TISSOT, JOSEPH. – Ascetical writer, b. at Annecy on 1 September 1840, d. on 2 August 1894. Having entered the Institute of the Missionaries of St. Francis de Sales at Annecy, he became its superior general.
He was an able 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. The work he published that achieved the greatest resonance was *La Vie inté-
rieure 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 counter sentimentalism in piety, by bringing it back to its essential principles: the end of man, the glory of God and, secondarily, his own beatitude; the way leading to it: the will of God, either significata in the divine commandments or of beneplacito* in the events of Providence; the means are, on God’s part, Grace, and on our part, exercises of piety, with greater emphasis placed 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.