Jaques Bénigne Bossuet, sacred orator, historian, theologian, and
controversialist, was born in Dijon, capital of the then Burgundy, on
September 27th, 1627. There is no question but he is the greatest
Catholic divine whom France ever knew, and one of the greatest, some say
_the_ greatest, of prose writers and orators of that country. His
importance in the literary history of France is due, moreover, not
simply to the high excellence of his productions, but fully as much to
their representative character. The power that was wielded with absolute
authority by Louis XIV. found in Bossuet the theorist who gave it a
philosophical basis, and justified to the Frenchmen of the seventeenth
century the conditions under which they lived.
[Illustration: BOSSUET]
The future educator of Louis XIV.'s son sprang, like most of the great
Frenchmen of that time, from the upper ranks of the _bourgeoisie_. The
Bossuet family had been for a long time honorably connected with the
legal profession and the judiciary: the father of Jacques Bénigne was in
1627 a counselor practicing before the "Parlement de Dijon," where his
own father had sat as "Conseiller," or Associate Justice. Later in life
he was himself called to a seat on the bench, when a new Parlement was
organized in the city of Metz for the province of Lorraine (1638). Ten
years later (January 24th, 1648) Bossuet, who had received his education
partly from the Jesuits of Dijon, partly in the celebrated Collège de
Navarre in Paris, and who had been shriven for the Catholic priesthood
when only eight years of age, made what may be called his first public
appearance when he defended his first thesis in theology. With this
important event of his life we find connected the name of the most
brilliant Frenchman of that time, the celebrated Prince de
Condé,--famous already by many victories, though hardly twenty-six years
of age,--who attended the disputation and had allowed the young
theologian to dedicate his thesis to him. Thirty-nine years later, after
a long period of close friendship, their names were again associated
when the illustrious Bishop of Meaux delivered the funeral oration of
the great warrior, and announced, at the close of a magnificent eulogy,
that this would be the last occasion on which he would devote his
oratory to the praises of any man; a promise which he kept, though he
outlived his friend for no less than seventeen years.
Bossuet's period of study lasted until the year 1652, when at the age of
twenty-five he was appointed Archdeacon of Sarrebourg. By virtue of his
position he thenceforward, for no less than seven years, resided in
Metz, a city whose peculiar position, especially in religious matters,
exerted a powerful influence over the direction of his whole
intellectual life. He found there what was very rare then in France,
representatives of three religions. In addition to the Catholics to whom
he was to minister, there were in Metz numerous Protestants,--both
Lutherans, and Calvinists or Presbyterians,--and a not inconsiderable
number of Jews; and the city was used to continuous theological
controversy between minister, rabbi, and priest. The Protestants of Metz
received the teachings of two brilliant ministers, David Ancillon and
Paul Ferri, the latter of whom soon published a Catechism which was
considered by the whole body of French Protestantism the clearest
exposition of its doctrines. The Catholic clergy of France had then not
yet renounced the hope of bringing all the inhabitants of the country to
place themselves voluntarily under the spiritual guidance of Rome; and
the conversions that were announced from time to time from the upper
ranks both of Protestantism and Judaism to a certain degree justified
such a hope.
Bossuet, while constantly improving his knowledge of the writings of the
Fathers, especially of St. Augustine, threw himself into the contest
with characteristic energy. As against the Jews he tried to demonstrate
that the coming of Christ is clearly foretold in the Prophecies. He thus
became more familiar with the Old Testament than any other Catholic
theologian of his time, and so far molded his style on that of the Bible
that it soon became difficult to distinguish in his productions that
which came out of the sacred writings from the utterances which belonged
only to him. This was done, however, strange to say, without any
knowledge of the Hebrew language. Bossuet never read the Bible except in
Greek or Latin. There was no good French version of the Bible; and it
may be stated here that there is none to the present day which occupies
in the French language anything like the position held in English by the
Bible of King James, or in German by Luther's version.
