Jacques-Bénigne Lignel Bossuet (; 27 September 1627 – 12 April 1704) was a French Catholic prelate and theologian who served as Bishop of Meaux from 1681 until his death in 1704. Renowned for his sermons, addresses and literary works, he is regarded as a brilliant orator and literary stylist of the French language.
A native of Dijon, Bossuet was educated at a Jesuit school before enrolling in the College of Navarre in Paris, where he studied philosophy and theology. In 1652, he was ordained a priest and became a Doctor of Divinity. He spent the next seven years at Metz, where he honed his skills in oratory and politics, before returning to Paris and establishing his reputation as a great preacher. By the early 1660s, Bossuet was preaching regularly before the court of King Louis XIV at Versailles. He was appointed tutor to the Dauphin in 1670 and elected to the Académie Française a year later.
In 1681, he was appointed Bishop of Meaux, a position he held until his death. Bossuet was a strong advocate of political absolutism and the divine right of kings. Later in his life, he was also involved in the controversies over Gallicanism and Quietism, and supported the king's revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which abolished the rights of the Huguenot Protestant minority. Bossuet died in 1704 at the age of 76.
The works of Bossuet best known to English speakers are three great orations delivered at the funerals of Queen Henrietta Maria, widow of Charles I of England (1669); of her daughter Henriette, Duchess of Orléans (1670) and of the outstanding military commander Le Grand Condé (1687). He published his Discours sur l'histoire universelle (Discourse on Universal History) in 1681.
Biography
Early years Bossuet was born at Dijon. He came from a family of prosperous Burgundian lawyers – on both his paternal and maternal sides, his ancestors had held legal posts for at least a century. He was the fifth son born to Beneigne Bossuet, a judge of the parlement (a provincial high court) at Dijon, and Marguerite Mouchet. His parents decided on a career in the Church for their fifth son, so he was tonsured at age eight.Cohn, Adolphe. "Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet", The Library of the World's Best Literature, (C. D. Warner et al. comp.) 1917
The boy was sent to school at the Collège des Godrans, a classical school run by the Jesuits of Dijon. When his father was appointed to the parlement at Metz, Bossuet was left in Dijon under the care of his uncle Claude Bossuet d'Aiseray, a renowned scholar. At the Collège des Godrans, he gained a reputation for hard work: fellow students nicknamed him Bos suetus aratro, an "ox accustomed to the plough". His father's influence at Metz allowed him to obtain for the young Bossuet a canonry in the cathedral of Metz when the boy was just 13 years old.Delamarre, Louis, and Ferdinand Brunetière. "Jacques-Benigne Bossuet." The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 2. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907.
In 1642, Bossuet enrolled in the Collège de Navarre in Paris to finish his classical studies and to begin the study of philosophy and theology. His mentor there was the college's president, Nicolas Cornet,H. L. Sidney Lear, 'Bossuet and His Contemporaries' (1874, Rivingtons), p. 10. the theologian whose denunciation of Antoine Arnauld at the Sorbonne in 1649 was a major episode in the Jansenist controversy.
For the time being, however, Cornet and Arnaud were still on good terms. In 1643, Arnaud introduced Bossuet to the Hôtel de Rambouillet, a great centre of aristocratic culture and the original home of the Précieuses. Bossuet was already showing signs of the oratorical brilliance which served him so well throughout his life. On one celebrated occasion at the Hôtel de Rambouillet, during a dispute about extempore preaching, the 16-year-old Bossuet was called on to deliver an impromptu sermon at 11 pm. Vincent Voiture famously quipped: "I never heard anybody preach so early nor so late."
Early clerical career Bossuet became a Master of Arts in 1643. He sustained his first thesis (tentativa) in theology on 25 January 1648, in the presence of the Prince de Condé. Later in 1648, he was ordained a subdeacon by Sébastien Zamet, Bishop of Langres. His ordination as a deacon came in 1649,Sanders, E. K., Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet: A Study by ... with Two Portraits, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1921, p. 14. after which he began to preach his first sermons.
He sustained his second thesis (sorbonica) on 9 November 1650. Then, in preparation for the priesthood, he spent the next two years in retirement under the spiritual direction of Saint Vincent de Paul at Saint Lazare in Paris.
Priest at Metz
In January 1652, Bossuet returned to public life, being named Archdeacon of Sarrebourg. He was ordained a priest on 18 March 1652. A few weeks later, he defended his brilliant doctoral work and became a Doctor of Divinity.
He spent the next seven years at Metz, where he now had the office of archdeacon. He was plunged at once into the thick of controversy; nearly half of Metz was Protestant, and Bossuet's first appearance in print was a refutation of the Huguenot pastor Paul Ferry (1655). During the rest of his time at Metz he frequently engaged in religious controversies with Protestants (and, less regularly, with Jews). Reconciling the Protestants with the Catholic Church became his dream, and for this purpose, he began to train himself carefully for the pulpit, an all-important centre of influence in a land where political assemblies were unknown and novels and newspapers scarcely born. His youthful imagination was unbridled, and his ideas ran easily into a kind of paradoxical subtlety, redolent of divinity faculties. Nevertheless, his time at Metz was an important time for developing his pulpit oratory and for allowing him to continue his study of Scripture and the Church Fathers. He also gained political experience through his participation in the local Assembly of the Three Orders.
