Jacques-Bénigne Lignel Bossuet. French Bishop And Theologian. 1627 - 1704.

Jacques-Bénigne Lignel Bossuet.

Artist: Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659–1743).

Date: 1698.

Current location: Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.

Source/Photographer: https://www.allposters.com/gallery

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Jacques-Bénigne Lignel Bossuet (27 September 1627 – 12 April 1704) was a French Bishop and Theologian, renowned for his Sermons and other Addresses. He has been considered by many to be one of the most brilliant Orators of all time and a masterly French stylist.

Court Preacher to King Louis XIV of France, Bossuet was a strong advocate of Political Absolutism and The Divine Right of Kings. He argued that government was divine and that Kings received their power from God. He was also an important Courtier and Politician.

Jacques-Bénigne Lignel Bossuet.

French Bishop And Theologian.

1627 - 1704.

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The Works best known to English speakers are three great orations delivered at the funerals of Queen Henrietta Maria, widow of King Charles I of England (1669), her daughter, Henriette, Duchess of Orléans (1670), and the outstanding soldier le Grand Condé (1687).

His work “Discours sur l’histoire universelle” (or Discourse on Universal History) (1681) is regarded by many Catholics as an actualisation, or second edition, of The City of God of Saint Augustine of Hippo.

Saint Etienne’s Cathedral, Metz, France, where 

Bossuet was made a Canon (aged thirteen) in 1640.

This File: 24 February 2006.

User: Tertulien.

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Bossuet was born at Dijon. He came from a family of prosperous Burgundian lawyers – on both his paternal and maternal side, his ancestors had held legal posts for at least a Century.

He was the fifth son born to Beneigne Bossuet, a Judge of the Parlement (a Provincial High Court) at Dijon, and Marguerite Mouchet. His parents decided on a career in The Church for their fifth son, so he was Tonsured at age ten.

The boy was sent to school at the Collège des Godrans, a Classical School run by The Jesuits of Dijon. When his father was appointed to the Parlement at Metz, Bossuet was left in Dijon under the care of his uncle, Claude Bossuet d’Aiseray, a renowned scholar.

At the Collège des Godrans, he gained a reputation for hard work: Fellow students nicknamed him “Bos suetus aratro”, an “ox broken in to the plough”.

His father’s influence at Metz allowed him to obtain for the young Bossuet a Canonicate in the Cathedral of Metz, when the boy was just thirteen years old.

In 1642, Bossuet enrolled in the Collège de Navarre in Paris to finish his Classical Studies and to begin the study of Philosophy and Theology. His mentor at Navarre was the College’s President, Nicolas Cornet, the Theologian, whose denunciation of Antoine Arnauld at The Sorbonne in 1649 was a major episode in The Jansenist controversy.

In 1643, Arnaud introduced Bossuet to the Hôtel de Rambouillet, a great centre of aristocratic culture and the original home of the Précieuses. Bossuet was already showing signs of the oratorical brilliance which served him so well throughout his life.

On one celebrated occasion at the Hôtel de Rambouillet, during a dispute about extempore Preaching, the sixteen-year-old Bossuet was called on to deliver an impromptu Sermon at 11 p.m. Voiture famously quipped: “I never heard anybody Preach so early, nor so late”.

Portrait of Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet in 1702.

Artist: Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659–1743).

Date: 1702.

Current location: Louvre Museum, Paris.

Source/Photographer: Own work by uploader.

(Wikimedia Commons)

Bossuet became a Master of Arts in 1643. He held his first Thesis (Tentativa) in Theology on 25 January 1648, in the presence of The Prince de Condé. Later, in 1648, he became a Sub-Deacon at Metz. He became a Deacon in 1649. During this period, he Preached his first Sermons.

He held his second Thesis (Sorbonica) on 9 November 1650. Then, in preparation for The Priesthood, he spent the next two years in retirement under the Spiritual Direction of Saint Vincent de Paul.

In January 1652, Bossuet re-entered public life, being named Archdeacon of Sarrebourg. He was Ordained a Priest on 18 March 1652. A few weeks later, he defended his brilliant doctoral work and became a Doctor of Divinity.

He spent the next seven years at Metz, where his father’s influence had got him a Canonry at age thirteen and where he now also had The Office of Archdeacon. He was plunged at once into the thick of controversy; for nearly half of Metz was Protestant, and Bossuet's first appearance in print was a refutation of the Huguenot Pastor, Paul Ferry (1655), and he frequently engaged in Religious controversies with Protestants (and, less regularly, with Jews) during his time at Metz.

To reconcile the Protestants with The Roman Catholic Church became the great object of his dreams; and, for this purpose, he began to train himself carefully for the Pulpit, an all-important centre of influence in a land where political assemblies were unknown and novels and newspapers scarcely born.

His youthful imagination was unbridled, and his ideas ran easily into a kind of paradoxical subtlety, redolent of the Divinity School. Nevertheless, his time at Metz was an important time for developing his Pulpit Oratory and for allowing him to continue his studies of Scripture and The Fathers.

He also gained political experience through his participation in The Local Assembly of The Three Orders.

In 1657, in Metz, Bossuet Preached before Anne of Austria, mother of King Louis XIV. As a result, he received the honorific title of “Counsellor and Preacher to The King”.

Until he was over seventy years, Bossuet enjoyed good health, but in 1702 he developed chronic kidney stones. Two years later, he was a hopeless invalid, and, on 12 April 1704, he died quietly. His Funeral Oration was given by Charles de la Rue, S.J. He was buried at Meaux Cathedral.

Bossuet is widely considered to be one of the most influential Homiliticians of all time. He is one of the Preachers, along with John Tillotson and Louis Bourdaloue, who began the transition from Baroque to Neo-Classical Preaching. He Preached with a simple eloquence that eschewed the grandiose extravagances of earlier Preaching. He focused on ethical, rather than doctrinal, messages, often drawing from the lives of Saints, or Saintly contemporaries, as examples.

He Preached, for example, on Saint Francis de Sales, as well as Funeral Orations on Queen Henrietta Maria of France and Henrietta Anne of England. Bossuet’s Funeral Orations, in particular, had lasting importance and were translated early into many languages, including English. Such was their power that even Voltaire, normally so antagonistic toward Clergy, praised his oratorical excellence.