THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

Jacques Benigne Bossuet

By the same Author

Angtliqite of Port-Royal ; Fin-
cent de Paul; Ste. Chantal

Jacques Benigne

A S TUDY by E. K. SANDERS

LONDON

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE

NEW YORK t THE MACMIIXAN COMPANY
1921

College
Library

<

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

INTRODUCTION i

I. SCHOOLBOY AND STUDENT 7

II. A PRIEST'S APPRENTICESHIP 18

III. BOSSUET IN PARIS 28

IV. THE BATTLEFIELD OF CONTROVERSY 46
V. THE CONVERSION OF TURENNE 57

VI. THE MESSAGE OF LA TRAPPE 68

VII. THE COURT PREACHER 83

VIII. THE PRIEST AT COURT 103

IX. THE CONTEST WITH THE KING 124

X. THE DAUPHIN 143

XI. THE COURT ECCLESIASTIC 164

XII. THE GALLICAN CRISIS 177

XIII. A CLERICAL ASSEMBLY 188

XIV. THE DEFENCE 202
XV. THE BISHOP IN HIS DIOCESE 208

XVI. THE SPIRIT OF VERSAILLES 220

XVII. BOSSUET AND THE MONASTERIES 230

XVIII. BOSSUET THE HISTORIAN 244

XIX. THE TOLERANCE OF BOSSUET 256

XX. QUIETISM AT COURT 270

XXI. THE COMBAT 285

XXII. THE MYSTICISM OF BOSSUET 305

XXIII. THE NUN OF JOUARRE 322

XXIV. BOSSUET THE DIRECTOR 336
XXV. BOSSUET AND HIS VOCATION 352

XXVI. THE END 367

Appendices

I. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 383

II. HOUSES IN PARIS OCCUPIED BY BOSSUET 383

III. MLLE DE MAULE"ON AND THE MARRIAGE LIBEL 384

IV. NOTES ON GALLICANISM 387
V. LIST OF WORKS PUBLISHED IN THE LIFETIME OF BOSSUET 389

VI. POSTHUMOUS PUBLICATIONS 390

VII. BIBLIOGRAPHY 391

Index

401

1385614

List of Illustrations

PORTRAIT from an engraving by Peter Drevet after the
painting by Hyacinthe Rigaud Frontispiece

PORTRAIT from an engraving by Auguste St. Aubin Facing p. 208

Introduction

THE most distinguished of French critics and
historians, during the last hundred years, have
made the personality and work of Bossuet the
subject of eager study. So great indeed is the eminence
to which he has attained that Shakespeare alone of
English writers holds with us a position akin to that
which he occupies among his countrymen.* Yet in
England, notwithstanding the widespread and increasing
appreciation of French literature, a student of Bossuet
is a rarity, while a vast number of well-informed persons
are content with knowledge summarized in the state-
ment that " he was a great French preacher who be-
haved very badly to Fenelon." The explanation of this
ignorance does not evade inquiry. It lies in the simple
admission that he has not awakened interest. Sermons,
even though they achieve the rank of classics, are not
popular reading, and the writings of Bossuet appear to
be inextricably entangled with the controversies of an-
other nation and another age. Moreover, Rigaud's im-
pressive portrait of him at Versailles has helped to remove
him to a sphere beyond the ken of ordinary humanity.

If the pompous personage created by tradition were
actually Bossuet he might be relegated to a place in the
group behind the throne of the Great Monarch and left
without regret. Recent admirers of his, however, have
had the courage to attack tradition, and by their efforts
new truth concerning him is brought to light. Thus a
man concealed by legend for two centuries at length
emerges. And, having thrust aside the veil of imposing
reputation, we find a character full of surprises. De-
throne him from his pedestal, and at close quarters he
shows himself to be the tool of contradictory impulses.
The saying of Pascal that " men are not so different
from each other as one man is from himself" draws sup-
port from such a study. Bossuet was an idealist.
When he wrote, glorious visions of man's possibilities of
holiness inspired his pen ; but when he left his desk the

* In the phrase of Sainte-Beuve : " La gloire de Bossuet est devenue
1'une Je> religions de la France."

2 Jacques Benigne Eossuet

interests of the world submerged his aspirations. The
standards behind his teaching were worthy of a saint,
but his relations with his fellow men do not display the
marks of sanctity. He gave himself with generous
ardour to the fulfilment of an exalted purpose from which
he never wavered till he died, yet many of his actions
were not exalted. Indeed, it must be said, at once and
without flinching, this man with his abnormal genius
was not great in personal character, and the varying
stages of his history are only scenes in a very familiar
spiritual drama. We behold a soul in conflict with the
powers of evil and, when at length the end of the long
struggle is in sight, there is no triumph in the victory.

He confesses in his sermons to a will that is wayward *
and hard to govern, and the same self-revelation may be
found in many intimate letters. The picture that is
suggested by his own avowal does not accord with the
traditional conception of him, but it is more convincing.
It may well be that the capacity for vision which raised
him to the position of a prophet was no aid in personal
conduct. With his gaze fixed on a far horizon he over-
looked the problems of each day's experience, and never
recognized the influences that mastered him. Of these
there is none more important than his devotion to the
King. To judge him fairly in a matter which has been
the subject of so much criticism we must see him as he
was before he had a claim to reputation, a simple-
hearted provincial of the middle class, and then consider
the effectiveness of the King's presentment of himself
before the eyes of his contemporaries. De loin il etonne,
de prts il attache f in that phrase Bossuet summed up
the two stages of his personal relation with his royal
master. He was dazzled first, and there are signs that
he made a struggle against the fascination so few had
power to resist, but his eventual surrender was complete.
He hugged his chains. And thereafter, for more than
thirty years, his imagination was so dominated by the

* See especially sermon preached at Metz ninth Sunday after Whit-
sun 1653.

f Discours pour I'Acadtmie Franfaise. (Euvns, vol. xii.

Introduction 3

King that it is impossible to picture him apart from the
associations of Versailles. All his worldliness sprang
from his love of royalty. For him the Court served as a
touchstone for the proving of his character so long as
he avoided it his weakness remained hidden. In 1670,
when he entered on his duties as tutor to the Dauphin,
a keen observer * could write of him that he had no
equal in reputation, that gentleness and frank sincerity
like his had not been known at Court. It would be
useless to seek for a corresponding tribute thirty years
later. Yet, while temptation exposed his frailty, it is
not clear that his nature suffered deterioration. It was,
and it remained, a simple nature, and the anomalies with
which his history presents us result from the extra-
ordinary tests to which it was subjected. If he had
thought and written in the obscurity of a distant diocese
there would be no clue to the personality of the man as
distinguished from the writer, and no reasonable ground
for the suggestion that his concentration on intellectual
labour was maintained at the cost of spiritual develop-
ment. It was real difficulty, when it confronted him
in the life of strenuous activities he had accepted, that
brought to light the incoherence in his claim to greatness.
Admiration for his genius (and for the portentous
industry which with him was the complement of genius)
is enhanced by an endeavour after knowledge of the man
himself. At the outset his aim was that of every faithful
priest, the conversion of his fellow men and the enlarge-
ment of God's kingdom. During the years in Metz and
Paris, when preaching was his special avocation, he held
this wide and obvious view of the duties of his calling.
It was only by degrees that he recognized the summons
to labour for reunion as personal to himself. Once this
mission was accepted, it filled his life. For one so im-
bued with the love of souls this was inevitable. To
understand his position it is only necessary to regard
his simplification of the differences that divided Christen-
dom. To deny the Church, he said, is to deny the
Gospel. Belief in the second involves belief in the first.

* Madame de La Fayette : see Bossuet CorresponJance, vol. i, p. 209.

4 'Jacques Benigne Bossuet

No one who believes in the Church can remain a Pro-
testant, no one who refuses such belief can remain a
Christian.*

Perhaps he paid the penalty of such simplicity when
there was need for apprehension of the honest difficulties
of other minds. (" // nous faut un prophete qut ait vaincu
le doute " is the suggestive comment of M. Bremond.)f
To himself, however, unwavering certainty was a treasure
beyond price, and his chief ambition was to impart it to
all whom he could reach by tongue or pen. He wondered
at delay, but he never doubted that eventually the Faith
itself would wield converting power over all mankind.
Thus, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes must be
numbered among those catastrophes that disturbed the
fair development of his career. He paid his well-known
tribute of admiration ^'to that act of tyranny because,
in his eyes, the will of the King was admirable, but there
is abundant proof that his own conviction remained un-
altered. And his conviction was directly contrary to the
King's policy towards Protestants : his chosen method
of approach to them was by conciliation. He believed
that the world awaited a presentation of the Faith so
true and comprehensive that every heretic would see
the misery of alienation from the Fold. Resort to perse-
cution || postponed the fulfilment of such a hope to the
millennium.

His ardour being that of the idealist his hope re-
mained undaunted, although a life of unremitting effort
did nothing towards the fulfilment of his vision. " All
else must yield when the Faith is concerned,"^ he said,
and his definition of the Faith was unalterably fixed in
every detail. To this fixity he owes his peculiar force
as a controversialist. Thus, in the Gallican dispute,

* See Conference avec Claude. CEuvres, vol. xiii.
f See Bossuet : Textes Choisis et Comment^.
\ Oraisons Funebres : Michel le Tellier.
See Correspondance, vol. i, No. 28.

|| Victor Hugo presents Bossuet "chantant le Te Deum sur lei dragon-
nadei " (Les Mis/ra&ks, 1. i, ch. x), but the evidence is against that view.
5 Correspondance, vol. xi, No. 1879.

Introduction 5

so perilous to the Church at large and so vital to himself
as an exponent of the Faith, the avoidance of catastrophe
may be attributed to his calm discernment. Indeed, if we
observe him in relation to this difficult episode it becomes
evident that for him a Gallican Question had no existence ;
it was only in its detailed application that an unassailable
opinion gave legitimate opportunity for argument.
Similarly the Quietist teaching, when first presented,
did not seem to him to admit discussion. Quietism,
as interpreted by Madame Guyon, must be realized, to
appreciate the effect of that doctrine on the mind of
Bossuet. For Madame Guyon welcomed Protestants
into her Companies of the Very Elect without requiring
their submission, and she did not disguise her own in-
difference to the Sacraments.* This is his justification
for the wrath that moved him. In his own eyes his
wrath was righteous, for this new heresy struck at the
root and principle of the Faith. It cannot be emphasized
too much that the antagonism which has become so
celebrated had no original taint of personal feeling : it was
directed towards Madame Guyon 's errors. The practice
of isolating the quarrel with Fe'nelon and regarding it
as a separate incident is responsible for the severity with
which the conduct of Bossuet is judged.f In fact the
Quietism controversy and his part in it should be studied
as a whole, and placed in their true relation with that
purpose which was the reason of his being.

The object of this book is to induce English readers
to discover Bossuet for themselves. His writings cover
a wide field, and selection from them, according to the
instinct of the reader, should not be difficult. They
must, however, be read as they were written ; the lyrical
quality of his style defies translation. And for knowledge
of the man as distinguished from the writer there are
the volumes of his Correspondance^. now almost com-

* Masson: Fe'nelon et Madame Guyon, p. 74, letter xxvii.

f In 1901 appeared a study of Fe'nelon by the present writer. The
judgments formed at that period have been modified by the reading of
the intervening twenty years.

^ Urbain et Levesque, 12 vols. (Hachette.)

6 "Jacques Eenigne Eossuet

plete. Hitherto the vision of him as the inspired orator,
the triumphant controversialist, has arrested any desire
for approach, and his letters have remained unread.
In their present form, arranged in accurate sequence,
they show him to us under a new guise. Here we
surprise him in moments of self-distrust and feebleness
and disappointment, and on occasion are admitted to
his confidence.

Chapter L Schoolboy and Student

JACQUES BENIGNE BOSSUET was born at
Dijon September 27, 1627, and baptized the same
day at the Church of St. John.* He was the
seventh child and fifth son of Benigne Bossuet and
Marguerite Mochet, both of whom belonged to the
minor bourgeoisie of Burgundy. A draper's shop in the
little town of Suerre was kept by a Bossuet for genera-
tions^ until the great-grandfather of Jacques Benigne
removed the business to Dijon in 1543, and trained his
son to a more exalted and more lucrative position as a
lawyer. During the civil warfare of the sixteenth cen-
tury, when loyalty and personal safety were often in-
compatible, no taint of treason rested on any of the family.
This fact is of interest in connection with the political
creed of their great descendant. His vision of monarchy
as the system of government designed by the Almighty
must have been conceived in a childhood passed among
staunch supporters of Church and King, and thus the
conviction that had such supreme importance in shaping
the thought and action of his later years may be traced
to the influence of his original environment.

In 1635 Jacques Benigne received the tonsure from
Sebastien Zamet, Bishop of Langres, and his later boy-
hood justified the assumption of his vocation for the
priesthood. When, three years later, his father left
Dijon for Metz, where family interest had secured him
a good appointment, Jacques and his favourite brother
Antoine remained with their uncle, Claude Bossuet
d'Aiserey, to continue their studies at the Jesuit College. :
Thus Dijon ceased to be his home while he was still a
schoolboy, and soon after his father's removal his future
prospects were definitely linked to Metz. In December
1640 a canonry in Metz Cathedral was secured for him,
and the fact gives an interesting illustration of the eccle-
siastical abuses then so prevalent, and the advantage to be
derived from them by a shrewd business man with a

* Floquet: fctudes sur la Fie de Bossuet, vol. i, p. 3. f Ibid,, p. 7
\ Founded 1581 by Jacques and Odinet Godrans, citizens of Dijon.
For reputation of Counsellor Bossuet see Correspondence, vol. i,
appendix iv and notes.