His attitude in regard to the Protestants is more interesting, because
more characteristic of the time in which he lived. France in the
seventeenth century had become convinced that harmony, unity,
fixedness, are the clearest manifestations of truth, the best guarantees
of peace, happiness, and prosperity; that variety and change are signs
of error and harbingers of disaster. Bossuet's whole effort in his
controversy with Protestantism was directed towards demonstrating that
Protestantism lacks and that Catholicism possesses the traits which were
considered by his contemporaries to clearly belong to truth; and as his
opponents were not unwilling to follow him on his chosen ground, as they
never for a moment denied his main proposition,--his statement of the
characteristics of truth,--as he even managed during the controversy to
bring about a number of conversions to Catholicism, he left Metz fully
convinced that he was waging a successful warfare upon unassailable
ground.
He had been in Paris less than a year when an event happened which made
him doubly sure of the soundness of his position, and tenfold increased
his belief in the ultimate victory of his Church over all other
denominations. The Commonwealth of England collapsed, and Charles II.
was called to the throne from which his father had been hurled by Oliver
Cromwell. Nothing can give any idea of the shock experienced by France
on hearing of the development and success of the Great Rebellion in
England. No Frenchman at that time understood what the English
Constitution was. The course of French history had led the people of
France to put all the strength they possessed in the hands of their
kings, and to treat as a public enemy any one who resisted, or even
attempted to limit in any way, the royal authority. To people holding
such opinions the English nation after the month of January, 1649,
appeared as a nation of parricides. And the feeling was intensified by
the fact that the wife of the beheaded king, Henrietta Maria, was a
sister of the King of France, a daughter of the beloved Henry IV., whose
death by Ravaillac's dagger was still mourned by every French patriot.
The triumph of Cromwell, the proud position which England occupied in
Europe during his protectorate, left however hardly any hope that the
rebellious nation would ever acknowledge the errors of her ways; and lo!
in a moment, without any effort on his part, without any struggle, the
dead king's son resumed his rights, and every one who had been in arms
against him lay prostrate at his feet. The same nation that had rebelled
against the levying of the "ship money" and the proceedings of the Star
Chamber allowed Charles II. almost as absolute an authority as ever the
King of France possessed. Once cured of her political errors, was
England not to be soon cured of her theological errors? After repenting
her rebellion against the King, was she not to repent her rebellion
against the Pope? Such were the questions which Bossuet, which the whole
of France, began to ask. Or rather, these were to them no longer
questions: the people of France began to look across the Channel with
confident expectation of a religious counter-revolution. The collapse
of the Commonwealth could not but be followed by the collapse of the
Reformation.
When Louis XIV., after Cardinal Mazarin's death, took in his own hands
the management of the affairs of the State; when the marriage of the
brilliant Henrietta of England with the Duke of Orleans made the sister
of the English King a sister-in-law to the King of France; when triumph
after triumph on the field of war, of diplomacy, of literature, of art,
added to the power and glory of France, which had never swerved in her
allegiance either to King or Church,--the feeling grew that only in
unity of Faith, Law, and King were truth and prosperity to be found by
nations. The saying "Une foi, une loi, un roi" (one faith, one law, one
king), which may be said to sum up Bossuet's religious, social, and
political beliefs, seemed to all an incontrovertible and
self-evident axiom.
These were the times when Bossuet's utterances grew in power and
magnificence. He was heard in a number of Parisian churches; he was
heard at court, where he several times was appointed preacher either for
Advent or Lent; he delivered panegyrics of saints, and was called upon
to eulogize in death those who had held the highest rank in life. He had
just delivered the most splendid and the most touching of his funeral
orations, those on Henrietta of France, widow of Charles I. of England
(November 16th, 1669), and less than a year later, on her unfortunate
daughter, Henrietta of England, Duchess of Orleans (August 21st, 1670),
when the King, at the request of the upright Duke de Montausier, called
him to court from the bishopric of Condom to which he had been raised,
and intrusted to him the education of his son and heir-apparent, the
Dauphin of France.
Bossuet's royal pupil never reigned. He died in 1711, four years before
his father's death: and it must be admitted that during the thirty-one
years that elapsed between the moment when he came out of Bossuet's
hands and the end of his life, he gave no evidence of being anything
except a very commonplace sort of a man. No such halo surrounds him as
surrounds his unfortunate son, the Duke of Burgundy, whose death two
years after that of the Dauphin was mourned as a public calamity.
