Bossuet

“ The age was great in prose as well as in poetry. The periods of BOSSUET, ordered, lucid, magnificent, reflect its literary ideals as clearly as the couplets of Racine. Unfortunately, however, in the case of Bossuet, the splendour and perfection of the form is very nearly all that a modern reader can appreciate: the substance is for the most part uninteresting and out-of-date. The truth is that Bossuet was too completely a man of his own epoch to speak with any great significance to after generations. His melodious voice enters our ears, but not our hearts. ”

“ Bossuet's individual distinction is, that he was a great man as well as a great orator; Bourdaloue's, that he was priest-and-preacher simply; Massillon's, that his sermons, regarded quite independently of their subject, their matter, their occasion, regarded merely as masterpieces of pure and classic style, became at once, and permanently became, a part of French literature.
The greatness of Bossuet is an article in the French national creed. No Frenchman disputes it; no Frenchman, indeed, but proclaims it. Protestant agrees with Catholic, infidel with Christian, at least in this. ”

“ The critic characterizes his subject broadly by his most commanding traits:
The simple idea of order, of authority, of unity, of the continual government of Providence, Bossuet, among the moderns, has grasped more completely than any other man, and he applies it on all occasions without effort, and, as it were, by an irrefutable deduction. Bossuet is the Hebrew genius, expanded, fecundated by Christianity, and open to all the gains of the human intelligence, but acknowledging something of sovereign interdiction, and closing its vast horizon precisely at the point where its light ceases. ”

“ The labor was in vain; the very loftiness of his genius, the extent and profundity of his views, rendered Bossuet unfit to get at the heart and mind of a boy who was timid, idle, and kept in fear by the king as well as by his governor. The dauphin was nineteen when his marriage restored Bossuet to the church and to the world; the king appointed him almoner to the dauphiness, and, before long, Bishop of Meaux. ”

“ Nor is this unjust, for though the most prominent of them all, Jacques Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704) was remarkable as a writer of matter intended to be read, not merely as a speaker of matter intended to be heard, this double character is not possessed by most of the orthodox theologians of the time; and even Bossuet, great as is his genius, is more of a rhetorician than of a philosopher or a theologian. In no quarter was the advance of culture more remarkable in France than in the pulpit. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The 'Siècle de Louis Quatorze' proper, that is the period subsequent to 1660, was the palmy time, from the literary point of view, of theological eloquence and discussion in France.
Bossuet.
Of the authors already named Bossuet deserves precedence in almost every respect except that of private character. Jacques Benigne Bossuet [279] was born at Dijon, in 1627, of a family of distinction in the middle class. He went to school to the Jesuits in his native town, and finished his education at the Collège de Navarre in Paris, receiving his doctor's degree and a canonry at Metz in 1652. ”

“ If he had been a loyal Roman Catholic, he would have been twinned with Bossuet, whom 154 he somewhat resembles, in the acclamations of general fame. It is far more in name than in merit that Bossuet surpasses him. Bossuet’s quasi-pontifical relation to the Gallican Church indeed engaged him in various activities which seemed to display a talent in him correspondingly more various than that of Saurin, who remained almost exclusively a preacher. ”

“ He was a born logician, as Bossuet was a born priest, loving to dispute as much as the Bishop of Meaux loved to preach; not a serious man, but a bright man, ready, keen, acute, turning fools into ridicule, and pushing acknowledged doctrines into absurdity; not to bring out the truth as Socrates did, or furnish a sure foundation of knowledge, but to revolutionize and overturn. His spirit was like that of Lucien,--desiring to demolish, without substituting anything for the dogmas he had made ridiculous. ”

“ Bossuet burst out laughing.
“Who is that man?”
“He?” retorted Courfeyrac, “he’s a poet. Poets are very fond of wearing the trousers of dealers in rabbit skins and the overcoats of peers of France.”
“Let’s see where Marius will go,” said Bossuet; “let’s see where the man is going, let’s follow them, hey?”
“Bossuet!” exclaimed Courfeyrac, “eagle of Meaux! You are a prodigious brute. Follow a man who is following another man, indeed!”
They retraced their steps.
Marius had, in fact, seen Jondrette passing along the Rue Mouffetard, and was spying on his proceedings. ”

“ Bossuet is even a more striking instance of a mind equally capable of the deepest philosophy and of the sublimest poetry, had the circumstances of his life given him a more definite impulse in either direction. ”

“ Bossuet, twinned here with Corneille, is to the Frenchman, as Milton is to the Englishman, his synonym for sublimity. Eloquence, somehow, seems a thing too near the common human level to answer fully the need that Frenchmen feel in speaking of Bossuet. Bossuet is not eloquent, he is sublime. That in French it is in equal part oratory, while in English it is poetry almost alone, that supplies in literature its satisfaction to the sentiment 138 of the sublime, very well represents the difference in genius between the two races. The French idea of poetry is eloquence ”

“ Bossuet no doubt is more of a speaker than a writer. His excellence lies in the wonderful survey, and grasp of the subject (qualities which make his favourite literary nickname of the 'Eagle of Meaux' more than usually appropriate) , in the contagious enthusiasm and energy with which he attacks his point, in his inexhaustible metaphors and comparisons. He has not the unfailing charm of Malebranche, nor that which belongs in a less degree, and with more mannerism, to Fénelon; he is very unequal, and small blemishes of style abound in him. ”

“ The doctrine of God's providence is at the centre of all Bossuet's system of thought, at the heart of his loyal passions. On earth, the powers that be; in France, the monarch; in heaven, a greater Monarch (we will not say a magnified Louis XIV.) presiding over all the affairs of this globe. When Bossuet tried to educate his indocile pupil the Dauphin, he taught him how God is above man, as man is above the brute. Monarchy—as he showed in his Politique Tirée de l'Écriture Sainte—is hereditary and absolute; but absolute power is not arbitrary power ”