8 Jacques Eenigne Bossuet

large family. The retention of the appointment seems
indeed to have depended on proficiency in the practice
of the law, for it was so hotly contested by a rival claimant
that the dispute won celebrity in Metz for the name of
Jacques Be*nigne Bossuet before its bearer had entered
on his fourteenth year.*

We have no means of ascertaining the views of the
new canon with regard to his preferment, for there are
no records of his intimate life during its early stages.
Tradition says that he showed himself to be a student
from the first moment that the chance of study offered
itself, and thereafter was always absorbed in books.
We owe to tradition also the dramatic details of his dis-
covery of the Bible, made in his fifteenth year. The
studious boy is shown to us approaching a volume that
lay open in his uncle's library at Dijon, pausing before it
because to him all printed pages held promise of enjoy-
ment, giving a curious glance at one line or another
until the spell of Isaiah's solemn poetry fell on him and
he became absorbed. Thenceforward all his learning
was focussed on his study of the Scriptures.

If the traditional date for this important incident be
accurate, it took place a few months before his departure
from Dijon. His exceptional talents having convinced
his father of his claim to a fuller education than that
which President Godrans had provided for the youth
of his native city, he was sent to Paris and to the College
of Navarre.f This was in October 1642, when he was
just fifteen. There was nothing astounding to con-
temporary opinion in plunging a lad of his age into the
dangers of life in Paris ; at fifteen it was customary to
assume some of the independence of manhood, and a
career might be made or marred before it had run a score
of years. In the case of Jacques Benigne it is likely
that his prudent father had assured himself that the
venture entailed no risk. He was the fifth son, but he
seems to have had opportunities that were not given
to any of his brothers ; certainly he went alone to Paris,

* Bausset : Hist, de Bossuet, liv. i, pt. v.
t Now ficole Pol/technique, Place Monge.

Schoolboy and Student 9

and he remained there studying for ten years. They
were eventful years in the history of France. The death
of Cardinal Richelieu was followed by that of Louis XIII.
Cardinal Mazarin assumed despotic power, and the
Fronde Rebellion expressed the general revolt against
his pretensions. No line of diary or letter records the
thoughts or experience of the young student, Jacques
Benigne Bossuet, during those troublous times. It was
a period when a condition of insignificance had many
advantages, and the routine of the universities seems to
have been maintained in spite of sieges and civil tumults.
In those days Intellect was apt to be on the side of the
Court, for the simple reason that revolt against the King
implied disorder and neither research nor education can
be maintained without stable authority and government.
Moreover, the foundation and endowment of a university
was most often the result of royal liberality. The time
had not yet come when scholars made the plans of revolu-
tion, for scholarship in the seventeenth century was
associated with the Church, and the interests of Church
and Throne alike required the maintenance of order.

Nicolas Cornet,* the head of the college, was orthodox
in theology and politics ; " there could not be a truer
Frenchman," as his pupil f said of him after his death.
His character, as well as his opinions and his learning,
fitted him for his post, and for young men who were
destined to an ecclesiastical career he was an admirable
model. The years at college passed under such direction
were peaceful ones for Bossuet in spite of the storms that
raged around him. He enjoyed the special favour of
Cornet, and may have owed to his constant and close
association with a man more than thirty years his senior
that solemn view of the conditions of human existence
which marked him at this time. He speaks of the
" constant and unbroken friendship "^ existing between
them ; it lasted for twenty-one years, but at their first

* See Soyez, E. : Nicolas Cornet : Grand Mai f re du College de
Navarre.

j" Bossuet : Oraisons Funebres : N. Comet.
$ Oraisons Funebres : N. Cornet.

io Jacques Eenigne Eossuet

meeting the master was fifty and the pupil fifteen. It
was while he was under this influence, at the age of
twenty-two, that he wrote his Meditation on the Brevity
of Life, which is the earliest example of his work that has
survived. Although the morbid tendency of some pas-
sages betrays his youth, there is nothing youthful in his
valuation of the triumphs of the world, and the work
as a whole is astonishingly mature. It was written in
Retreat at Langres before his ordination as sub-deacon,
when, standing on the threshold of life, he could look
forward thoughtfully.*

" I mean to assert myself, to show myself off as others
do, and then I must disappear ; I see others go before
me, others will see me go, these again give place to their
successors. . . . My life here will last eighty years at
most even call it a hundred : how much time there
has been when I was not ! how much when I shall be no
longer ! How very small a place I hold in the vastness
of the years 1 And the comedy will not be less well
played when I go behind the scenes. My part is a very
little one, and so unimportant that when I look at it
closely it seems to me to be only in a dream that I am
here at all, and that everything that surrounds me is
pretence, for the fashion of this world passes away.

" My term is eighty years at most, and to reach that
how many dangers, how much sickness, must I not go
through ! How insecure our hold on life from one
moment to another 1 Have I not realized this again
and again ? I have escaped death on such and such
occasions ; that is a false statement 1 I have escaped
death ? I have avoided a particular danger, but not
death ! Death prepares many pitfalls for us ; if we
avoid one we fall into another ; in the end she must
lay hold upon us. I seem to see a tree at the mercy
of the wind ; there are leaves falling every moment, some
yield quickly, others cling longer. If there are any that
escape the storm, the coming of winter will bring them
down.

" My term is eighty years at most, and of those eighty
* See Revue Bossuet, 1901, p. 108.

Schoolboy and Student 1 1

years what proportion can be really looked upon as life ?
Sleep is more death than life. Infancy is merely the
life of an animal. How much of my youth has there
been which I would wish to cancel, and when I have
lived longer how much will there be then ? What does
it all amount to ? What is there that is worth counting ?
Is it the moment when I have been happy or in which
I have won some honour ? Such moments are very
thinly sprinkled through my life. And what remains
to me from innocent enjoyments ? Merely an idle
memory and of those which were unworthy only regret
and a debt which I must pay in penitence or else in hell.

' Truly we use an apt phrase when we speak of passing
our time. We do pass it indeed, and we pass with it.
All my being hangs on this moment, that is all that is
between me and nothingness ; the moment flies I seize
another ; they slip by one after another ; one after
another I link them together trying to have something to
which to hold, and I forget that they are taking me with
them, and that it is not time itself, but only the time which
is mine which is passing by. That is the condition of my
life, and it is terrible in this : that, while time passes
away from me it remains before God, and I am con-
cerned in it. All that I have depends on the passing of
time because I myself depend upon it ; but it all be-
longed to God before it belonged to me, it all depends on
God more than on time, time cannot take it from His
grasp, it is superior to time in its relation to Him, it
endures and is stored in His Treasury. That which I
place there I shall find again : the use that I make of
time passes through time into eternity. My enjoyment
of this pleasure is only for its moments as they pass ;
when they have passed I must answer for them as if they
remained with me. It is useless to say * They are over,
I will think no more of them ! ' They are over ! Yes,
they are over for me, but they remain with God. I shall
have to answer for them to Him."*

Thus Jacques Benigne Bossuet, the young student
meditating in the silence of Retreat; and in the spirit of

* See (Euvres Oratoires, Lebarq, vol. i.

12 Jacques Eenigne Bossuet

that meditation he entered on the period of self-training
and self-repression which followed his university career.
The prospect of future priesthood did not debar the
students at schools of theology in Paris from amusing
themselves, but no legends of youthful escapades are
attached to Bossuet's record. Probably the excite-
ments that were a temptation to his contemporaries had
no attractions for him, and certainly his youth was dis-
tinguished by unvarying discretion and solemnity. His
kindred at Metz and Dijon may have rejoiced at his
prudent conduct, but to future generations the picture
of his years at college would be more pleasing if they
contained a hint of boyishness. Instead of the follies
and ambitions natural to his age, a sense of the responsi-
bility of life possessed him. The immense conclusions
regarding God and the Universe that emerged from his
study of theology engrossed him to the exclusion of all
else. Fifty years later the Bishop of Meaux, when occa-
sion offered, could treat difficult questions with a light-
ness of touch that recalled St. Francois de Sales, but
Jacques B6nigne, the student, remained shrouded in a
cloak of gravity which hides any of the inclinations or
weaknesses of youth.

In those ten years, moreover, there seems to have been
no crisis, no moment of awakening or immense decision.
We have seen that Bossuet was a Canon of Metz Cathe-
dral when he came to Paris. Ten years later he left
Paris for Metz to take up the duties of his office. Other
opportunities offered themselves. A congenial life at
the College of Navarre and future succession to Nicolas
Cornet as its head was open to him,* and if he had re-
mained in Paris his fortune would have been secure. It
was characteristic of him that he fulfilled a plan which
had been gradually maturing in his mind. The strength
of his conviction did not inspire him to any tremendous
venture, he never hesitated on the threshold of the
cloister, he never resolved as did Cornet to refuse
the prizes of his calling. Yet, though we may look in
vain for a dramatic moment, his vision of the meaning of
* Floquet: tudts, vol. i, p. 188.

Schoolboy and Student 1 3

the priest's vocation called him to a form of definite
renunciation special to himself : he chose to withdraw
into obscurity, that the powers of mind and spirit which
he was dedicating should have time to mature in prepara-
tion for the claim that might await them. Such a choice
made at twenty-five augured well for the future, for
already the recognition of his intellectual powers was
wide enough to make it clear to him that they were of no
common order. In the scholastic world he had won fame
in the public examinations that began and ended his
career at college ; and, in addition, he had achieved
celebrity by his appearance at the Hotel Rambouillet
as the youngest preacher known to society.

The story is a familiar one. One evening, at a gather-
ing of those brilliant and distinguished persons who
frequented the Chambre Bleue, one of the intimates of
Madame de Rambouillet introduced the young scholar
from the College of Navarre as an orator competent,
if they desired it, to preach a sermon on any subject
chosen for him, without book. The company, always
athirst for novelty, welcomed the suggestion. Bossuet,
then a lad of sixteen, having claimed a few minutes for
preparation, delivered a discourse which won unqualified
applause.* This feat was too much of the nature of
a drawing-room performance to be creditable, and its
celebrity might have aroused all the latent vanity of
youth. Fortunately for himself his nature was well
balanced, and he seems to have had the judgment of a
man where the use of his boyish powers was concerned.
While many of his contemporaries were eager to make
their voices heard in the pulpits of Paris f long before
the course of education prescribed for them had been
completed, he showed precocity of a very different kind :
in the midst of clamour he could be silent.

It is always difficult to determine the degree to which
a young life may be ordered by the advice of the ex-
perienced. Bossuet had wise friends, and foremost

* The occasion of the hackneyed mot of Voiture " Je n'ai jamai
entendu precher si tot ni si tard"

f See Serrant: L 'Abbt de Ranee" et Bossuet, p. 13.

14 Jacques Benigne Bossuet

among them stood Cospe"an, Bishop of Lisieux,* a
notable scholar and preacher, whose favour with the
Queen earned him the enmity of Mazarin. The veteran
priest discerned the great promise of the young Burgun-
dian, and warned him that learning and reflection rather
than constant practice were the best preparation for a
preacher.f Cospe'an belonged to the inner circle of the
Hotel Rambouillet, and was so experienced in men and
manners that it was in itself a compliment that he
should give counsel to an unfledged youth. Bossuet
obeyed him ; the chances of immediate notice and suc-
cess were put aside, and when the time came for choice,
and the student period was over, he had the courage to
turn his back on Paris. Four years earlier, in May 1 648,
having attained the prescribed age of twenty-one, Bossuet
had visited Metz to make formal assertion of his position
as a canon, and in the following autumn he was ordained
sub-deacon by Zamet, Bishop of Langres. A year later,
in the Cathedral at Metz, he was ordained deacon.

Clerk's orders, involving the tonsure, were a necessary
preliminary to ecclesiastical preferment, and were re-
ceived by many youths who had no semblance of vocation.
It was possible to draw a large income from the endow-
ment of a cathedral or a monastery, even to hold the rank
of bishop or of cardinal without being committed further.
But some of the recipients of the prizes of Church
patronage were not content with a titular appointment ;
they desired the full state and power of their office, and
to them any delay in attaining the full privilege of priest-
hood was irksome. Therefore it was a recognized practice
at this period to confer the three degrees of ordination
at the same time. Vincent de Paul strove to inculcate
a general recognition of the sacredness of Holy Orders,
but his teaching was regarded as an innovation and was
only accepted by a minority. The younger sons of noble

* " // //ait le Saint de la Cour " : Madame de Motteville (M/m.,
vol. i, p. 203).

t Floquet: Etudes, vol. i, p. 101 ; and Lebarq: op. cit., vol. i, p. 2.
$ See Tallemant des Rcaux: Historifttfs, vol. ii, No. 130.
$ Serrant : op. cit., p. 1 6.

Schoolboy and Student 1 5

families still assumed the mysterious responsibilities of
priesthood, and therewith the wealth of bishopric or
abbey, hastily and without any scruple regarding their
qualification for their charge. Jacques Benigne Bossuet
was not the scion of a noble family, and neither his
opportunities nor his temptations were as great as those
of his well-born comrades, but the slowness of his pro-
gression may be attributed to a deeper cause than the
accident of birth. His successive ordinations each
marked a definite stage in advance towards the goal to
which his course was directed. In March 1652 he was
ordained priest, and when, ten years later, in the Church
of the Oratorians, he described the solemnity of ordina-
tion he did so in terms which were not representative
of contemporary opinion.

