CAUSSADE, JEAN-PIERRE de. - French Jesuit, spiritual writer, b. March 7, 1675 in the diocese of Cahors, d. at Toulouse Dec. 8, 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 own province, in the years 1729–30 and returned there to direct the House of Spiritual Retreats from 1734 to 1739. His relations as spiritual director with several Visitandines of Nancy gave occasion to his writings. He was rector at Perpignan (1741–43) and Albi (1744–46).
He published only one work in his lifetime: *Instructions spirituelles en forme de dialogue sur les divers états d'oraison, suivant la doctrine de M. Bousuet, évèque de Meaux* (Perpignan 1741; several abbreviated reprints, except for one complete edition at Avignon 1825; complete reprint edited by H. Bremond under the title: *Bousuet maître d'oraison*, Paris 1931).
The author’s intent is clear: since many object to anything mystical by invoking the authority of Bossuet, he wished to clarify Bossuet’s true position. A first series of dialogues 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 therein, and especially the trials that accompany II.
Yet the great fame of Fr. de C., as a doctor—one might say a classical doctor—of abandonment (v.) to the will of God, is recent and rests upon a work not written by him in the form in which it is known. Around 1860, a manuscript treatise on the interior life, composed somewhat indiscriminately from the abundant letters of direction of Fr. de C. to Visitandine nuns, was presented to Fr. Henri Ramière. Discerning the central ideas of these writings, Ramière reclassified and coordinated the extracts in light of them, remedied certain dangerous passages with slight revisions and explanatory notes, and published the work under the title: *L’abandon à la Providence divine, envisagé 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, salutary for all the faithful; the second, on the state of total abandonment, intended for souls called by God to this special way of sanctification. Because it brought comfort to troubled souls, the work met with immediate success, necessitating an abbreviated edition (only the first part, Paris 1863). Since the Visitandines had been able to communicate to Fr. Ramière other letters of Fr. de C., mostly on the same theme, in the fifth edition (1861) Ramière added to the treatise, left in its original 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 interior trials of souls called to the state of abandonment. He also prefixed to vol. II an “editor’s discourse” 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 remarkably wide diffusion given the austerity of the subject, making it one of the most influential spiritual books of the 19th century. A more critical edition of de C.’s letters would nonetheless be highly desirable, both because other texts are now known and especially because Ramière, focusing solely on doctrine, considerably reworked the form, omitting large passages that did not fit his plan, as well as all chronological and biographical data. Restoring the letters to their concrete and personal context would address one of the most serious criticisms leveled against the book. For although its doctrine of abandonment, grounded in the teachings of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Bossuet, and above all St. Francis de Sales, is far removed from Quietist errors, and although Ramière’s interpretation of it is theologically unimpeachable, the inconvenience inherent in the book’s very origin remains: namely, that it generalizes into a treatise for all directions and responses given for a particular case and justified by specific needs or circumstances. Its reading can therefore be dangerous for those who forget this.
Fr. M. Olphe-Galliard announced in 1939 that he had undertaken the work of such an edition.