Jacques Bénigne Bossuet

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Jacques Bénigne Bossuet Signature Jacques Bénigne Bossuet.PNG

Jacques Bénigne Bossuet (born September 27, 1627 in Dijon , † April 12, 1704 in Paris ) was a French bishop and author. He made an important contribution to the philosophy of history and is considered by the French as a classic among their pulpit speakers .

Life and work

Bossuet grew up in a family of judges. He was destined for the priestly career at an early age and was tonsured at the age of nine . He received his schooling first in the Jesuit college of Dijon, then in the Collège de Navarre in Paris. As a theology student in Paris, he frequented some glamorous salons and shone there with his eloquence (for example in a sermon improvised at a late hour). After ordination and doctorate in 1652, he became canon in Metz , which was annexed by France in 1633 , where his father had received a judge's office at the newly founded parliament . Here he made the fight against Protestantism an urgent task and in 1655 published his first work, the Réfutation [refutation] du catéchisme de Paul Ferri , which was directed against the Protestant pastor Ferri . In addition, he often stayed in Paris, where he was a student of the great preacher of the Caritas Saint Vincent de Paul (1581-1660).

From 1660 he lived entirely in Paris and quickly made a name for himself as a pulpit speaker and panegyricist . 1662 he was in the Louvre before King Louis XIV. And the yard the Lenten sermon followed. After this he was fashionable, although he did not hesitate to occasionally admonish the young king to be more strict or to remind the rich of their duty to care for the poor. More and more often he was asked to celebrate the funeral mass for the high-ranking deceased and to hold a funeral speech, for example in 1667 for Anna of Austria , the pious queen mother, or in 1670 for Henriette d'Angleterre , the young deceased sister-in-law of Ludwig. In 1669 he was appointed bishop of the small diocese of Condom in south-west France, which he was able to administer largely from Paris. In 1671 he became a member of the Académie Française .

Shortly before (1670) he had been appointed Prince Educator (précepteur) of Crown Prince ( Dauphin ) Louis (who died in 1711 before his father Louis XIV, i.e. did not ascend the throne). For his royal, but not too educated pupil, he wrote a series of tracts over the course of his ten years as a Preceptor: an Exposition de la doctrine catholique ("Presentation of Catholic Teachings"), a government manual La Politique tirée des propres paroles de l'Écriture Sainte ("Politics, drawn from the scriptures' own words"); further the philosophical-theological Traité de la connaissance de Dieu et de soi-même (“treatise on the knowledge of God and himself”) and above all the Discours sur l'histoire universelle (“treatise on world history”, 1681), one Brief history of the world in which Bossuet represents the will of God for the expansion of Christianity and for the eternal salvation of people as the guiding force of all material and ideal causes and effects. The Discours is the last major attempt to interpret history as a history of salvation , which Voltaire , among others, worked on.

In 1681, after the Dauphin's marriage, Bossuet was appointed Bishop of Meaux . Although he took his office very seriously, he was still often in Paris and Versailles , employed a. a. with sermons and funeral speeches (for example in 1687 on the death of Prince de Condé, who belonged to the royal family ). In 1689, after he had declared his role as a speaker (perhaps also for reasons of voice), a selection of his speeches appeared in print for the first time. It shaped his image in literary history.

But Bossuet was also, thanks to his long closeness to the king and his intimate knowledge of the conditions at court, very active in politics in the narrower and broader sense, which he sought to influence through direct influence and through numerous writings. As a member of the Grand Conseil de l'Église de France , he grew increasingly into the role of a primate of the French bishops and became known as the bellicose "Eagle of Meaux". As this he helped in 1682 to delimit and restrict the rights of Rome in France against those of the Crown ( Gallicanism ). At the same time he fought Protestantism on all fronts, for example with a Histoire des variations [changes] des Églises Protestantes (1688), in which he showed the conflicting doctrines and divisions of the Protestant churches in order to emphasize the unity of Catholic teaching. In 1685 he was involved in the repeal of the Edict of Tolerance of Nantes , with which Henry IV had granted Protestants freedom of religion and civil equality in 1598. In 1687 he sided with the traditionalists under Nicolas Boileau in the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes , a literary controversy triggered by Charles Perrault and motivated by cultural policy . In addition, he wrote against Jansenism and, above all, fought against the mystically pious quietism , which began around 1690 by Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon and which quickly spread and sympathized in war-torn and impoverished France, including another bishop, crown prince president and author: François Fénelon .

In 1694 Bossuet attacked with his Maximes et réflexions sur la comédie also the theater, which corrupts morals and souls, and thus contributed to the solidification of intellectual life in France in the late period of Louis XIV.

In his final years he had to experience how many of the currents he was fighting not only did not disappear, but even gained in influence.

At the end of the 17th century, Bossuet spoke to the Lutheran abbot Gerhard Wolter Molanus at the Loccumer Hof in Hanover about ways of reunifying the two denominations.

His autographs are kept in the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library , among others .

Due to the influence of "teaching Catholic doctrine" of Bossuet converted claims to Prince Adolf Frederick of Mecklenburg in 1818 to the Catholic faith.

Quotes

“This strictness of the church lies in its original spirit; This will never go out, and she will always oppose it to relaxation. How does it help us with the council to abhor the effeminacy of the heretics, who have abolished that holy seriousness of satisfaction when we sink into equally limp beings and in fact deny ourselves what we profess with words? "

- Bishop Jakob Benignus Bossuet: reflections on the time of the Jubilee. German Edition, Würzburg 1826.

“The act of surrender is the most perfect and sacred of all acts; for it does not consist in the development of spiritual strength of a person who wants to act from himself; it is rather a letting go in order to be driven by the spirit of God ( Rom 8,14  EU ). However, do not believe that through this surrender you would lapse into inactivity, into a kind of indolence; on the contrary, we work all the more because we are moved, driven and animated by the spirit of God. The act of surrender, so to speak, puts us in full activity for God. We dedicate ourselves because God wants it. "

- Jacques Bénigne Bossuet: act of surrender. In: Pierre Caignon SJ: Peace of mind. Verlag Franz Kirchheim, Mainz 1901.

literature

Oeuvres , 1852

Web links

Commons : Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Jacques Bénigne Bossuet  - Quotes
Wikisource: Jacques Bénigne Bossuet  - Sources and full texts (French)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Waldemar R. Röhrbein : Loccumer Hof. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 413f.
  2. ^ David August Rosenthal : Convert pictures from the nineteenth century. Volume 1, part 1, page 332, Schaffhausen, Hurter Verlag, 1871.
  3. ↑ Jakob Benignus Bossuet: Reflections on the time of the anniversary.
predecessor Office successor
Charles-Louis de Lorraine Bishop of Condom
1671–1693 		Jacques de Goyon de Matignon
Dominique II. De Ligny Bishop of Meaux
1681–1704 		Henri Pons de Thiard de Bissy
personal data
SURNAME Bossuet, Jacques Bénigne
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French bishop and author
DATE OF BIRTH September 27, 1627
PLACE OF BIRTH Dijon
DATE OF DEATH April 12, 1704
Place of death Paris