' To prepare for the priesthood," he said, " is not,
as many people seem to think, an undertaking that can
be accomplished in a few days, it is the employment of a
lifetime. It does not mean the repudiation of sin by a
sudden effort of the will, but a persistent habit of re-
sisting it. Devotion must not have the fervour that
springs from novelty, but that which has been confirmed
and deepened by long custom. St. Gregory Nazianzen
said of St. Basil that ' he was a priest before he was made
a priest,' which means, if I am not mistaken, that without
waiting for the mystic consecration he had from his child-
hood consecrated himself by the untiring practice of
piety."*

There is every reason to believe that Bossuet had been
preparing since his childhood for the day when he should
be made a priest, and at its near approach he withdrew to
St. Lazare for the Retreat which M. Vincent had suc-
ceeded in making customary before ordination in the
diocese of Paris. In that ten days of undistracted quiet
there was opportunity for looking back, for recognizing
the mistakes and failures of the first period of youth,
and for surveying the possibilities of the future. Gondi
future Cardinal de Retz had emerged from a similar
Retreat resolved on the choice of evil ; to Ranee*, the

* Oraisons Funebres : Pere Francois Bourgoing, December 1662.

1 6 Jacques Eenigne Bossuet

future Trappist, it meant only the deepening of his revolt
against the state of life to which he was committed. On
neither of these two did association with St. Vincent and
his company have an elevating influence, but to both
their sojourn at St. Lazare meant the deliberate facing of
reality ; they could not plead that they had drifted into
misuse of the high calling they had accepted ; they had
seen and considered its claim upon them and had re-
fused it.

Bossuet had no new considerations awaiting him in his
Retreat ; circumstances had combined with desire to
make his vocation unquestionable. He brought great
powers and strong purpose to its fulfilment, and the day
of his ordination to the priesthood was the greatest land-
mark in his life. His future prospects were by no means
assured, however. He was resolved to be the faithful
servant and defender of the Church, but wide oppor-
tunities of service were, ordinarily, obtained by family
interest, and Jacques Be'nigne Bossuet was not secure of
full scope for his great powers because the name he bore
was incurably plebeian.

To the inhabitants of Metz the subject of family
interest and misused patronage in the Church was a
burning question. For forty-seven years Verneuil, the
natural son of Henri IV, enjoyed the revenues of their
bishopric, but, as he never received even deacon's orders,
he could not exercise full episcopal authority, and dis-
cipline, particularly in the Cathedral Chapter, was diffi-
cult to maintain. The position was further complicated
by an attempt to transfer the title and revenues to Cardinal
Mazarin, an arrangement which the Pope refused to
ratify, and M. de Verneuil remained bishop until 1659,
when he resigned. A few years later he astonished
society by his marriage with the widowed Duchesse de
Sully.* The system of using ecclesiastical revenues to
reward those who found favour with the King or his
First Minister was too firmly established to be a cause
of scandal, but it was hard to reconcile with those high
standards which were cherished by the disciples of
* Correspondanct, vol. i, No. r, note.

Schoolboy and Student 1 7

Vincent de Paul. And here, at the opening of his career,
we find Bossuet confronted with the necessity of choice
between the claims of traditional loyalty and of his own
conscience. He was shrewd enough to know that
Verneuil represented an evil which was more destructive
to the Church than any Protestant machinations. Nomin-
ally Verneuil was his bishop, it is true ; nevertheless,
it is matter for regret that he addressed to him an essay,
composed at the College of Navarre, with a compli-
mentary Latin dedication as respectful as if it were
offered to a veritable Father in God.* The custom of
the time is his excuse. Verneuil showed his appreciation
of the compliment promptly by conferring the Arch-
deaconry of Sarrebourg on the young canon, and prefer-
ment to the Archdeaconry of Metz itself followed two
years later. f

* Correspondence, vol. i, No. r, July 5, 1651.
f Floquet: tudes, p. 372.

V

Chapter II. A Priest's Apprenticeship

BOSSUET began his work as a preacher as soon
as he was established in residence at Metz.
If it is the case that he intended this early period
of his career to be a time of definite preparation his sur-
roundings had many points that were favourable to his
design. A contemporary chronicle * tells us quaintly
that " Metz was an important place with its own Parle-
menty where the ladies were more cultivated and agree-
able than in any other provincial town." Probably this
is not unprejudiced testimony, but it suggests that there
was capacity for intellectual response in the audience
before whom the young abbe" was to test and mould
his powers of oratory. And, besides the legal and com-
mercial element, there was an occasional reminder of the
Court in the cathedral congregations. Marshal Schom-
berg was Governor of the province and made Metz his
home, and he had married Marie de Hautefort,f whose
experience as a lady-in-waiting was peculiarly rich in
adventure and romance. She had passed from the
service of Marie de' Medici to that of Anne of Austria ;
she had been the object of the passionate attachment of
Louis XIII ; she had served her royal mistress, in her
years of distress as the neglected Consort, with un-
swerving self-devotion ; and she had admonished her,
when her liberty as Regent had led her into licence,
with no less courage. She had been exiled, first as the
victim of the jealousy of Cardinal Richelieu, and again
for her opposition to Mazarin, and throughout she pre-
served her reputation quite unsullied. The dramatic
career of Madame de Schomberg was a matter of com-
mon knowledge, and Bossuet, though he became the
declared enemy of the drama, had the dramatic instinct
sharply developed : we see it in his Oraisons Funebres, in
many sermons, in many letters, and in his work as an
historian ; therefore he must have welcomed his oppor-
tunities of intercourse with this great lady. Indeed, to

* Quoted Victor Cousin : Madame de Chevreuse et Madame de Haute-
fort, vol. ii, p. 229.

t See Levesque de Burigny : Vie de Bossuet, p. 24.

A Priest's Apprenticeship 1 9

a student of human nature few subjects could offer
greater interest, for she had every reason for disillusion
and yet was not disillusioned ; she had proved the hollow-
ness of royal favour, yet could not renounce her desire
for it.* Also she was intimate with that devout world
whose place as an influence on the conduct and on the
politics of the day is so hard to define and so impossible
to deny. As the Queen's companion she had been
familiar with Val de Grace ; for her own consolation
she was a constant guest at the Visitation Convent close
to it ; and her husband's sister was Madame de Lian-
court, at whose house f she had associated with the
adherents of Port Royal.

Bossuet's experience as a student in Paris cannot have
left him in ignorance of the significance of these cele-
brated convents. The scheming that went on within
their walls may have been prompted by high motives,
but it gave ample justification for the suspicion that they
were a danger to the ruling powers of the moment ;
there are many proofs of the real spiritual life in the back-
ground, but contemplative and intrigante knelt side by
side in choir stalls, and to describe a Carmelite as " stand-
ing in high favour with the Queen " suggested no con-
tradiction in idea. Possibly the whisper of conspiracy
increased the glamour which the convents of that period
undoubtedly possessed, and their appeal to popular
imagination attracted within their precincts many who
would have been repelled by the Religious Life in its
true aspect. The net was wide enough to sweep out-
siders of very diverse types into the vast chapels of Val
de Grace and of the Visitation in the Rue St. Jacques,
and preachers invited to these pulpits had a great oppor-
tunity. Bossuet was to distinguish himself particularly
by the use he made of such openings when his years of
apprenticeship were over, and his intercourse with

* Madame de Motteville: M/moires, vol. i, p. 507.
f Rapin : MJmoires, vol. i, p. 99.

^ Louis XIV referred in public to the Carmelites of Rue du Bouloi as
" des intrigueuses." (See Madame de Sevigne, vol. v, No. 663.)
Rapin : MJmoires, vol. i, book i, p. 161.

2O Jacques Eenigne Bos suet

Madame de Schomberg was calculated to enlighten
him on the possibilities of evangelization accorded by the
organization of the convents. It is evident that he stood
in considerable awe of the Governor * and his distin-
guished lady. They were great people, and their bene-
volence to him, from which he derived a social standing
not otherwise attainable, f made their natural claims on
outward manifestation of respect more insistent. Yet
he was not lavish in his use of pulpit adulation ; they
made their appearance unexpectedly when he was about
to preach on St. Gorgon $ in the Cathedral at Metz,
and he improvised the complimentary phrases which the
elaborate custom of the time demanded ; but when he
had proved that his wits did not fail him in an emergency
he put aside the language of compliment and proceeded
to balance flattery with solemn exhortation. On another
occasion, when he had paid his tribute from the pulpit
to the virtue and good works of Madame de Schomberg,
he summoned courage to warn her that all the admiration
of which she was the object was ill-bestowed unless she
was grounding all she did upon humility.5

Even at that early stage there were omens of the
struggle that later was destructive to inward self-com-
placency or calm. He desired to conform to the wishes
of the world, to be liked by those with whom he asso-
ciated ; yet at all times, even in those moments still far
distant when the pride of life seemed to have mastered
him, he hated worldliness and battled with it. The
society of the Schombergs could not be said to represent,
even to a young priest, the temptations of the world ;
they were both far too exemplary in faith and conduct
to be classed as worldlings, nor was there experience to
be gained from intimacy with Marie de Hautefort that
could aid him in future intercourse with the more typical

* The earliest published work of Bossuet was dedicated to Schomberg.
See (Euvres, vol. xiii, " Refutation du Cattchisme de Ferry " chez Jean
Antoine a Metz.

t Ledieu: MJmoires, p. 25. $ (Euvres, vol. xii, p. 315.

Victor Cousin : op. cit., appendix, p. 497.

5 (Euvres, vol. xii, p. 167.

A Priest's Apprenticeship 2 1

ladies of the Court. His friendship with her in these
early scenes is important, nevertheless, for it shows that
there was already developed in him that power of under-
standing and of suggestion which made him the ideal
consoler of Henrietta of England on her deathbed, and
the prop and stay of Louise de La Valliere in her great
decision. Schomberg died in Paris in 1656, and a
letter * from Bossuet to Marie de Hautefort in her third
year of widowhood is the first evidence of his capacity
for personal dealing with troubled souls. The worst
pain of her bereavement was her constant apprehension
as to the future state of the being she had loved. This
distress assumed terrible proportions from time to time,
and it is supposed that Bossuet was urged to write to her
by a third person, probably Alix Clerginet, foundress of
the Institute for the Propagation of the Faith in Metz.
The letter is a long one, and is free from platitudes of
condolence or of compliment ; it is written with the
confidence of one who knows his correspondent inti-
mately and respects character as well as rank in her.
The grief with which he is dealing is not selfish, it is
rooted in the depths of absorbing human love, but it
indicates Disorder of mind and failure to grasp an essential
part of Catholic teaching. Schomberg's conversion had
taken place long before his last illness ; he had been
known in Metz for his devout practices (we are told that
he fasted during one Lent on the coarser kind of bread),f
he lived strictly, and died with the consolation of the
Sacraments. " We should not pity the dead under such
conditions," says Bossuet, " we do them wrong in calling
them the dead. His end, madame, was that of one of
the predestined. He saw Death coming towards him,
he felt it approaching step by step ; with that knowledge
he made Communion and took stock of the vanished
years."

To mourn as one without hope over such a bereave-
ment as this is heresy, but Bossuet understood that it was

* Correspondance, vol. i, No. 13.

f Vie incite de Marie de Hautefort^ quoted Victor Cousin : op. cit.,
vol. ii, p. 233.

22 Jacques Benigne Bossuet

not theological argument or priestly admonition that
would lessen the terrors that oppressed the mourner,
but rather sympathy and the tenderest persuasion.
Marie de Hautefort was set apart from the other well-
known women of her time : all that she said and did
proclaimed her absolute integrity, and that quality had
become rare under the rule of Richelieu and of Mazarin.
Indeed, she owed her celebrity as much to popular esteem
for her real worth as to the importance of her part in the
drama that had the Court for stage. Bossuet's letter was
worthy of its recipient, and her desire for it proves that
already social barriers were breaking down before him.
We know that she regained her mental balance eventually,
and was able to assist and comfort the Queen-mother,
her former friend and mistress, in the miseries of her
last illness ; * and we can conjecture that it was Bossuet
who helped her through the perils of depression until her
faith returned.

The daily life of the young abbe at Metz, however,
was not greatly affected by his association with celebrated
personages, and it has no history. He was sincere" in his
acceptance of retirement, and he set an example of quiet
regularity to the turbulent ecclesiastics of the Cathedral
Chapter. There were many new experiences awaiting
him in Metz, for the frontier city had a character of its
own. He was not a stranger there, however, and he had
the temperament that readily adapts itself to any sur-
roundings. Consequently his position as a citizen was
assured before he had been many months in residence,
and in a year it had become a very important one. In
the miserable necessity of treating with Conde", who was
fighting for Spain against his own country, Bossuet was
the envoy of the people of Metz j" for the arrangement
of the subsidy which was demanded as the price of their
security. Here he had his first opportunity of showing
skill as a diplomatist, and he acquitted himself admirably
and won the gratitude of the townsfolk. It is possible
that he found the small adventure of passing the frontier

* Vie infdite : op. cit., vol. ii, p. 239.

f CorresponJance, vol. i, Nos. 3 and 4 and notes.

A Pries fs Apprenticeship 23

and treating with the enemy a welcome change from the
routine he had adopted, for he was at this time twenty-six,
an age at which outward monotony, however useful in
itself, cannot be welcome. His preaching made the
most important of all the claims upon his time, however,
because the study and consideration connected with it
involved far more than the act of pronouncing sermons
from the pulpit. The art of preaching, as Bossuet re-
garded it, involved an endeavour towards the understand-
ing of men and women, their interests and beliefs, and the
influences of the moment and of the locality that most
affected them. It was not merely a student and doctor
of theology who confronted the people of Metz in the
cathedral pulpit ; it was a young and ardent human
being, consumed, then and throughout the periods of his
public ministration, by a passion for the conversion of
souls. With that aim always in view, no point of ex-
perience in his round of duties was wasted on him, and
for four years he was content gradually to gather know-
ledge, to reflect, to gain facility in the use of his great
gift, without seeking recognition outside the narrow
circle of his fellow-citizens.

