MASSILLON, JEAN-BAPTISTE. – Son of a notary, b. at Hyères in Provence on 24 June 1663, d. at Beauregard on 18 Sept. 1742. In 1681 he entered the Congregation of the Oratory (he was ordained a priest in 1692), devoting himself to teaching at the Colleges of Pézenas and Montbrison and at the Seminaries of Vienne and St-Magloire in Paris. After his first successes as a preacher in the provinces, his reputation as an orator was consecrated by the Lenten sermons delivered in 1699 in the Parisian church of the Oratory.
For twenty years, in Paris and at court, his uninterrupted activity as a sacred orator continued, up to the ten sermons of the Petit carême delivered in 1718; in 1719 the doors of the Academy were also opened to him. Two years earlier, on 6 Nov. 1717, he had been designated bishop of Clermont; consecrated at the end of 1718, he was kept in the capital for a further two years by negotiations aimed at restoring peace in the French Church, which had been profoundly disturbed by the promulgation of the bull Unigenitus, and in which his reputation, eloquence, and moderation were of no small assistance. After taking part in the episcopal consecration of the minister Dubois, who had largely desired and directed those negotiations, he withdrew definitively to his diocese, where he remained until his death.
His oratorical work, partially collected by a nephew belonging to the same Congregation, differs clearly from that of his great predecessors of the seventeenth century, not so much because of its more elaborate and ingenious style as because of its tendency to place the postulates of morality in the foreground, and to analyze and sympathize with the melancholy, discouragement, and weaknesses of the human heart. His contemporaries and, in general, the men of the eighteenth century, beginning with Voltaire himself, felt and appreciated M.’s eloquence as being closer to their own needs and literary sensibility, less impetuous, and more supple and compelling even in its expression. Hence the origin of M.’s great success.
Works: Sermons (edited by his nephew Fr. Joseph Massillon, 9 vols., Paris 1745); Oeuvres (with preliminary information by L. P. Béranger, 15 vols., Lyon 1810); Oeuvres complètes (14 vols., Paris 1818; new eds. 1822–25, in 15 vols., and 1828–29, in 16 vols.); Oeuvres complètes collated with the manuscripts and furnished with notes, variants, information, and documents by E. A. Blampignon (3 vols., Bar-le-Duc 1865–67 and Paris 1886).