MASCARON, JULES. - Preacher and Bishop of Agen, b. at Marseille in 1634, d. at Agen on 16 Dec. 1703. He entered the Congregation of the Oratory at a very young age (1650), where he had been educated.
He continued his theological studies at the Seminary of Saumur, where he began preaching with immediate success; he soon moved to Marseille, Aix, Nantes, Paris, and from 1666 to 1671 preached at Court, where Louis XIV (whose dissolute conduct M. nonetheless vehemently stigmatized) summoned him again in 1675, 1679, 1683, 1684, and 1694. He was appointed Bishop of Tulle in 1671 and of Agen in 1678.
Especially renowned were his funeral orations for Queen Mother Anne of Austria (1666), the Duke of Beaufort, Henrietta of England (1671), and Turenne (1675); on the latter, as on other Calvinists, his rhetoric—rich in both the virtues and defects of the time—exerted notable influence.