpretation that Ramière gives of it is theologically irreproachable, there nevertheless remains the drawback, inherent in the very origin of the book, of generalizing into a treatise for everyone directions and answers given for a particular case and justified by well-determined needs or circumstances; its reading can therefore be dangerous for anyone who forgot this. Fr. M. Olphe-Galliard announced in 1939 that he had undertaken the work of such an edition.
Bibliography5 works
Edmondo Lamalle