“ The honest, high-minded, laborious bishop, with his dignity and his enthusiasm, his eloquence and his knowledge of the world, represents for us the best and most serious elements in the Court of Louis. The average good man of those days must have thought on most subjects as Bossuet thought—though less finely and intensely; and Bossuet never spoke a sentence from his pulpit which went beyond the mental vision of the most ordinary of his congregation. ”

“ In lending himself to these singular exercises and to these tournaments where his person and his gifts were challenged, treated as an intellectual virtuoso in the salons of the Hôtel de Rambouillet and the Hôtel de Nevers, it does not appear that Bossuet was in consequence subjected to the slightest charge of vanity, and there is no example of a precocious genius so praised, caressed by the world, and remaining so perfectly exempt from all self-love and from all coquetry. ”

“ A wonderful genius, discovering by flashes, and as if by instinct, the most profound truths of human nature, and giving them expression in an incomparable style, forcing, straining the language to make it render his idea, darting at one bound to the sublimest height by use of the simplest terms, which he, so to speak, bore away with him, wresting them from their natural and proper signification. “There, in spite of that great heart of hers, is that princess so admired and so beloved; there, such as Death has made her for us!” Bossuet alone could speak like that. ”

“ It seems hardly possible that one of the greatest intellects of a period so near us could have been so doubly deceived. Yet Bossuet, the glory of the French Church, one of the keenest and strongest of thinkers, not only mingled Scripture with astronomy, and opposed the Copernican theory, but also mingled Scripture with political economy, and denounced the lending of money at interest. ”

“ The Discourse of Bossuet on Universal History is perhaps the greatest effort of his wonderful genius. Every preceding abridgment of so immense a subject had been superficial and dry. He first irradiated the entire annals of antiquity down to the age of Charlemagne with flashes of light that reveal an unity and coherence which had been lost in their magnitude and obscurity. It is not perhaps an unfair objection that, in a history calling itself that of all mankind, the Jewish people have obtained a disproportionate regard ”

“ I will of you when I am big.” Assured of his righteousness as a priest and his fine tact as a man, the king appealed to Bossuet in the delicate conjunctures of his life. It is related that it was the Bishop of Meaux who dissuaded him from making public his marriage with Madame de Maintenon. She, more anxious for power than splendor, did not bear him any ill-will for it; amidst the various leanings of the court, divided as it was between Jansenism and Quietism, it was to the simple teaching of the Catholic church, represented by Bossuet, that she remained practically attached. ”

“ Santeul, "the gray-haired child," who made Latin verses to describe and celebrate the chateau and the park of Germigny. How many verses Germigny has inspired!
This beautiful terrace which overlooks the Marne and where so many illustrious shades surround that of "M. de Meaux," is the very place to evoke the "sweet and simple" Bossuet! When we see that he has so many friends and know this taste for retreat and country life, the man loses at once a little of that solemnity and that inflexible arrogance which have come down in legend as characteristic of his personality. ”

“ Bourdaloue is almost in the same relation to Bossuet, as Patru to Le Maistre, though the two orators of the pulpit are far above those of the bar. As the one is short, condensed, plain, reasoning, and though never feeble, not often what is generally called eloquent, so the other is animated, figurative, rather diffuse and prodigal of ornament, addressing the imagination more than the judgment, rich and copious in cadence, elevating the hearer to the pitch of his own sublimity. Bossuet is sometimes too declamatory ”

“ For Bossuet’s worship of authority by no means killed his confidence in reason; what it did was to make him doubt the honesty of those who reasoned otherwise than himself. The whole chain of argument seemed to him so clear and simple. Philosophy proved that a God exists, and that He shapes and governs the course of human affairs. History showed that this governance is, for the most part, indirect, exercised through certain venerable corporations, as well civil as ecclesiastical, all of which demand implicit obedience as the immediate representatives of God. ”

“ After six months’ residence at Meaux, Madame Guyon received from Bossuet a certificate attesting her filial submissiveness to the Catholic faith, his satisfaction with her conduct, authorizing her still to participate in the sacrament of the Church, and acquitting her of all implication in the heresy of Molinos. [351]
Meanwhile, Fénélon had been added to the number of the commissioners at Issy. He and Bossuet were still on intimate terms; but Bossuet, like all vain men, was a dangerous friend. He knew how to inspire confidence which he did not scruple to betray. ”

“ BOSSUET AND THE PREACHERS—FÉNELON
I
"A man set under authority"—these words, better than any other, define Bossuet. Above him was God, represented in things spiritual by the Catholic Church, in things temporal by the French monarchy; below him were the faithful confided to his charge, and those who would lead the faithful astray from the path of obedience and tradition. Duty to what was above him, duty to those placed under him, made up the whole of Bossuet's life. To maintain, to defend, to extend the tradition he had received, was the first of duties. ”

“ It will be remembered how, after Mme. de Montespan had replaced her in the favour of the king, Louis XIV., she withdrew to the convent of the Carmelites, under the name of Sister Louise de la Miséricorde. On the left are Henrietta of France, queen of England, whose funeral oration was delivered by the "Eagle of Meaux," and the Dauphin, whose tutor Bossuet had been.
Behind the pedestal is a bust of the Great Condé. Bossuet was his friend, and frequently visited him in his beautiful castle of Chantilly, and often received him at the Bishop's Palace. ”

“ In the great body of noble religious eloquence delivered from French pulpits during the 17th century, the first place is certainly held by the sermons of J. B. Bossuet (1627-1704) , who remains perhaps the greatest preacher whom the world has ever seen. His six Oraisons Funèbres, the latest of which was delivered in 1687, form the most majestic existing type of this species of literature. ”