In September 1657 the door through which ultimately
the Abbe Bossuet was to pass to a position of distinction
was unfastened. Affairs of State brought the Queen
Regent, the King, Mazarin, and all their following to
Metz.* On October 1 5 the Regent, as befitted a devout
Spaniard, repaired to the cathedral for the panegyric of
St. Teresa."}" It was an opportunity which was seized
upon by Bossuet for the benefit of his flock rather than
for the service of his own ambition. The needs of the
diocese were great, and the abuses to which we have
already referred increased the difficulty of preserving
the faith of Catholics in the midst of a multitude of Jews
and heretics. It was only after the death of Mazarin
that her enterprises in connection with charity, and with
the Church, became the chief interest in the life of Anne
of Austria ; at this period there were many conflicting

* Floquet: fitudes, vol. i, p. 425.
f (Euvres, vol. xii, p. 382.

24 Jacques Eenigne Bossuet

claims on her attention, and there was every reason to
expect that the needs of Metz, skilfully though they had
been presented, would be forgotten when she returned
to Paris. It chanced, however, that benevolent impulses
possessed her for so long that Vincent de Paul had been
commissioned to organize a Mission at Metz before
they had subsided. Bossuet was known at St. Lazare,
and belonged to the society that met there for the cele-
brated " Tuesday Conferences," * and when the an-
nouncement of the Queen's intention was made to him
he seized with alacrity upon the chance of personal
communication with M. Vincent.

The Mission was to be held in the Lent of 1658 by
twenty priests belonging to the " Conferences," under
direction of the Lazarists, and the leader chosen by
M. Vincent was Chandenier, Abbe* de Tournus, a man
of recognized power and great saintliness.f It was an
important enterprise, and Bossuet threw himself whole-
heartedly into the work of organization. M. Vincent
was supremely the apostle of Order ; his work was done
directly in the service of God and nothing in it was left
to chance ; it was the key to the success of his vast under-
takings that he considered and regulated every detail
of the original scheme with infinite care, and the letters
written to him by Bossuet, in capacity of agent for
St. Lazare at Metz, reflect the spirit that he strove to
inculcate. For the secular priest, in his practical as well as
in his spiritual life, there was no better guide and example
than M. Vincent, but there were very many who came
in touch with him and went upon their way unaffected.
Bossuet was not of these, however ; his business letters
are full of trembling respect, and there is a development
in the formality of their conclusion which is suggestive.
The first bears, after the signature, the pompous designa-
tion " Archdeacon of Metz," the second " unworthy
priest." The manifold occupations of M. Vincent
never affected his capacity for observation, and the young

* Revue Bossuet, October 1907.

f Abelly : Vie de Vincent de Paul (1664), liv. i, p. 242.

\ Correspondence, vol. i, Nos. 6 and 7.

A Priest's Apprenticeship 2 5

and brilliant abbe, who had already made his mark
among the members of the Conferences, was no stranger
to him, therefore he must have been fully alive to the
significance of those differing signatures and perhaps
allowed himself to smile at them. But the smile of
M. Vincent was innocent of mockery.

There were a vast number of uninteresting arrange-
ments to be made before the spiritual work of the Mission
came in sight : difficulties of lodging, of commissariat,
of service. It was not an easy task to provide for more
than twenty visitors, but that toil was as nothing beside
the effort which was needed to still the jealousies and evil
rumours that threatened to wreck the enterprise com-
pletely. The Suffragan was perpetually at variance with
the Cathedral Chapter,* and the announcement that he
had given his warm approval to M. Vincent's scheme
secured for it the opposition of the resident ecclesiastics.
And there was a popular Dominican preacher who had
already been engaged for Lent, and resented the sugges-
tion that he was no longer needed.f It was good training
and good discipline to deal with these obstacles, and by
the time he had overcome them Bossuet had made no in-
considerable addition to his capital of experience. It was
his duty also to prepare the people for the great oppor-
tunity offered to them, and he approached this spiritual
side of his task with real humility.

" I know my own incapacity to give the help I wish to
give," he wrote to M. Vincent,^ and his remarkable
success in dealing with the jealousies and contentions
of his neighbours may be attributed to his own effort
towards self-effacement. M. Vincent was the real leader
of the Mission at Metz, although there was no thought of
his actual appearance there, and the young abbe, burdened
with the care of the multifarious preliminaries, turned
constantly towards him, and from him drew inspiration
to humility. When the Missioners arrived Bossuet
himself took over a little church upon the ramparts, and

* For details see Maynard: Fie de St. Vincent de Paul, vol. ii, p. 92.
t Correspondance, vol. i, appendix iii, p. 422.
\ Ibid., No. 6.

26 Jacques Benigne Bossuet

withdrew into the background. Two months later, when
they left for Paris, his letter to M. Vincent expresses the
thanks of one who has witnessed with admiration the
work done by others, and refers to himself as though his
own association with the Missioners was an honour to
which he could not reasonably have aspired.*

This Mission at Metz was generally regarded as extra-
ordinarily fruitful ; M. Vincent himself referred to it
with thankfulness ; it woke Catholics from spiritual
slumber and disturbed the peace of the Huguenots and
of the Jews. Moreover, it reached further than the
limits of a Mission to the people and touched their
pastors, thereby fulfilling a constant aspiration of the
Superior of St. Lazare. The reality of the impression
is proved by the formation of a society instituted by the
priests of Metz and the surrounding districts, whose
object was the continuance of Conferences and Mission
work. Undoubtedly the personal labours of Bossuet
had been instrumental in bringing all this about. At
every stage his influence in the city, and his familiarity
with the various aspects of its life, were valuable, and,
in addition, there had been opportunity for his natural
gifts to make their mark. Chandenier had not been too
much engrossed with the responsibility of leadership to
note the powers of this young recruit. He was himself
a man whom others held in reverence, he was of high
birth (which meant much to the position of a priest in
those days), and he had been chief in this great spiritual
venture of which the devout world was chattering, but
he felt that the service rendered by the Abbe* Bossuet
deserved greater recompense than thanks from him.
The documents relating to the Mission at Metz, pre-
served at St. Lazare, included the letter in which he asked
that M. Vincent himself should write congratulations to
Bossuet on his preaching and instructions. f

' What is there that is worth counting ? Is it the
moment in which I have been happy or have won some
honour ? Such moments are very thinly sprinkled

* Correspondence, vol. i, No. 1 1 .
t Ibid., p. 29, note 5.

A Priest's Apprenticeship 17

through my life." So runs the meditation in Retreat
six years earlier. But already the writer was discovering
that life offered privileges which brought neither happi-
ness nor triumph in their train, and these had not been
considered in his reckoning. Of such privileges was his
work in the Mission at Metz. The generous impulse
of the Queen Regent, to which the Mission owed its
being, had been evolved by his eloquence ; his skill and
energy had so smoothed the way that the Missioners
entered on their labours undistracted ; moreover, in his
association with the enterprise he had himself received
real spiritual benefit. Here, in truth, he had reached
not merely the moment, but the period in his life that
was worth counting, and it had not the evanescence which
his youthful pessimism ascribed to all human achieve-
ments and desires. Indeed, his connection with the
Mission had important effect on the development of
his career ; he seems by means of it to have found his
foothold. The spring of 1658 was the end of his retire-
ment.

Chapter III. Bossuet in Paris

AFTER the year of the Mission Bossuet's life no
longer centred at Metz ; his work was waiting
for him in Paris, and the links which bound him
to the scene of his first labours had to be loosened.
These links were strong, for all the fervour of his nature
had been thrown into the opening of his ministry. Metz
was not merely the arena in which he fought his earliest
battles with the champions of the hosts of Reform ;
it was the testing-place for his capacities in intimate
spiritual guidance. His admirers in labelling him theo-
logian and controversialist have injured him ; the venera-
tion accorded to him by the wise and learned is not more
than his due, but his stupendous intellectual achieve-
ment has been emphasized to the detriment of his other
important qualifications as a priest. If we look for it
there is abundant proof that Bossuet was a man of prayer,
and in his mind the life of a priest was a united whole:
there were no departments of study, of preaching, and
of social intercourse to be adjusted to their right pro-
portions. An idea of unity was always present to him,
and the fact that a priest was worthy to mount into the
pulpit implied his fitness to minister at the altar. Both
acts alike, as he regarded them, assumed the possession
of a power which was a trust from God, and for both
prayer was essential ; a priest neglecting prayer de-
prived himself of the force by which alone all the other
activities that belonged to his vocation could be sustained.
Perhaps a vivid intellect is not an unmixed blessing to a
man who has to deal with others, for it is hard to pre-
serve unbroken charity towards those whose dragging
minds refuse the sequence of clear reasoning, and in
Bossuet's case a subconscious instinct of impatience with-
held him from emphasizing that which appeared to
him to be self-evident. The value that he set on prayer,
for instance, or his sense of its necessity in his personal
life, is rarely stated, although his later teaching shows
that he knew more of the science of prayer than can be
learned by study.

There is, however, one record of his first year's

Bossuet in Paris 29

ministry which gives us a little knowledge of the progress
of his spiritual development. When he settled at Metz
there was living in the city a woman named Alix Clerginet,
whose efforts towards winning the daughters of the
Jewish population to Christianity had had remarkable
success. Her original plan was to receive her converts
into her own house, but she was in humble circumstances,
and the money necessary for the institution known as
La Maison de la Propagation de la Foi, of which she
was the foundress, was subscribed by charitable persons
headed by Madame de Schomberg. The enterprise
made particular appeal to the sympathy of Bossuet ; he
became Superior, and its rule in its final form was drawn
up by him.* His personal association with its foundress,
however, has a much more important bearing on his life
than his connection with its work, for there seems suffi-
cient evidence to establish the identity of Alix Clerginet
and " The Lady dwelling in Metz " to whom Bossuet
wrote letters of direction. f The lady in question was,
clearly, not a member of a religious Order, yet she was
so far advanced in the spiritual life that the young abbe
could write to her freely as to one who will meet him
with understanding. Caution would have forbidden
many expressions in the letters ^ had they been addressed
to a neophyte or to a stranger, but he is sure of his
ground, and he allows his pen to run freely into revela-
tion of his thought.

" My dear daughter, it is necessary that you should
have a vehement desire to love Jesus Christ. This de-
sire possessed me all day yesterday, and I am eager to
write something about it to you. The desire to love
Jesus Christ is the beginning of that holy love which
opens and expands the heart that it may abandon itself
to Him without reserve, completely to self-annihilation
so as to have no being apart from Him.

" Whoever loves Jesus Christ is always beginning over
again ; he regards all he has done hitherto as of no ac-

* (Euvres, vol. xvii, p. 285.

f Revue Bossuet, 1904 (July).

^ Correspondance, vol. i, Nos. 14, 15, 16, 17.

30 "Jacques Benigne Bossuet

count this is why he is always in a state of desire, and it is
this continual desire that makes love infinite. When
love has made if such a thing were possible its very
last effort, it is with its final moments that it wishes to
begin again ; and so it can never cease to call upon
desire to support it, because desire is always beginning
and never ends, and will not suffer itself to be limited.
The first condition for a heart that desires to love is the
fixed admiration with which it regards its object, and
that is the first wound that pure love makes in the heart.
The heart that is seized and possessed by this holy
admiration can see nothing that is not Jesus Christ, can
endure nothing that is not Jesus Christ. There is no
greatness for him except Jesus Christ, and his admiration
so surges up within him that he is forced to exclaim
' The Lord is Great,' Magnus Dominus. When this point
is reached, little by little he loses sight of everything else.
If anything else shows itself, either it repels him or else
he says ' That is beautiful but it has no part with my
well-beloved.' And from that springs a fierce desire
to break away every bond, however slight, that binds
the heart so that it cannot lose itself in Jesus Christ ;
and this is what is meant by the desire of love."

This is the mysticism of the scholar. The Saints
as well as the Fathers, evidently, had had their place in
the course of study undertaken during those years at
Metz.* The seed, moreover, had fallen upon fertile soil,
and Bossuet did not overrate the value of the fruit of
his own meditation in judging it worthy to be com- .
municated to a responsive soul. Indeed, a glimpse of
the knowledge that may not be gleaned from books had
been vouchsafed to him, there is the note of discovery,
and it becomes more resonant in another letter a few
days later. His theme (for the moment he has no other)
is still the love of Jesus.

' There in loving Jesus an immense love of other
souls is born, and thought of self should have no place

* M. Bremond suggests that his knowledge was drawn from contem-
porary devotional writers, such as Surin and Boudon (Bossuet, vol. i,
p. 112, note), but M. Bremond is the apologist of Fdnelon.

Bossuet in Paris 3 1

save in relation to the boundless love that we desire
to have for all souls in general and each in particular.

Jesus, by Thy bitter thirst upon the Cross give me the
grace of a true thirst for souls, the grace to prize my own
only by the claim upon it to have regard for others. I
desire to love them all because they are all capable of
loving Thee, because this capacity has been given to
them by Thee, and because it is from Thee that the call
comes to them to turn to Thee and concentrate all their
power of love upon Thee only. Therefore, O Jesus,

1 cannot rest while any soul is left without knowledge of
Thy love."

