BOSSUET, JACQUES BENIGNE French divine, orator and writer, was born at Dijon on Sept. 27, 1627, the son of a judge of the parlement at Dijon, afterwards at Metz. The boy was sent to school with the Jesuits till 1642, when he went up to the college of Navarre in Paris. There he gained a great reputation for hard work; fellow-students nicknamed him Bos suetus ox broken to the plough. In 1652 he was ordained priest. The next seven years he spent at Metz, where his father's influence had got him a canonry at the early age of 13; to this was now added the more important office of archdeacon. He was plunged into the thick of controversy, for nearly half Metz was Protestant, and Bossuet's first appearance in print was a refutation of the Huguenot pastor Paul Ferry (1655). To recon cile the Protestants with the Roman 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 influ ence in a land where political assemblies were unknown, and novels and newspapers scarcely born. In 16J9 he settled in Paris, and three years later mounted the pulpit of the Chapel Royal.
Bossuet possessed the full equipment of the orator, voice, language, flexibility and strength. He never needed to strain for effect; his genius struck out at a single blow the thought, the feeling and the word. What he said of Martin Luther applies peculiarly to himself : he could "fling his fury into theses," and thus unite the dry light of argument with the fire and heat of passion. These qualities reach their highest point in the Oraisons f unebres. Bossuet was always best when at work on a large canvas; besides, here no conscientious scruples intervened to prevent him giving much time and thought to the artistic side of his subject. For the Oraison. as its name betokened. stood midway between the sermon proper and what would nowadays be called a biographical sketch. At least, that was what Bossuet made it ; for on this field he stood not merely first, but alone. His three great masterpieces were delivered at the funerals of Henrietta Maria, widow of Charles I. (166g), her daughter, Henrietta, duchess of Orleans (1670), and the great soldier Conde (1687).
Apart from these State occasions, Bossuet seldom appeared in a Paris pulpit after 1669. In that year he was gazetted bishop at Condom in Gascony, though he resigned the charge on being appointed tutor to the dauphin, only child of Louis XIV. Bossuet wrote for his pupil's instruction (or rather, to fit himself to give that instruction) a remarkable trilogy. First came the Traits de la connaissance de Dieu et de soi-merne, then the Discours sur l'histoire universelle, lastly the Politique tiree de l'Ecriture Sainte. The three books fit into each other. The Traits is a general sketch of the nature of God and the nature of man. The Discours is a history of God's dealings with humanity in the past. The Politique is a code of rights and duties drawn up in the light thrown by those dealings. Not that Bossuet literally supposed that the last word of political wisdom had been said by the Old Testament. His conclusions are only `drawn from Holy Scripture," because he wished to gain the highest possible sanction for the institutions of his country—to hallow the France of Louis XIV. by proving its astonishing likeness to the Israel of Solomon. Then, too, the veil of Holy Scripture enabled him to speak out more boldly than court-etiquette would have otherwise allowed, to remind the son of Louis XIV. that kings have duties as well as rights. Louis had often forgotten these duties, but Louis' son would bear them in mind. The tutor's imagination looked forward to a time when France would blossom into Utopia, with a Christian philosopher on the throne. That is what made him so stalwart a champion of authority in all its forms : "le roi, Jesus-Christ et l'Eglise, Dieu en ces trois noms," he says in a characteristic letter. Philosophy proved that a God exists, and that He shapes and governs the course of human affairs. History showed that this governance is, for the most part, indirect, exercised through certain venerable corporations, civil as well as ecclesiastical, all of which demand implicit obedi ence as the immediate representatives of God. Thus all revolt, whether civil or religious, is a direct defiance of the Almighty. Cromwell becomes a moral monster, and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes is "the greatest achievement of the second Con stantine." Not that Bossuet glorified the status quo simply as a clerical bigot. The France of his youth had known the misery of divided counsels and civil war ; the France of his manhood, brought together under an absolute sovereign, had suddenly shot up into a splendour only comparable with ancient Rome. Why not, then, strain every nerve to hold innovation at bay and pro long that splendour for all time? Bossuet's own Discours sur l'histoire universelle might have furnished an answer, for there the fall of many empires is detailed. But then the Discours was composed under a single preoccupation. To Bossuet the estab lishment of Christianity was the one point of real importance in the whole history of the world. Over Mohammed and the East he passed without a word ; on Greece and Rome he only touched in so far as they formed part of the Praeparatio Evangelica. And yet Bossuet made a heroic attempt to grapple with origins and causes, and in this way his book deserves its place as one of the very first of philosophic histories.