Whether Bossuet's failure to make a great prince out of the Dauphin was
due to a faulty system of education or to the unresponsive nature of the
pupil, can hardly be considered to-day a matter of great interest. But
French literature was certainly the gainer by the appointment of Bossuet
to the post of tutor to the Prince. Three of his most remarkable
works--his 'Discourse upon Universal History,' his 'Policy according to
the Holy Writ,' and his 'Treatise on the Knowledge of God and Man'--were
written especially for the Dauphin, and read by him as textbooks a long
time before their publication. The opening sentence of the 'Discourse'
tells us clearly the author's purpose: "Were history useless to other
men, it would still be necessary to have it studied by princes."
In 1680 Bossuet left the Dauphin, who then married a Bavarian princess,
and one year later he was called to the bishopric of Meaux. Louis XIV.
was then taking steps leading to the important and fatal venture by
which three years later he repealed the Edict of Nantes, and forbade the
existence in France of the Protestant religion. No one can deny
Bossuet's share in determining the king to follow a policy so fatal to
the interests of France, but at the same time so much in accord with the
views of Rome. A natural outcome would have been the raising of Bossuet,
who was certainly then the greatest orator, the greatest writer, and the
greatest theologian in the Catholic clergy, to the Cardinalate. Still
Bossuet was never a cardinal.
The explanation lies in Bossuet's conduct in the year 1682. The King of
France in that year called together a General Assembly of the clergy of
France, a kind of National Council. His object was to have the clergy
assert its national character, and to state that in civil matters it was
subject not to the Pope, but to the King. The various statements to that
effect constitute what is known as 'The Liberties of the Gallican
Church.' The statements were adopted after being drafted by Bossuet, who
had at the opening of the sessions delivered before the Assembly his
celebrated 'Sermon on the Unity of the Church,' the main part of which
is an eloquent defense of the above-stated views. France was too
powerful then for the see of Rome not to yield, but no favors were
thenceforth to be expected for the spokesman of the French
national clergy.
Still the great divine continued his efforts, and in 1688 he put forth
the most complete and masterly exposition of his beliefs, his 'History
of the Variations of the Protestant Churches.' The Revolution of 1688-89
in England did not in the least, sad though it seemed, weaken his faith
in the ultimate triumph of Catholicism. In France at that time the
English revolution was not considered an assertion by the people of
political and religious rights, but the carrying out of a detestable
family conspiracy of a daughter and son-in-law with their father's
enemy. This better than anything else explains the hatred which was
harbored against William III., and which found expression in the works
even of as free-minded a writer as La Bruyère. It is during the period
of the fiercest struggle between Louis XIV. and William III. that
Bossuet carried on with the German philosopher Leibnitz a series of
negotiations, the object of which was the return to Catholicism of
Protestant Germany. We need hardly state that the negotiations
utterly failed.
In another controversy which occupied Bossuet's last years he was
entirely successful. The most eloquent of his disciples, Fénélon, then
Archbishop of Cambrai, seemed to him to have fallen into dangerous
errors. He had adopted the mystic doctrine of Quietism, which had been
made known to him first by an erratic woman, Madame Guyon. Bossuet
determined that the eloquent archbishop must be compelled to recant. A
number of works were published by him in support of his position, the
most important one being his 'Relation on Quietism'; and he did not rest
until the Pope had condemned his rival, and Fénélon had submitted to
censure in his own cathedral at Cambrai. Some accuse Bossuet of too much
harshness in the contest. The Pope himself was reported to have said,
"The Archbishop of Cambrai sinned by too much love of God, the Bishop of
Meaux by too little love of his fellow-man."
Bossuet was then a very old man, but neither growing age nor the care
that he took of what he considered the general interests of Catholic
Christianity ever kept him from giving the closest attention to the
spiritual government of his flock. He was a model bishop. He died April
12th, 1704, aged seventy-six years, six months, and sixteen days.
Bossuet was a very prolific writer. In the best edition, that of Abbé
Caron, begun in Versailles in 1815, his writings fill not less than
forty-one volumes. But it must be stated at once that a great deal of
this production belongs decidedly more to theology than to French
literature. Some of it is not even in French, but in Latin; for
instance, Bossuet's letter to the Pope on the subject of the education
of the Dauphin. Although in French, such works as the 'Treatise on
Communion' or the 'Explanation of John the Baptist's Revelation' are
decidedly outside the pale of literature, as the word is usually
understood. We shall mention here only those works of Bossuet which, by
virtue of their perfect form and the accessibility of the subject to the
general reader, are to this day more or less familiar to the best
educated people in France.