In 1657, in Metz, Bossuet preached before Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV. As a result, he received the honorific title of "Counselor and Preacher to the King".
Early career in Paris
In 1657, St. Vincent de Paul convinced Bossuet to move to Paris and give himself entirely to preaching. (He did not entirely sever his connections with the cathedral of Metz, though: he continued to hold his benefice, and in 1664, when his widowed father was ordained as a priest and became a canon of the Metz cathedral chapter, Bossuet was named chapter's dean.)
Bossuet quickly gained a reputation as a great preacher, and by 1660, he was preaching regularly before the court in the Chapel Royal. In 1662, he preached his famous sermon "On the Duties of Kings" to Louis XIV at the Louvre.
In Paris, the congregations had no mercy on purely clerical logic or clerical taste; if a preacher wished to catch their ear, he had to manage to address them in terms they would agree to consider sensible and well-bred. Having very stern ideas of the dignity of a priest, Bossuet refused to descend to the usual devices for arousing popular interest.
The narrative element in Bossuet's sermons grew shorter with each year. He never drew satirical pictures like his great rival Louis Bourdaloue. He would not write out his discourses in full, much less learn them off by heart: of the two hundred printed in his works, all but a fraction are rough drafts. Ladies such as Mme de Sévigné forsook him when Bourdaloue dawned on the Paris horizon in 1669, though Fénelon and La Bruyère, two much sounder critics, refused to follow their example.
Bossuet possessed the full equipment of the orator: voice, language, flexibility, and strength. He never needed to strain for effect; his genius struck out at a single blow the thought, the feeling, and the word. What he said of Martin Luther applied peculiarly to himself: he could fling his fury into theses and thus unite the dry light of argument with the fire and heat of passion. These qualities reached their highest point in the Oraisons funèbres (Funeral Orations).
Bossuet was always best when at work on a large canvas; besides, here no conscientious scruples intervened to prevent him from giving much time and thought to the artistic side of his subject. The Oraison, as its name betokened, stood midway between the sermon proper and what would nowadays be called a biographical sketch. At least that was what Bossuet made it; for on this field, he stood not merely first, but alone.
137 of Bossuet's sermons preached in the period from 1659 to 1669 are extant, and it is estimated that he preached more than a hundred more that have since been lost. Apart from state occasions, Bossuet seldom appeared in a Paris pulpit after 1669.
Tutor to the Dauphin, 1670–1681 A favourite of the court, in 1669 Bossuet was gazetted bishop of Condom in Gascony without being obliged to reside there. He was consecrated bishop on 21 September 1670, but he resigned the see when he was elected to the Académie française in 1671.
On 18 September 1670 he was appointed tutor to the nine-year-old Dauphin, eldest child of Louis XIV. The choice was scarcely fortunate. Bossuet unbent as far as he could, but his genius was by no means fitted to enter into the feelings of a child; and the dauphin was a choleric, ungainly, sullen boy. Probably no one was happier than the tutor when his charge turned sixteen and was married off to a Bavarian princess. Still, Bossuet's nine years at court were by no means wasted.
Bossuet's tutorial functions involved composing all the necessary books of instruction, including not just handwriting samples, but also manuals of philosophy, history, and religion fit for a future King of France. Among the books written by Bossuet during this period are three classics. First came the Traité de la connaissance de Dieu et de soi-même ("Treatise on the Knowledge of God and of Oneself") (1677), then the Discours sur l'histoire universelle ("Discourse on Universal History") (1679, published 1682), and lastly the Politique tirée de l'Écriture Sainte ("Politics Drawn from Holy Scripture") (1679, published 1709). The three books fit into each other. The Traité is a general sketch of the nature of God and the nature of man. The Discours is a history of God's dealings with humanity in the past.Because of his work on Biblical chronology, Bossuet has been described as one of the last great practicitioners of a biblically inspired view of history. Cited by Berthoud in his paper on Heinrich Bullinger, (). The Politique is a code of rights and duties drawn up in the light thrown by those dealings. Bossuet's conclusions are only drawn from Holy Scripture because he wished to gain the highest possible sanction for the institutions of his country and to hallow the France of Louis XIV by proving its astonishing likeness to the Israel of Solomon. Then, too, the veil of Holy Scripture enabled him to speak out more boldly than court etiquette would have otherwise allowed, to remind the son of Louis XIV that kings have duties as well as rights.
The Grand Dauphin had often forgotten these duties, but his son, the Petit Dauphin, would bear them in mind. The tutor's imagination looked forward to a time when France would blossom into Utopia, with a Christian philosopher on the throne. That is what made him so stalwart a champion of authority in all its forms: "le roi, Jesus-Christ et l'Eglise, Dieu en ces trois noms" ("the king, Jesus Christ, and the Church, God in His three names"), he says in a characteristic letter. The object of his books was to provide authority with a rational basis. Bossuet's worship of authority by no means killed his confidence in reason – what it did was make him doubt the honesty of those who reasoned otherwise than himself.