In 1681 he became bishop of Meaux; but before he could take possession of his see, he was drawn into a violent quarrel between Louis XIV. and the pope (see GALLICANISM). Here he found himself between two fires. To support the pope meant support ing the Jesuits; and he hated their casuistry and devotion aisee almost as much as Pascal himself. To oppose the pope was to play into the hands of Louis, who was frankly anxious to humble the Church before the State. So Bossuet steered a middle course. Before the general assembly of the French clergy he preached a great sermon on the unity of the Church, and made it a magnifi cent plea for compromise. As Louis insisted on his clergy making an anti-papal declaration, Bossuet got leave to draw it up, and made it as moderate as he could. And when the pope declared it null and void, he set to work on a gigantic De f ensio Cleri Gallicani, only published after his death.
The Gallican storm a little abated, he turned back to a project very near his heart. Ever since the early days at Metz he had been busy with schemes for uniting the Huguenots to the Roman Church. In 1668 he converted Turenne; in 167o he published an Exposition de la foi catliolique, so moderate in tone that adver saries were driven to accuse him of having fraudulently watered down the Roman dogmas to suit a Protestant taste. Finally in 1688 appeared his great Histoire des variations des eglises protestantes, perhaps the most brilliant of all his works. For the moment the Protestants were pulverized by this vigorous work; but before long they began to ask whether variation was neces sarily so great an evil. Between 1691 and 1701 Bossuet corre sponded with Leibnitz with a view to reunion, but negotiations broke down precisely at this point. Individual Roman doc trines Leibnitz thought his countrymen might accept, but he flatly refused to guarantee that they would necessarily believe to-morrow what they believe to-day. "We prefer," he said "a Church eternally variable and for ever moving forwards." Next, Protestant writers began to accumulate some startling proof s of Rome's own variations ; and here they were backed up by Richard Simon, a priest of the Paris Oratory, and the father of biblical criticism in France. He accused St. Augustine, Bossuet's own special master, of having corrupted the primitive doctrine of Grace. Bossuet set to work on a Defense de la tradition, but Simon calmly went on to raise issues graver still. Under a veil of politely ironical circumlocutions, such as did not deceive the bishop of Meaux, he claimed his right to interpret the Bible like any other book. Bossuet denounced him again and again; Simon told his friends he would wait until "the old fellow" was no more. Another Oratorian proved more dangerous still. Simon had endangered miracles by applying to them lay rules of evidence, but Malebranche abrogated miracles altogether. It was blas phemous, he argued, to suppose that the Author of nature would break through a reign of law He had Himself established. Bossuet might scribble nova, mira, falsa, in the margins of his book and urge on Fenelon to attack them; Malebranche politely met his threats by saying that to be refuted by such a pen would do him too much honour. These repeated checks soured Bossuet's temper. In his earlier controversies he had borne himself with great magnanimity, and the Huguenot ministers he refuted found him a kindly advocate at court. Even his approval of the Revoca tion of the Edict of Nantes stopped far short of approving dragonades within his diocese of Meaux. But now his patience was wearing out. A dissertation by one Father Caffaro, an obscure Italian monk, became his excuse for writing certain vio lent Maximes sur la comedie (1694) wherein he made an out rageous attack on the memory of Moliere, dead more than 20 years. Three years later he was battling with Fenelon over the love of God, and employing methods of controversy at least as odious as Fenelon's own (1697-99). All that can be said in his defence is that Fenelon, 24 years his junior, was an old pupil, who had suddenly grown into a rival; and that on the matter of principle most authorities thought him right.
In the midst of these controversies Bossuet died. Meaux found him an excellent and devoted bishop, much more attentive to diocesan concerns than his more stirring occupations would seem to allow. Bossuet was one of the greatest controversialists of his own or any age. But his best praise is to have brought all the powers of language to paint an undying picture of a vanished world, where religion and letters, laws and science, were conceived of as fixed unalterable planets, circling for ever round one central Sun.