The first to be mentioned among these are the 'Sermons,' the 'Funeral
Orations,' and the 'Discourse upon Universal History.'
Bossuet's sermons undoubtedly were among his most perfect productions.
He was a born orator; his majestic bearing, his melodious and powerful
voice, his noble gestures, made the magnificent sentences, the beautiful
and striking imagery of his speeches, doubly impressive. Unfortunately,
with only a few exceptions Bossuet's sermons have reached us in a very
imperfect form. He did not, as a rule, fully write them, and the art of
taking down verbatim the utterances of public speakers had not yet been
invented. The sermon 'On the Unity of the Church' we possess because
Bossuet had committed it to writing before delivering it; other
impressive sermons, those on 'Death,' on the 'Conversion of the Sinner,'
on 'Providence,' on the 'Duties of Kings,' etc., have reached us in a
sufficiently correct form to give us an idea of Bossuet's eloquence:
but the reader who really wishes to know the great sacred orator of
Louis XIV.'s reign had better turn at once to the 'Funeral Orations.'
Bossuet's funeral orations were prepared with great care. They were
delivered as a rule several months after the death of the person to be
eulogized, as part of a religious ceremony in which a mass was said for
the repose of his soul.
Bossuet delivered eleven funeral orations, one of which--that of Anne of
Austria, widow of Louis XIII. and mother of Louis XIV,--is lost. Of the
other ten, four are youthful productions and deal with people of
comparatively small importance. Six remain that are known as the _great_
funeral orations, and they were delivered between November 16th, 1669,
and March 10th, 1687. They are those on Henrietta of France, Queen of
England; Henrietta of England, Duchess of Orleans; Maria Theresa of
Spain, Queen of France; Anne of Gonzaga and Clèves, Princess of the
Palatinate; Michel Le Tellier, High Chancellor of France; and Louis de
Bourbon, Prince of Condé.
The most remarkable of these are the first two and the last one. In the
funeral oration on Henrietta of France, Bossuet had just the kind of
subject which he was best fitted to treat, and it must be considered his
masterpiece. It presents in magnificent style, in pompous development, a
complete exposition of his historical and political theories, together
with a strikingly vivid account of the great English rebellion. His
portraits of Charles I. and Oliver Cromwell--the one, of course,
altogether too enthusiastic, the other too severe--stand out in as bold
relief as the paintings of Van Dyck or Velasquez. His theory of
revolutions, which he considers the punishments inflicted by God upon
sovereigns for violations of His law, is presented with a wealth of
illustrations which was simply overwhelming for the audience that
listened to it. It remains to this day one of the most plausible, as it
will remain forever one of the most eloquent pieces of historical and
theological reasoning.
In the funeral oration on Henrietta of England we find little of
history, still less of politics. Here we have a domestic catastrophe of
appalling suddenness: a brilliant woman, the worshiped centre of the
most brilliant court, one to whom the speaker himself was most tenderly
attached, so abruptly snatched away by death that the suspicion of foul
play at once arose and has not to this day been entirely dispelled.
Nowhere has Bossuet, nor perhaps any other orator, so powerfully
depicted the uncertainty of everything human. The closeness with which
he treated his subjects is well illustrated by an anecdote that is
connected with this oration. Only two or three hours before her death,
when already conscious of her desperate position, the unfortunate
princess had directed that an emerald ring of hers should be after her
death handed to the great preacher. "What a pity," he was told, "that
such an incident cannot find place in a funeral oration!"--"Why not" he
answered. When he delivered the oration, the emerald ring was on one of
the fingers of his right hand; and when speaking of the princess's
virtues and charming qualities, he alluded to the art of giving, in
which she signally excelled. "And this art," he went on, "never deserted
her, not even, _I know it_, in the throes of death," at the same time
raising his right hand and placing the precious jewel in full view of
the audience.
