TISSOT, JOSEPH. - Ascetical writer, b. at Annecy on Sept. 1, 1840, d. on Aug. 2, 1894. Having entered the Institute of the Missionaries of St. Francis de Sales at Annecy, he became its superior general.
He was a valiant preacher and wrote several works intended to promote 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 Salésien de la Supérieure, ibid. 1893. Greater resonance was enjoyed by the work he published: La Vie intérieure simplifiée, whose author was the Carthusian François de Sales Pollien (d. in 1936); (a recent Italian edition bears the latter's name). The purpose of this work was to react against sentimentalism in piety, leading it back to essential principles: the end of man, the glory of God and, secondarily, his own beatitude; the way that leads there: the will of God, either signified in the divine commandments, or of beneplacitum* in the events of Providence; the means are, on God's part, Grace: on our part, the exercises of piety, insisting more on the interior spirit than on a "mechanical fidelity to exterior practices"; it culminates in evoking Christ, our life and Head of the Mystical Body.