TISSOT, JOSEPH

He was a gifted preacher and wrote several works intended to foster the restoration of Salesian spirituality: *La Flore mystique de St François de Sales*, Paris 1873; *Les Abeilles Mystiques*, ibid. 1880; *La Journée de Philothée*, Petit Trésor Salesien de la Supérieure, ibid. 1893. Greater resonance, however, was achieved by the work he published: *La Vie intérieure simplifiée*, of which the author was the Carthusian François de Sales Pollien (d. in 1936); (a recent Italian edition bears the latter’s name). The aim of this work was to react against sentimentalism in piety, bringing it back to essential principles: the end of man, the glory of God and, secondarily, his own beatitude; the way to attain it: the will of God, whether signified in the divine commandments or in the *beneplacitum* in the events of Providence; the means are, on God’s part, grace; on ours, the exercises of piety, insisting more on inner spirit than on “mechanical fidelity to external practices”; it culminates in evoking Christ, our life and Head of the Mystical Body.