The funeral oration on the Prince de Condé shows us how he triumphed
over difficulties. He was a warm friend and ardent admirer of the
Prince, and at the same time a devoted subject of the King, rebellion
against whom he considered a very grievous sin. Yet the Prince had for
years been a rebel against the King during the wars of the Fronde, and
had continued in the ranks of the hostile Spaniards even after all the
other rebels had submitted to the royal authority. After conducting his
narrative down to the time when the Prince, still a faithful subject,
was unjustly imprisoned by order of Cardinal Mazarin,--"And," he goes
on, "since I have to speak of these things over which I would fain keep
eternally silent, until this fatal imprisonment he had not even dreamed
that anything could be attempted against the State.... This is what made
him say (I certainly can repeat here, before these altars, the words I
received from his lips, since they so clearly show the bottom of his
heart)--he said then, speaking of this unfortunate prison, that he had
entered it the most innocent, and had left it the guiltiest of men."
Nearly the whole of this oration is devoted to history; it teems with
brilliant passages, the most famous of which is the narrative of the
Prince's first victory, the battle of Rocroi, in 1643.
Thoughtful readers seldom pass by the funeral oration on Anne of
Gonzaga. It forms a curious incident in Bossuet's life. The great
preacher's most striking fault was a lack of energy in his dealings with
royal characters. "He lacks bones," some one said of him: and thus when
his enemies so intrigued as to have him required to eulogize from the
pulpit the erratic princess, who had been a political intriguer and the
heroine of many scandals before repentance took hold of her, he lacked
the courage to decline the doubtful honor. But in the pulpit, or
whenever the _priest_ had to appear, and not simply the man, his better
manhood, pure and commanding, at once took the upper hand; and so,
facing his critics,--"My discourse," he said, "which perhaps you think
you are to judge, will judge you when the last day comes; and if you do
not depart hence better Christians, you will depart hence guiltier men!"
With the funeral orations one might mention another series of religious
discourses not strikingly different from them,--the panegyrics of
saints, of which twenty have been preserved, that of Saint Paul being
indisputably the best.
The 'Discourse upon Universal History,' which was originally written for
the Dauphin, is a masterly attempt to give a philosophical explanation
of the facts of history, beginning with the Biblical account of the
Creation, and ending with the assumption by Charlemagne of the imperial
crown in 800 A.D. It is divided into three parts: The Epochs; Religion;
the Empires. The first part contains the significance of twelve events
considered by Bossuet as epoch-making: the Creation, the Flood, the
calling of Abraham, Moses and the giving of the Law, the taking of Troy,
the building of the Temple of Solomon, the foundation of Rome, Cyrus and
the re-establishment of Hebrew nationality, the defeat of Carthage, the
birth of Christ, the triumph of the Church under Constantine, the
re-establishment of the Empire with Charlemagne.
The second part, which contains thirty-one chapters, has a twofold
object: to demonstrate that the coming of Christ is clearly foretold in
the Old Testament, and that the Roman Catholic Church is the only
faithful representative of true Christianity. The third part is less
theological. It is an attempt to explain the facts of history, at least
partially, by a study of the various influences to which the different
nations have been subjected. The general purpose of the whole work is
best explained by the last chapter of this third part, the title of
which is: Conclusion of the whole Discourse, in which is shown that all
events must be ascribed to a Divine Providence.
Next to the above works we must mention the 'History of the Variations
of the Protestant Churches,' partly a work of theological controversy,
but partly also a brilliant exposition, from a strictly Catholic point
of view, of the history of the Reformation. It contains a portrait of
Luther which is almost worthy to be compared with that of Cromwell in
the funeral oration on Henrietta of France.
The only other works of Bossuet that we would mention here are two
admirable devotional works, the 'Meditations upon the Gospel,' and the
'Contemplations on the Mysteries of the Catholic Religion,' the latter a
clear and concise but now superannuated treatise on philosophy; the
'Treatise on the Knowledge of God and Man,' a very curious and eloquent
and at the same time thoroughly Biblical treatise on theocratic policy;
'Policy according to the Holy Writ'; and finally his 'Relation on
Quietism,' which shows what hard blows he could, when thoroughly
aroused, deal to a somewhat disingenuous opponent.
[Illustration: Signature: Adolphe Cohn]