This is mysticism applied to the daily life of persons
whose vocation like that of Bossuet and his corres-
pondent involved the instruction of others, and the
dangers of its study (of which every honest student of
the subject is aware) slip out of sight. It is the mysticism
which his eager mind could grasp a stimulus to activity.
Indeed, from that day of Retreat just before Ascension-
tide, when the young priest discovered for himself the
meaning of the written words which Juan d'Avila and
Louis de Leon and St. Teresa had left behind them, and
the " ardent longing " for the love of Jesus ceased to be
a phrase, there came to him fresh inspiration for the
evangelistic work which was to be his part. He was
receiving many calls to Paris,* and he knew probably
that thenceforward his days would be passed in the
midst of controversy and effort and perpetual distrac-
tion ; it may be he was shrinking from the prospect,
and it was on the threshold of this new condition that
he experienced " the first wound that pure love makes
in the heart." The outpouring of his soul under that
joyful suffering suggests that the cell of the contem-
plative is drawing him, but that first fervour was rapidly
assimilated with his long-established purpose.

This revelation of his inner self acquires peculiar
interest from the circumstances under which he made it.

* He is accused of being actuated by motives of self-interest in leaving
Metz. For examination of this charge see M. Rebelliau in Revue des
Deux Mondes, July 15, 1919.

32 Jacques Eenigne Bossuet

Before him lay Paris, and Paris was the home of a vast
multitude of whom a very small proportion desired that
their world should be conformed to the law of Christ.
That thought filled his mind as he faced the future,
because he held a commission to conquer souls, and the
chief motive of his life in those days was his absorbing
faith in that commission. Moreover, in his new revela-
tion of the love of Jesus there had come to him a new
capacity. In his own words : " There in loving Jesus
an immense love of other souls is born. I cannot rest
while any soul is left without knowledge of Thy love."
Aspiration, soaring beyond possibility of fulfilment, was
the best stimulus for the evangelistic labour on which he
was embarking. And he never lost the faculty of
aspiration through the long years of his pilgrimage.
The course that lay before him was not to be a steady
upward progress ; far from it yet in following it he
followed his vocation. There were times when tempta-
tion pressed upon him and the world passed severe judg-
ment on his failures, yet his purpose never faltered.
However strong the desires that personal ambition
prompted, they were all subservient to that one with
which he entered on his life-work, the desire to win souls
for the Church.

A direct result of the Mission at Metz was an in-
vitation from the Superior of St. Lazare to the Abbe
Bossuet to conduct the Ordination Retreat at Easter
1659.* It is memorable that Bossuet began his career
as a preacher in Paris under the auspices of Vincent de
Paul, and that his earlier sermons were not addressed
to fashionable audiences, but to inmates of charitable
institutions, to converted heretics, or to the more secluded
of the religious Communities. This should exonerate
him from any charge of being drawn to Paris by am-
bition, although it is likely that other motives moved
him to his venture f besides his thirst for souls. The
man who could achieve such close analysis of human
passions as may be found in many of his sermons must

* Floquet: Etudes, vol. ii, p. 14.

t Jovy, E. : tudcs et RecAercAes, p. 67.

Bossuet in Paris 33

have been well aware of the temptations likely to assail
himself. It is interesting to observe the pitiless minute-
ness with which the succeeding stages of ambition are
set forth in his panegyric of St. Francois de Sales,*
and his warning is directed especially to ecclesiastics,
and therefore to himself. If we consider his condition
and prospects, the temptation to push himself and win
recognition becomes evident. According to the tradi-
tions of the time, by which an inherited claim to high
place was the only valid one, his birth was a hindrance
to advancement so great as to be almost insuperable.
Yet his powers were not of a kind to come to full fruition
in obscurity and, while it was possible for him to be
conscious of this and yet to remain humble, the prompt-
ing of ambition in its most specious form was inevitable.
In following his career we shall find that external achieve-
ments brought in their train interior failures, and that
he fell most heavily when he was most secure that his
ardour was solely for the service of the Church.

When he came to Paris Bossuet took up his abode
at the Doyenne* du Louvre.f The churches of St.
Thomas and St. Nicolas du Louvre were surrounded
by the dwellings of great families, among them the
Hotel Rambouillet, the Hotel de Chevreuse and the
Hotel de Longueville, in the district between the Louvre
and the Rue St. Honore.:]: A little circle of his former
comrades at the College of Navarre was established at
the Doyenne", each one of whom had been touched by the
influence of M. Vincent, and for such work as lay before
him there could not have been a more desirable back-
ground. At first he was only clear of his object, he
could not foresee the method of accomplishment. From
the whirlpool of Paris life he desired to rescue souls,
but it is unlikely that during his student years he had
reached any distinct comprehension of the social con-
ditions with which he would have to deal in the pursuit
of his endeavour. Attempts to depict these social con-

* (Euvres, vol. xii, p. 70.
f Floquet: Etudes, vol. ii, p. 28.

4: The actual site is part of the present Place du Carrousel.

c

34 'Jacques Eenigne Bossuet

ditions of the reign of Louis XIV have been made many
times, but never with real success, because the mind
cannot grasp, as a connected whole, so diverse a medley
of contrasting types, or conceive with any clearness the
result on individual temperaments of that artificial code
of thought and practice which as we shall see the
King was imposing on the minds and consciences of his
subjects.

It would seem that human nature, in revenge against
this false coercion, asserted its independence with extra-
ordinary vigour in every sphere that was immune from
the King's authority. As if to counterbalance the effect
of the perverted standards which the pomp and circum-
stance of kingship imposed upon opinion, men and
women of all ranks gave constant proof that they recog-
nized the prevailing influence of the supernatural.
The supernatural in this connection must not, of course,
be confounded with the spiritual. Yet the constant
manifestations of popular credulity in its most degraded
form * bore testimony to the realization of an unseen
kingdom, even though that kingdom was an evil one.
It was of great importance to a preacher that he should
realize, as a component part of the material with which
he had to deal, this capacity for revolt against the actual,
but its realization must have been difficult to Bossuet.
Many years afterwards Antoine Arnauld commented on
"the depth of sincerity and of judgment "f which was
part of his mental endowment, and the bias of his mind
at all times was on the side of clearness and simplicity
of thought. To him therefore more than to others the
inconsequence and contradiction that characterized the
process of thinking in so many minds was baffling.
The instances of inconsistency which his generation pro-
duced can hardly be surpassed. Among his contem-
poraries to take one instance of many was the cele-
brated sorceress and poisoner, La Voisin, whose influence
in all grades of society was vast beyond all reckoning.

* See Colbert: Lettres, vol. vi, appendix xx, Mtmoire de ravocat
Duplessis.

f Arnauld, A.: Lettres, vol. vii, p. 370.

Bossuet in Paris 35

This woman, at a time when daily she was perpetrating
the most atrocious crimes, believed in the efficacy of
prayer, and considered that a novena strictly kept in the
chapel of Ste. Ursule at Montmartre was more likely
to obtain the restoration of peace in a divided household
than any potions or incantations.* And, at the other
end of the social scale, there was Madame de Montespan
with her rigid adherence to the Rule of the Church re-
garding Fast-days f at a time when the burden of flagrant
and notorious sin upon her conscience made additions
of this nature appear of negligible importance. Innate
in them both there was an instinct of reverence which,
though its expression may seem to travesty devotion,
was not entirely unreal. La Voisin is supposed to have
made a good end though she died upon the scaffold,
and Madame de Montespan devoted the last years of
her life to rigorous practices of penitence.:}: Manifesta-
tions of the same confusion of thought were rife among
all the social grades when Bossuet began his work in
Paris. Reliance on the pronouncements of soothsayers,
on charms, and on the grossest forms of sorcery did not
indicate an irremediable stage of mental perversion,
but rather a condition of mind which, if carefully treated,
would be as receptive to the teaching of the Faith as to
the suggestions of the Devil. Here, then, was the great
opportunity for the preacher; but in proportion to the
greatness of the opportunity was the difficulty of the task.
Bossuet could draw upon his experience at Metz for
those commissions which came to him through M. Vin-
cent. The untrained mind in Paris might be more
corrupt than that with which he was familiar in the
provinces, but it could be reached by the same channels.
Also he was practised in the work of attracting and
persuading heretics, and so long as he remained under
the direction of St. Lazare he found continual occupation

* Funck-Brentano : Le Drame des Poisons, p. 119.

f See Madame de Caylus: Souvenirs et Correspondance, p. 45, "faut-il
parcr quejefais un malfaire tous les autres ? "

$ For her connection with the Maison de St. Joseph, Rue S. Dominique,
see Lemoine : Madame de Montespan et la Le"gende des Poisons.

36 Jacques Benigne Bossuet

and avoided many difficult problems. But in the spring
of 1660 he stepped outside the boundary that the Lazar-
ists set upon their labour and undertook his first Lent
course in Paris. It was preached at the church of Les
Minimes, close to the Place Royale. This was an ex-
tremely fashionable quarter, and the simple truths of the
Church's teaching would not satisfy an audience drawn
from its inhabitants. The congregation at Les Minimes
was composed of persons who were well instructed in
the Faith, and who were in the habit of discussing ab-
struse questions of theology with enthusiasm. " Women
with any pretensions to cleverness make a point of telling
everybody what they think about predestination and
grace," writes a contemporary.* Such subjects were
topics of ordinary chatter at social gatherings ; dis-
cussion of them was encouraged by the fashionable
ecclesiastics who were to be met at the Hotel Rambouillet
or in any other popular salon, and the opportunity was
seized for the display of learning and of wit. Even the
language of devotion was familiar to those who were
intimately connected with the Court, for intimacy with
the Queen Regent necessitated sympathy with the life
of those convents where, from time to time, she sought
refuge from the sensational experiences of her chequered
career.f It will be seen, then, that the rustling, whisper-
ing crowd that thronged Les Minimes to hear a notable
preacher was not susceptible to the appeal that would
move the congregations at a Lazarist Mission to re-
pentance and conversion ; it was, in fact, difficult to find '
any argument or suggestion that they did not know
already. The mental attitude of the society woman was
admirably presented by Madame de La Sabliere in a
letter to the Jesuit Pere Rapin.

" I am always honest with you," she wrote, " and I
tell you plainly that I should greatly like to be devout,
but that I am not so at all. I have so high an idea of the
standard of true piety that I have no strength to aspire

* Rapin: Me"moires, vol. i, p. 62.

f See V. Cousin : Madame de CAevreuse et Madame de Haute/art,
vol. ii, p. 21.

Bossuet in Paris 37

after it, because of the immense number of things which
it appears I should be required to give up. Moreover,
if one has good manners, as I think, reverend father,
without vanity I may say that I have, what is most im-
portant is secure, and one is inclined to be slack about
the rest."*

* Thus," cried Bossuet, " we attempt to link Christ
and Belial and what has been produced ? A race of
semi-Christians, a corrupt race of worldly Christians
who have nothing but a bastard sort of piety, all chatter
and vain semblance. O fashionable piety, with your
boastings and your elaborate phrases which flow so
readily so long as the world is going well, what can I
offer you except derision ? " f

It was not the wickedness of the worldlings that
aroused his scorn, for he was in quest of sinners it was
their levity. These fashionable congregations would
listen with admiration while he declared to them the
consequences of the vices and the self-indulgence to
which most of them were addicted ; they were charmed
with the beauty of his discourse when he depicted the
peace and ultimate delight of a life of righteousness ;
they followed his argument point by point with flattering
attention, and his sermons were a topic for conversation
in the highest circles ; but there was little evidence
that his message to his listeners at Les Minimes had
any effect upon their actual conduct. His eloquence
at its highest level might provoke sensations of alarm
or of regret, but these were only sensations ; a popular
actor might boast a like achievement and would receive
a wider measure of recognition.

The dearth of personal record leaves us without
knowledge of Bossuet's valuation of the conditions that
he found in Paris. Just when he made his own great
venture, and entered on the possibilities of service which
the great world seemed to offer, another struggling
genius was emerging from obscurity. It was in 1659,
the year that Bossuet left Metz, that Moliere first played

* Quoted Griselle : Bourdaloue : Histoire Critique, vol. i, p. 300.
f (Euvres, vol. xii : Pantgyrique de St. Andrt.

38 Jacques Eenigne Bossuet

before the King. The actor was five years older than
the priest, but he had raised himself from indigence,
and when his place was won no preacher could compete
with him in influence over the minds of his contem-

C-aries. And the young abbe" in the Doyenne" du
uvre had sufficient penetration to realize the im-
mensity of the power which a great gift had placed in
the hands of the popular favourite. The deep root of
his resentment on this count became evident forty years
later. Probably the disappointment, inevitable to men
of great intentions, which shadowed his years in Paris,
weighed on him more heavily because in Moliere he
saw the possibilities of real success. For him, in those
days, there was no certainty of eventual fame ; other
men before him had been as full of fervour, as certain
that they held the remedy for the evil under which the
world was groaning, and had made their puny efforts,
and had died and been forgotten. He must have fore-
seen the possible difficulty of obtaining listeners, and
when that was overcome he faced another hindrance
of a more insidious kind. A world that welcomed and
applauded him had not the least intention of altering its
customs at his bidding. One of his contemporaries,
having been required to observe him at this time, sums
up his observations thus : " His preaching is austere
but it is very Christian, and those who know him person-
ally say that his life accords with his preaching. He
always seems to me to be very clever and I know that
he is good. His appearance is not deceptive, for it is
charming. He gives the impression of being modest,
contented, and thoughtful. I know nothing of him that
is not excellent." *

Colbert, the King's First Minister, was making in-
quiries about the Abbe* Bossuet, and this was the result.
The testimonial is in every way satisfactory, but it was
written in 1662, when Bossuet was thirty-five and his
great powers had attained full development, and neither
the demand for it nor the terms in which it is couched
would have been possible if adequate recognition had
* Lfttres tie Colbert^ vol. v, appendix xv, p. 504.

Eossuet in Paris 39

been accorded to them. His ambition at this time
concentrated on obtaining the widest opportunities of
usefulness ; he had a message to deliver, and if he failed
in its delivery it meant the failure of his lifework, but in
that year 1662 the possibilities of real achievement still
hung in the balance. Moreover, the friendly view of his
personality which we have recorded does not appear
to have been universal. If a man displayed conspicuous
power it became the duty of the King's First Minister
to collect all information available with regard to him,
in case his power might be used in the service of the
State. A second report on the Abbe Bossuet may be
found in Colbert's Confidential Correspondence* It shows
him in an aspect that is not directly contradictory to
the first, as " keen-witted, sympathetic, eager to please
everyone with whom he came in contact and to agree
with everyone's opinion, and most unwilling to take any
side lest by so doing he should hinder the attainment
of his real object." The characteristics of this portrait,
as it gains in detail, are those of the time-server, the man
who can disguise his inclinations and master his real
self that he may win favour. " When he sees the part
that will bring him the highest fortune he will accept
it whatever it may be, and it is likely that he will play it
very well." That is the summing-up.

The unknown critic was superficial in his judgment,
however. No doubt it was true enough that Bossuet was
waiting upon Fortune, but the eagerness for personal
advancement so clearly indicated in the report is im-
possible to prove from authentic records of him.f The
power that he coveted, moreover, was not concerned with
temporal affairs; he hungered for dominion over the minds
of other men that he might convince them of that which
he believed to be the Truth. And in the future the
tasks that were destined to foster personal ambition were

* Quoted Ge"rin : " V Assemble du Clerge", etc.," p. 290.

f The comment on him in Les Annales de la Compagnie du Saint-
Sacrement says : " c'Jtait un des eccttsiastiques les plus zMs et les plus
exemplaires de la Compagnie." See MS. Bib. Nat., quoted Revue Bossuet,
1901, p. 32.

40 Jacques Benigne Bossuet

not solicited ; there was no moment in his life when he
planned his labours with any view to self-aggrandize-
ment.

During this precarious period of his career he
offered his services freely to the convents, and it
has been suggested that in doing so he was seeking
to attract the notice of the Queen-mother. It is true
that Carmel had great fascination for the two Spanish
queens, and the Carmelite convents north and south of
the river were centres of fashionable devotion. But if
he had been angling for Court favour he would, when he
preached the Lent course at the Louvre in 1662, have
used the opportunity the appointment gave him for
making himself acceptable to the King. It is notorious
that he did not do so.

In fact the motive for the service that he gave to the
convents was his deep sympathy with the Religious Life.
We have seen how the veil which hides the domain of
the spirit had been lifted for him just as his life of full
activity began, and that he realized then " the wound of
the love of Jesus " as something more than the mere
phrase of mystic writers. If that transitory experience
inflamed his tireless energy to fresh ardour in the search
for errant souls, it inspired him also with a craving for
response to that which he felt to be highest in himself.
He was fond of asserting that a preacher is dependent
upon his auditors, and in a convent chapel his appeal
to the idle throng whom he confronted from the pulpit
drew half its force from his remembrance of the listeners
behind the grille. It can be maintained, after study of
his sermons, that the deepest in thought and spiritual
understanding are those preached at the Carmelite
Convent of the Rue St. Jacques.

The powers that Bossuet possessed could not be used
mechanically ; their force did not wax and wane at his
discretion : he was an artist though his art was spiritual,
and therefore his message was hindered in its delivery
by an environment that was uncongenial.* The proof

* " C'est aux auditeurs de faire lei prtdicateurs." Sur la Parole de
Dieu (CEuvres, vol. ix, p. 122).

Eossuet in Paris 4 1

that he held his place in these centres of devotion by
virtue of powers that are not born of calculation lies in
the fact that he was chosen again and again by individuals
to preach the sermon of Clothing or Profession. That
was a tribute to something in him higher than the gift
of oratory, for those by whom he was selected were
women whose vocation was so clear as to serve as a beacon
to others. The central figure in these ceremonies was
taking upon herself a great responsibility, for the vocation
of the contemplative is not easy to fulfil, and, if the words
of exhortation were to be worthy of the act they heralded,
it was necessary that the speaker should have the true
vision of the Religious Life. It was because he pos-
sessed this vision that a few years later Louise de La
Valliere sought and found in him the support she needed
in the problems of her tangled career. The great
friendship of his life with the Abbe de Ranee owed its
permanence to the same source, for it would have been
difficult to maintain intimacy with the Trappist and refuse
sympathy to the impulse of self-immolation.

This side of the character of Bossuet claims separate
and careful study. The ascetic tendency in him has
not been given its due place in the traditional portrait,
and remembrance of its actuality is specially important
during the years of swift development in Paris when the
conditions of the social life around him were gradually
unfolding before his astonished eyes. He preached four
sets of sermons before the Court, beginning in 1662
with the Lent course at the Louvre, ending in 1669
with Advent at St. Germain, and this experience was im-
portant, but it was only a minor part of the training the
years were giving him. The Louvre was not yet de-
serted in favour of Versailles, and Bossuet's place of
abode was therefore very near the heart and centre of
the kingdom. His work took him north and east and
south away to the northern suburbs to take counsel with
the Lazarists or to give assistance in their ceaseless
labours, eastward to the wealthy quarter where the oldest
families in France had dwelt for generations, and then,
crossing the river southward, up the long straight in-

42 Jacques Eenigne Bossuet

cline of the Rue St. Jacques to the great space beyond
the Luxembourg where innumerable monasteries were
clustered. In the years to come the coach of the Bishop
of Meaux was provided with a travelling library * and its
occupant was always immersed in books, but the Abb
Bossuet had to make his way about the city by simpler
methods, and had opportunities for the acquirement of
another species of knowledge during his journeys. The
experience of men and manners that he must have gained
was calculated to intensify his eagerness in the service
of the Church, for he held that the remedy for all the
misery he witnessed lay in her keeping. With each
one of his ten years in Paris, however, the hindrances
to the evangelizing of society became, of necessity, more
manifest.

He was an idealist, or he would have lost courage.
Practical, logical, industrious as he might appear before
the world, he was nevertheless a dreamer of dreams,
one who could turn from disappointment and baffling
difficulty to an interior vision that held the promise of
peace whatever might befall. We find him in this
character in a letter to his intimate friend and confidant,
M. de Bellefonds, written at a moment when the world
was pressing him on every side.

14 I picture a condition which it is hardly possible to
describe," he wrote ; " it is clear to me in theory though
I am very far away from it in practice. Imagine a soul
which knows itself to be nothing and is quite content
with its nothingness, but yet emerges from it at a sum-
mons which seems to have come from God ; it accepts
activity in obedience, yet sighs inwardly after the quiet
where it can feel God's Presence unhindered. In
obedience it takes its part in the world without caring
for its office or for itself ; equally ready to do or not to
do ; yet doing all things with energy because it is the
will of God that nothing should be done listlessly ;
moreover, because it loves to follow the will of God
it carries out all undertakings as divine commands,
and not to give satisfaction to itself or to others. A
* Revue Bossuet, 1904, p. 173.

Bossuet in Paris 43

soul such as this would rather be as nought in its own
eyes and in the eyes of the world ; it would have no being
save before God and remain useless unless used by Him.
Consider the joy with which the Blessed Virgin cried :
' He hath regarded the lowliness of His handmaiden.'

" I am using a great many words because I have not
yet arrived at the root of that which I am seeking :
a single word should be sufficient to convey it and, failing
human words, it is enough to fix one's mind on the
Word Incarnate, Jesus hidden for thirty years, no more
than a carpenter for thirty years, seemingly useless for
thirty years, but in reality very useful to the world,
for He was showing it that real life is to live only for God.
He emerged from obscurity when God so willed it, but,
though He was working for humanity, all the time He
was still seeking God and finding God."*

" I have not yet arrived at the root of that which I
am seeking " possibly to the end of his life Bossuet
would have been ready to make that avowal, yet behind
all the activity that the world observed and criticized
this secret quest went on. The problem of existence
was solved very simply by Louise de La Valliere, by
Ranee, and by many others, and Bossuet had close
and familiar intercourse with them; but he could not
share in their security. His vocation was for a life in the
world, a life passed in the midst of grievous perils in
which he never approached his ideal of self-surrender;
nevertheless in accepting it he obeyed the call of God.
We have seen him from his boyhood onwards intent
on conveying to the world the precious knowledge which
had been committed to him, and no rebuffs could shake
him in his purpose. This sense of vocation governed his
whole life and he had deep comprehension of its meaning.
At the very end of his years of work in Paris he delivered
a sermon on Vocation at the Carmel of the Rue St.
Jacques, and in spite of the fact that his hearers were,
many of them, experts in his chosen subject he had never
before produced so profound an impression. f In that
place, where each one of his listeners behind the grille

* Correspondance, vol. i, No. 90. f Ledieu : MSmoires, p. 86.

44 Jacques Eenigne Bossuet

had made her venture of entire self-surrender, he set
forth the meaning of detachment and proclaimed the
dependence of every human effort upon the will of God.
That he could do so with success is proof of his own
spiritual advance during those years of preaching.*

" When God wishes to show that a piece of work is
really in His hands He allows it to reach the point of
absolute defeat and then He raises it." That is the
note to which the whole sermon is attuned. The
preacher, always untiring in his study of the Scriptures,
had evidently found his thoughts arrested by the miracle
of the Church's birth. " Only consider, I beg of you,"
he cried, " what it was that these fishermen undertook to
do ! Never did monarch or empire or republic make
so ambitious an attempt. They had no expectation of
any human help, yet they made the world a field for con-
quest and divided it among themselves. They intended
to bring about a change throughout the universe in all
established religion whether false or true, among Jews
and among Gentiles. They were going to establish a
new way of worship, a new way of sacrifice, a new law
because, as they said, this was the teaching of a man
who had been crucified at Jerusalem. Let the world
laugh as it will : a cause that could hold its own in
defiance of all probability, against the sharpest possible
tests, depending for support on men who were full of
doubts and fears, of whom the boldest denied his Master
out of cowardice, a cause such as this is true ! A sham
will not reach so far, a surprise will not last so long, a
dream is not so consistent."

Here, vehement and spontaneous, we have the appeal
this man could make by reason of his faith ; he swept
away the artificial methods that had long been practised
in fashionable pulpits, and strove to set before his listeners
the picture which had gripped his own imagination.
And if the cause upheld before the world by those humble
fishermen of Galilee were true, what then ? The argu-
ment discloses itself gradually. The claim of the

* For the attack on his private life and evidence connected with it, see
Appendix iii.

Bossuet in Paris 45

Crucified was an affront to human intelligence in the
days when His disciples first urged it on mankind, yet
it has won its way and still remains no less contradictory
to human reason and no less constant in insistence than
it was then.

" How hard it is when the world is offering us all
things to deny ourselves anything ! How is any one
to understand that in the midst of abundance he should
endure privation, that the life of penitence demands that
he should face every kind of suffering ? Yet little by
little he will discover more peace and more delight in the
rigour of penitence and in the humiliation of the way
of the Cross than the lovers of the world will ever draw
from the wildest of its joys and the greatest of its
triumphs."*

The paradox is familiar, but on Bossuet's lips it be-
comes a challenge, and he leads his audience on from the
suggestion of self-discipline as a necessity in ordinary life
to consideration of the further claim which could only
be satisfied within the cloister. The listeners ranged
before him in the nave belonged to the great world,
but it was to those behind the grille that he looked for
entire understanding. He had the vision of their life
and its true meaning. He saw it as a state of perpetual
self-offering which, at its highest, was the nearest ap-
proach to the imitation of Christ that human conditions
permitted, and the fervour of his admiration was infec-
tious ; those to whose hearts he spoke were inspired
to new knowledge of the privilege of their vocation.

To himself at that moment the call had come in a very
different form. The period of his obscurity was at an
end, and he was even then a well-known figure in the
world of Paris. But perhaps as he put aside the picture
he had made so clear for others, and left Carmel and its
silent appeal behind him, his certainty that God had
summoned him to labour in the world was mingled with
regret.

* Pantgyrique de St. Andrt (GEuvres, vol. xii).

Chapter IV. The Battlefield of Controversy

DURING the years that he was winning renown as
a preacher Bossuet was vigorously at work in
other directions. Among those who listened
to his sermons a few at least were in earnest and sought
counsel from him. We hear of instructions given in the
private apartments of Madame de Longueville,* of
growing friendship with M. de Luynes and M. de
Bellefonds, of intercourse with Mile, de Montpensier
and with Henrietta Maria, the widowed Queen of
England. At a time when all the various parties within
the Church threw suspicion on each other Bossuet in-
spired waverers with confidence ; and the reluctance
to choose a side, for which he was criticized, was an assist-
ance in his attempts to heal divisions among the faithful.
Possibly there were certain questions in which he recog-
nized the danger of decision. Among these may be
numbered the Six Articles f propounded in 1663 by the
Faculty of Theology assembled at the Sorbonne4 They
embodied the statement of Gallican independence with
which years later he was to be so closely associated,
and it is interesting to find his name noted among the
party opposed to their promulgation.

At Metz the question of heresy was comparatively
simple ; a heretic was a person who had been led astray
by the teaching of Calvin or of Luther, and his return
to the Church required visible acts and involved visible
consequences. But in Paris there were heretical by-
paths besides the broad road indicated by the Reformers,
and minor heresies became dangerous because they were
spread by the many who talked, before the thoughtful few
had had time to pronounce judgment on them. The
King was intolerant of those who differed from himself ;
he aspired to absolute control over the thoughts and
opinions of his subjects. The intelligence of a French-
man does not submit readily to coercion, however, and
royal interference was apt to turn temporary disagree-

* Ledieu : MSmoires, p. 86. f See Appendix iv.

$ Jourdain: Hist, de I' Univers ite" de Paris, p. 221.
G^rin: L'AsumbUe de 1682, p. 85.

The Battlefield of Controversy 47

ments into open warfare and to aggravate the many
disastrous controversies of the period. Of these the
most important in the history of the Church in France
is that concerning Jansenism. Probably there has never
been a question of theology which has aroused such in-
extinguishable bitterness, but Bossuet, who in later
years exhibited a capacity for partisanship of a very
vigorous type, was never deeply involved in this particular
struggle ; whenever he touched it he was in the character

OO '

of peacemaker. The fact is especially noticeable because
Nicolas Cornet, his friend and master, was responsible
for extracting the famous Five Propositions from the
study of St. Augustine written by Jansenius, Bishop of
Ypres.* When the Five Propositions were condemned
by the Pope the defenders of Jansenius denied that they
could be discovered in his book,f and Cornet became the
object of their most violent antipathy. Bossuet managed
to maintain friendly relations with Antoine Arnauld,
however, and with many on whom the taint of Jansenism
had fallen, without abating his admiration for their
chief accuser.

When Cornet died in April 1663 the task of preaching
the sermon and panegyric which the custom of the time
demanded was assigned to Bossuet, and he seized the
opportunity to summarize the position of the contending
parties in a passage that has become celebrated : "In
these days there are two grave diseases afflicting the
Church : there are certain among its leaders who are
imbued with a cruel sort of good-nature, a deadly type
of compassion, at the suggestion of which they have
cushions made ready for the elbows of penitents and
search for cloaks to provide them with a disguise for
their sins, thus avoiding wounds to vanity and encourag-
ing the pretence of simplicity and ignorance. There
are others also who go to the opposite extreme and bind
the conscience with unreasonable strictness : they cannot

* Soyez : Vie de Nicolas Cornet, p. 26.

t On this point Bossuet did not temporize. See Ledieu : Journal,
vol. i, p. 382, " /'/ dit qu'il a relu Jansenius tout entier, et que comme il fit
il y a quarante ans y i! y a retrouvt les Cinq Propositions tres-nettement"

48 Jacques Benigne Bos suet

make allowance for any weaknesses, they flourish the
threat of hell continually, and have nothing to offer
except curses. The Evil One has use for both sides
equally the easy-going make vice attractive, the violent
make virtue alarming."*

When those words were spoken it was five years since
Pascal's Provincial Letters, destined to infuse such extra-
ordinary acrimony into the Jansenist controversy, had
made their sensational appearance. That masterpiece of
pamphleteering is a personal attack from the Jansenist
camp upon the methods and principles of the opposing
party. Personal attacks were then in vogue. It
was a period when the war of pamphlets was waged un-
ceasingly in one direction or another, and the scribes,
writing for the moment, claimed the licence to put their
case with the vividness that cannot be attained without
exaggeration. Response, delivered on equal terms,
came swiftly, the real point at issue became more and
more obscured by personalities, and excitement rose until
the moment when hostilities were checked by authority,
either ecclesiastical or secular. When that stage was
reached the nature of the missiles thrown in the heat of
battle ceased to have serious significance.

For the defence of Port Royal, however, a genius
seized his pen, and, writing swiftly to arrest popular
imagination at the moment, he produced work of im-
perishable quality. This offence has never found forgive-
ness, and the cause he made his own paid heavily for the
glory won by its champion. Pascal died before the
world had recognized the literary value of the Provincial
Letters, and it is unlikely f that Bossuet grasped its
significance among the factors determining the fortunes
of Port Royal when he composed his Funeral Panegyric
on Nicolas Cornet. In condemning the extremists on
both sides he adhered to the controversial methods
habitual with him and attempted to make the way of

* (Euvres, vol. xii, p. 669.

t See Ecrit sur U Style, 1669 (Floquet : Etudes, Appendix): " Les
Lettres au Provincial, dont quelques-unes ont beaucoup de force et de
viktmence, et toutes tine extrlme dtlicatesse"

The Battlefield of Controversy 49

reconciliation easy. And his good intentions were so
far recognized that Perefixe, Archbishop of Paris, en-
listed his services for the persuasion of the religious of
Port Royal. By this time the two leaders of opinion,
Angelique Arnauld and Jacqueline Pascal, were dead,
and the Community had been scattered by order of the
King. Bossuet's mission was to La Mere Agnes and
her niece Marie Angelique Arnauld, in the Visitation
Convent in the Rue St. Jacques, where they were relegated
until they would make formal denunciation of the Jansen-
ist heresy as summarized in the Five Propositions.*

It is possible, but not certain, that the younger of the
rebels was influenced by Bossuet ; La Mere Agnes
remained unaffected, however, and his arguments and
exhortations had no lasting results. The importance
of the incident rests on a letter he addressed to the
Community of Port Royal in which the case against them
is stated temperately. Events moved rapidly, and by
the time the letter was ready for dispatch the Jansenist
mutiny had become too definite for a scholarly remon-
strance of this type, therefore it never reached its destina-
tion and was reserved in case of future opportunity for
use. Its revision was one of the last labours of Bossuet.
Some forty years after he composed it the controversy
regarding Pere Quesnel stirred the same questions as
he had treated in his interviews with Marie Angelique,
and he believed that his long-buried study of them would
be of service.f It was published in 1 709 by Cardinal de
Noailles and aroused considerable comment,^: for strife
still surged around Port Royal with unabated violence.
Its interest for the student of Bossuet, however, lies in
the conception of the Church that it presents. Originally
the State may have been responsible for the mistaken
handling of the Jansenists, but their ultimate revolt was

* See Correspondence, vol. i, No. 21, Notes, pp. 85-87, and Revue des
Deux Mondes, October and November 1919, for detail re dealings of
Bossuet with Jansenist Controversy.

f Ledieu: Journal, vol. i, p. 372.

^ The position of Bossuet towards Pere Quesnel and the controversy
that eventually produced the Bull Unigenitus is examined by M. Urbain
(Revue du Clerge"franfais, juillet 1897, aout 1899).

o Jacques Benigne Bossuet

against the authority of the Church. And Bossuet, in
his remonstrance with them, shows that the intellectual
independence they were claiming was inconsistent with
the Faith. Then and always he saw that unity depended
on the acceptance of the decision of the Church in all
spiritual matters. It is the reassertion of this principle
rather than the condemnation of Jansenism that is the
theme of the letter to Port Royal. In truth, Jansen-
ist doctrine in itself never seems to have aroused him
to serious apprehension ; the menace of it in his eyes
was the insubordination of its advocates. He decided
in his youth to combat Jansenism by a statement of the
necessity of obedience to the Pope in spiritual matters,
and forty years later he set the seal on that early decision
and manifested the unvarying quality of his convictions.
Yet while he judged the Jansenists as rebels he was
never numbered among their accusers. The standard
which Angelique Arnauld had set before her Community,
and through them before the world, was a high one,
and he could appreciate its value. Probably an honest
observer could not do otherwise, for we find even her
vehement opponent, the Jesuit historian Pere Rapin,
paying his tribute to the root of purity from which the
whole Port Royal movement sprang,* and to Bossuet,
approaching the case unbiassed, the circumstances ex-
tenuating the guilt of the Port Royalists must have been
clearly evident. Indeed, their original revolt against
habits and practices which dishonoured the name of
Christianity expressed the principle which inspired his
most powerful sermons, and the measure of sympathy
which he accorded to them f brought on him the suspicion
of Jansenist proclivities. The suspicion had no solid
foundation and has been harboured only by those who
desire to discredit him, but he must have been aware that
he risked discredit by continuing to be intimate with
those whom the world condemned. By so doing, how-
ever, he acquired personal knowledge of the ideas prompt-

* Rapin: Mtmoires, vol. i, p. 443.

t See Correspondance, vol. i, Nos. 128, 129; appendix xiv ; vol. iii,
Nos. 291,293,314.

The Battlefield of Controversy 5 1

ing the reform which had grown into revolt, and could
estimate the degree to which revolt was nurtured by
persecution. Thus his position of neutrality gave him
an opportunity of vision denied to those who were
committed to the struggle, and what he saw was useful
for his future guidance. It was plain that in the im-
placable hatred which could not rest without the entire
ruin of Port Royal there were other elements besides
theological antagonism. He had come to Paris with that
high sense of the possibilities of individual effort in the
evangelization of society which had been the inspiration
and the snare of Angelique Arnauld forty years earlier.
No doubt even without the example of her experience he
would have learnt that the world does not desire to listen
to a message of wholesale condemnation, but the story of
Port Royal provided a salutary warning against undue
insistence on unpopular doctrines.

Bossuet was no fanatic ; his dedication of himself and
all his capacities to the service of the Church was con-
ditioned by the resolve to use his powers to the best
advantage. He was governed most often by motives
deeply rooted in religion, but there is no moment of his
life when his choice of action was due to a swift impulse
of religious fervour ; even his self-dedication was a
considered act made in his youth and maintained until
his death. When he fought against the open enemies of
the Church he placed his blows deliberately and hus-
banded his strength ; and when he realized, as he did
in his life at Court, that vigorous denunciation of evil,
instead of lessening its volume would only close his own
opportunities of approach to the evil-doer, he accepted
silence. At every step there is evidence of calculation,
and undoubtedly an occasional lapse into the swift
venture of the enthusiast would add attraction to his
record. He was devoid of the gambler's spirit, however,
and the dangerous hours that the future held for him
were not of his own choosing ; indeed, his methods of
service to the Church appeared to himself to be in-
evitable ; he recognized no choice.

Certainly the controversy that had the first claim upon

52 Jacques Eenigne Bos suet

him was fought openly, for there were no subtleties in
the battle between Catholics and Huguenots. Both
parties fought with equal desire though not with equal
chances for supremacy in France ; both parties were
unscrupulous as to the means employed to gain their
ends, and it is probable that a Huguenot ruler would
have adopted the policy of extermination as readily as
did Louis XIV. This was the spirit of the times. In
individual cases, and throughout his diocese when power
was in his hands, Bossuet was merciful, but he was never
tolerant in any question that concerned the Catholic
faith. To his vigorous patriotism tolerance was im-
possible ; it was the privilege of his country to be
Catholic, and therefore heresy was treason to the King
as well as to the Church. His was a clear and simple
view : the teaching of the Reformers was equally
destructive to themselves and to the commonwealth,
and must therefore by argument or by force be silenced.
He differed from his contemporaries, however, in the
value that he gave to argument. He believed that a
great deal of heresy was rooted in misconception, that
the Church from which the Huguenots revolted was the
Church as presented by Bellarmin, not the Church of
Gallican tradition. It was his aim to show them that
the Church's doors stood wide open to receive them,
and that prejudice or calumny was responsible for most
of the obstacles which seemed to them insurmountable.
Indeed, although the Catholic faith was part of his being
he had none of the vices of the bigot : he strove to win
opponents to agreement, it was the office of smaller
minds to bully into submission.

We shall see that his writings on the Protestant con-
troversy are impregnated with the theory that reunion
was attainable, and the strength of his case seemed to
him so formidable that, granted a fair hearing, he could
not fail to win it. If he had lived in the sixteenth century
he might have laboured less vainly, but religion and
politics had become hopelessly entangled in the inter-
vening period, and every Huguenot who died for his
faith made the barrier to agreement more insurmountable.

The Battlefield of Controversy 53

When Bossuet came upon the scene he could claim that
there was a general desire for reunion, but the only
means of fulfilling that desire acceptable to either party
was the unreserved capitulation of the other, and all his
concessions and explanations did not inspire wise and
observant minds with hope. Cardinal de Be*rulle had
declared, after a lifetime of reflection, that forcible re-
pression by the State was the only way to deal with
Protestantism.* His conclusion is a confession of weak-
ness, yet it must be acknowledged that the result of
Bossuet's great endeavour confirms it. In fact, the
memory of the massacres under Charles IX in the minds
of Huguenots, and the thought of the political situation
in England under Cromwell in the minds of Catholics,
were obstacles to peace that no theologian could move
by so much as a hairsbreadth. Bossuet raised contro-
versial methods to a higher level f and achieved many
individual conversions, but unity remained as un-
attainable as though he had never taken pen in hand.

It was in 1654 that Paul Ferry, at that time the leader
of the Protestants in Metz, published his Catechisme
General de la Reformation, with the object of showing that
the Protestant schism had been a necessity. In April
of the following year Bossuet replied. He was twenty-
seve^i at this time, but, as we have seen, he attained to
intellectual maturity very early, and this, his first assay
in polemics, is free from the ordinary faults of youth and
bears witness to that capacity for seizing and presenting
the real points at issue which gave him such force as a
controversialist. His answer to Paul Ferry ^ was at
once a pleading and a protest against the separation
of the Reformers from the Church. He does not deny
that many evils were crying for reform, but he declaims
against the policy of adding to their number a greater
one than all that of schism. Under two distinct heads
he admitted the responsibility of Catholics for alienating
the Reformers: by teaching which he regarded as un-

* Tabaraud : Vie de C. de Bfrulle, vol. ii, pp. 52, 55.
f See Correspondance, vol. i, No. 23, and appendix x.
$ CEuvres, vol. xiii.

54 Jacques Benigne Bossuet

authorized and contrary to tradition, and by a way of life
that gave cause for scandal.*

He declared, on an occasion when he preached before
the King,f that " the bodyguard of the Church is required
as a defence against all human weaknesses and vices and
passions, against all the bad habits of the worldly, against
all the scheming of the heretics ; in short, against all
the energies of hell. Does it not need therefore to be
as well equipped with experience and skill and wisdom,
yes, and with courage also, as the troops of the visible
world ? But what is one to think when those who hold
command are completely ignorant of tactics ? Heresy
wins kingdom after kingdom from the Church. Where
will you find the cause of that disaster ? The answer
rises up all around us from the depths of hell the cry
of the people from the abyss into which they have fallen :
' Unworthy priests are the cause of our destruction ;
their follies and their ignorance made us distrust them ;
their pride and their malice made us hate them ; when
we turned from them we became the prey of our se-
ducers ! ' While the sentries slept the enemy came
upon us and the Faith has been despoiled because its
appointed keepers were neglectful. "$

These are strong words, but Vincent de Paul fifty
years earlier had given voice to the same opinion :
' The worst enemies of the Church are her unworthy
priests," and there is sufficient evidence to justify them.
Even Pere Rapin allowed that the exaggerated rigour
of Port Royal found its excuse in the corruption within
the Church that Mazarin encouraged, and Bossuet, in
acknowledging responsibility for the errors of the
Huguenots, lost the self-righteousness that is the ordinary
characteristic of the controversialist. In all his dealing

* The Minister Claude vehemently repudiated the suggestion that
Huguenot belief owed any of its strength to the depravity of Catholics.
See (Euvres PostAumes, vol. v, p. no.

f (Euvres, vol. x, p. 164.

See also Introduction, Hist. Jet Variations des Eglises Protestantes
(GEuvrfs, vol. xiv).

Rapin: Me"moires t vol. i, p. 212.

The Battlefield of Controversy 55"

with Paul Ferry he never forgot the respect due to a
man of great learning and irreproachable virtue who was
old enough to be his father, and his desire to conciliate
was inseparable from his eagerness to convince. His
response to Ferry's pamphlet, instead of opening a feud,
established a friendship ; the Huguenot and the priest
discovered that they held one great aim in common,
and that each was absolutely sincere in his pursuit of it.
If realization of their dream of unity had been attain-
able they were the men to give it substance. In fact
their friendship left their division unaffected. After
twelve years they were still conferring, and we find
Bossuet planning to visit Ferry at whatever time he
chooses. " I will come to you in your library ; I only
ask that you should be at leisure and alone."* He was
untiring in writing letters that set forth what may be
termed the minimum of Catholic faith and doctrine
required for reconciliation with the Church, but the
enterprise was foredoomed to failure ; it is evident that
the Huguenot party, as a whole, would not have agreed
to any scheme of reconciliation that it was possible for a
Catholic priest to propound.

Bossuet ' seems to have merited the reputation for
kindliness in personal dealing with the Huguenots
ordinarily accorded to him. Episodes are recorded,
nevertheless, in which his conduct cannot be described
as kindly. These do not belong only to the difficult
period at Meaux after the Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes. There are letters f written from Metz which give
evidence of a keen desire to avail himself of the authority
of the Law to its utmost limits for the discomfiture
of his Protestant neighbours. His inconsistency was
not altogether without method, however. When he
settled in Metz about one third of the population,
some ten thousand persons, professed the Reformed
Religion, and they were a well-conducted body, loyal
to the King, diligent in business, and becoming
more and more influential as the years passed.
To Bossuet the spectacle of prosperous and contented
* Correspondance, vol. i, No. 22. f Ibid., Nos. 7, 8, 9, 10.

56 Jacques Benigne Bos suet

Huguenots was unseemly ; if they confronted him on
equal terms they were his enemies ; it was only when
they suffered in mind or body that charity had part in
his relations with them. Nothing indeed could be so fatal
to his hopes as this contentment. Actually it was rare
to find among the followers of Paul Ferry the restlessness
of spirit which gave him his opportunity, and his per-
suasive gifts were wasted on those whose faith sufficed
them.

Chapter V. The Conversion of Turenne

THE Court itself proved the best field for individual
conversion, and the genius of Bossuet found its
most fruitful opportunity among those sons and
daughters of the ruling class whose fathers had rejected
the old Faith. The new religion had been the fashion
at Court a century earlier, and the Huguenot nobles who
fought under the banner of Navarre against the League
had been able then to unite loyalty to their King and to
their Faith; but their descendants were in a different
position. It has been said* that Henri IV, in his personal
charm, in his virtues and in his vices, is the type of the
high-born Frenchman. If this be so his action, when
he abjured Protestantism, was symbolic as demon-
strating that the true French temperament can assimilate
the Faith of the Catholic Church and none other. The
aspiration of a section of the middle class in the sixteenth
century, which resulted in schism and in civil war, was
after a high ideal, a new form for the old Faith. It was
prompted by disgust at prevalent disorder, not by in-
tellectual negation as in Germany f or by the spirit of a
political party such as that of the Puritans in England,
and it was an unfortunate succession of circumstances
that made it a danger to the State. The position of
nobles who were Huguenot was encompassed by many
difficulties, some of which derived their force from senti-
ment, for under the Bourbon monarchy aristocrat and
courtier were almost synonymous terms and the true
courtier cannot remain at variance with his King. The
scholars summed up the position in a phrase : Cujus
regio ejus religio, and it was very difficult to be superior
to a sentiment which was held by all who were most
worthy of esteem. To assert that it was among the
nobility that Bossuet found the most fertile ground for
his persuasions and arguments against the Reformed
Faith is not thereby to impugn the sincerity of the con-
versions he effected. Tradition and inheritance were
all on the side of the Church, and tradition and in-

* An tin : L'Echec de la R/forme en France, p. 238.
t Ramsay : Hist, de Turenne, vol. i, pp. 7, 8.

58 Jacques Eenigne Bossuet

heritance were stronger forces in men of pure descent
than in a humbler and more promiscuous class. As the
years passed Bossuet's intellectual distinction gave him
more and more intercourse with a social grade above his
own, and the combination in him of learning and of
sincerity, which seems to have been very generally
recognized, had special attractions for those whose change
of Faith was of public importance.

Most celebrated, and most deliberate in process of all
the conversions of the period, was that of Marshal
Turenne. For him worldly consideration lay on one
side and family ties on the other, while personal opinion
wavered betwixt the two. He stood, moreover, between
Claude and Bossuet, who were in future to be adversaries
before the world, and by temperament he was no more
disposed to theological controversy than any other
eminent soldier. In private life he was of peaceable
and kindly disposition, and was reputed to be under the
influence of his sisters,* who were all ardent Calvinists.
At forty he married a woman whose intellectual ability
was equal to his own, and whose religious convictions
were far stronger Charlotte de Caumont la Force.f
She was the friend of the minister Claude, and her
enthusiasm for Reform was of the type that thrives on
persecution. The marriage took place in 1651, and
those sanguine persons who had seen in Turenne a
medium of reconciliation between his party and the
Church recognized that this alliance was an insuperable
obstacle to the fulfilment of their hopes.

When Conde", after his imprisonment by Mazarin,
turned traitor, Turenne was the greatest commander
left to the French Army, and his adhesion to the cause
of Reform became a fact of serious political importance.
It is probable that his chief desire was to abstain from all
religious discussion, to serve his King and country with
all his great ability, and to enjoy domestic peace when his
country was not needing him. The spirit of the times
in which he lived, however, did not permit him to fulfil

* Sff Picaret: Les Dernieres Anntes de Turenne, p. 202.
f Ibid., p. 1 8.

The Conversion of Turenne 59

these moderate ambitions. His world was insatiable
in curiosity and untiring in speculation as to the possible
developments of his religious opinions. His elder
brother had long since returned to the Church,* and
Turenne's real inclinations may have lain in the same
direction, but he knew that his wife and sisters would not
follow him and therefore in his individual existence
conversion implied havoc.

It is a curious picture, belonging essentially to that
period and to no other. On the one hand the King,
impatient of any opposition to his wishes, ready with
bribe or threat to obtain his will : behind him and one
with him in opinion, the great mass of society ; and
at his side, sharing his eagerness, Bossuet, the most
perfect medium through which the royal wishes might
become articulate. On the other hand were forces less
susceptible of calculation : the traditions of a lifetime,
the deep implanted memories of purity and virtue spring-
ing from the Faith the Huguenot professed, and, finally,
the influence that women of indomitable will can exercise
in the association of daily life.f Lured to advance by
every prize the world can offer, yet held by chains whose
every link was dear, it is no marvel that the puzzled
soldier evaded arguments and temporized with direct
questions bearing on the Faith. His wife and sisters
were unequivocal in their dislike of Rome, and he, whose
courage was so conspicuous on the field of battle, does
not seem to have displayed that quality in domestic inter-
course. And so he continued to disappoint the fashion-
able ecclesiastics who were sent to convince him of his
errors. Such persons never received a rebuff, but
gradually it became evident that his case was not more
hopeful because there was no violent prejudice or antagon-
ism to be overcome ; his resistance was gentle, but
persuasion left him unmoved.

A series of bereavements altered the position.:}: In
swift succession he lost two of his sisters, Mile, de Bouillon
and Madame de la Tremouille, and in 1666 his wife died.

* In 1636. f See Picaret : op. cit. y pp. 211-213.

$ Picaret: op. cit., p. 220.

60 Jacques Eenlgne Bossuet

Popular opinion had assigned responsibility for his
obstinacy to Madame de Turenne, and it was supposed
that the news of her death would be followed by the
announcement of his conversion. For a time, however,
her influence survived her, and if her husband had been
less important to the State he would probably have died
a Huguenot. But he was not allowed to remain undis-
turbed ; his friends were scheming constantly to bring
him within reach of such presentations of the Church's
teaching as might rouse in him the desire, hitherto lack-
ing, for the benefits she only could bestow. Finally,
in the autumn of the year 1668, he abjured his errors
and was received into the Church. The Oratorian
preachers had some share in the conquest, and Turenne
himself acknowledged a debt to Antoine Arnauld, the
Jansenist.* It was due chiefly to Bossuet, however,
and the Bishopric of Condom was his reward.

Undoubtedly he rendered a great service to the State
when he fixed the hesitating opinion that had hung so
long in the balance, and it is likely that the tremendous
weight of his own conviction was just the force required
for a condition of vacillation that had become chronic.
That there were inducements that had no connection
with theology is plain. The conversion of Turenne was
of great benefit to his country ; it was also, like that of
Henri IV, advantageous to his personal fortunes, and
knowledge that this would be so was a perfectly legitimate
argument in its favour. All this was open to the con-
sideration of Bossuet ; his enterprise had been for the
service of the State as well as for the Church, and his
dealing with Turenne may be regarded as a link between
his public and political career and that deeper side of his
life which concerned the awakening of souls. This con-
version was, as we have said, his stepping-stone to
episcopal dignity. Preaching at Court did not advance
his fortunes (although the King sent a gracious message
to old Be'nigne Bossuet at Metz congratulating him on
the talents of his son),f for it was not the royal pleasure

* Olivier Lefevre d'Ormesson : Journal, October 24, 1668.
f Floquet : IituJes, vol. ii, p. 204.

The Conversion of Turenne 6 1

to encourage talents that had been exercised over-
boldly on himself by giving them wider scope; and it is
plain that the Abbe Bossuet would never have won prefer-
ment by the exhortations delivered in the royal chapel.
It was as a result of the capitulation of Turenne that he
became an object of royal favour, and his obligation
to the great soldier did not end there, for the work that
laid the foundation of his literary reputation was the
result of their intercourse.

It is quite impossible to have any understanding in
these days of the sensation created by The Explanation of
the Doctrine of the Catholic Church which was published
by Bossuet in 1671.* Short and luminous statements of
every kind of Faith are now placed before the public
constantly, and even those that most perfectly achieve
their purpose do not create excitement. But religious
opinions in the seventeenth century were matters of life
and death to individuals a*d the causes of savage warfare
among nations, and that background, and all that it means
in its effects upon the minds of men, must be remembered
when Bossuet's work as a controversialist is under con-
sideration. The leader of a movement of revolt is
tempted, for purposes of propaganda, to exaggerate
those abuses which prompted him to violent action,
and it seldom happens that the temptation is resisted.
The Protestant ministers encouraged their flock to regard
Catholic belief as a compound of fable and idolatry, and
kept before them all the worst instances of mistaken
teaching and unworthy practice that could be collected.
These tactics, common to all types of controversy, infuse
peculiar venom when the subject is a religious one, and
an exchange of violent recriminations by the commanders
of opposing camps ordinarily usurps the place of argu-
ment. The method and the aim of Bossuet differed
from those in vogue. In his correspondence with Ferry
he was attempting to evolve a real scheme of reunion,^
and then and ever after he believed in its possibility.
The progress of the negotiations alarmed the extremists

* (Euvres, vol. xiii. Cf. Arnauld, A.: Lettres, vol. iv, p. 155.
f See Carre spondance, vol. i, appendix x.

62 Jacques Benigne Bossuet

on either side and the scheme collapsed, but the time
and thought that Bossuet gave to it were spent to good
purpose, for he acquired an insight into the mental
position of the Protestants that was of incalculable
service to him.

His Exposition of the teaching of the Catholic Church
is the written summary of the statements he had made to
well-