Massillon, Jean Baptiste
Massillon, Jean Baptiste
Born 24 June 1663 at Hyres; died 28 September 1742 at Clermont, France . Celebrated preacher and bishop . He entered the Congregation of the Oratory at the age of 18, and after his ordination began his career as a preacher which was to give him rank with Bossuet and Bourdaloue. In 1717 he was appointed to the see of Clermont, one of the largest in France . As bishop he maintained ecclesiastical discipline, was a tender father to his clergy and devoted to his flock. His works have been frequently reprinted.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Massillon, Jean-Baptiste
A celebrated French preacher and bishop; born 24 June, 1663; died 28 September, 1742. The son of François Massillon, a notary of Hyères in Provence, he began his studies in the college of that town and completed them in the college of Marseilles, both under the Oratorians. He entered the Congregation of the Oratory at the age of eighteen. After his novitiate and theological studies, he was sent as professor to the colleges of the congregation at Pèzenas, Marseilles, Montbrison, and, lastly, Vienne, where he taught philosophy and theology for six years (1689-95).
Ordained priest in 1691, he commenced preaching in the chapel of the Oratory at Vienne and in the vicinity of that city. Upon the death of Villeroy, Archbishop of Lyons (1693), he was called upon to deliver the funeral oration, and six months later that of M. de Villars, Archbishop of Vienne. Joining the Lyons Oratory in 1695, and summoned to Paris in the following year, to be director of the Seminary of Saint-Magloire, he was thenceforward able to devote himself exclusively to preaching. As director of this seminary he delivered those lectures (conférences) to young clerics which are still highly esteemed. But a year later he was removed from his position at Saint-Magloire for having occupied himself too exclusively with preaching. Having preached the Lent at Montpellier in 1698, he preached it the next year at the Oratory of Paris. His eloquence in this series of discourses was very much approved, and, although he aimed at preaching in a style unlike that of his predecessors, public opinion already hailed him as the successor of Bossuet and Bourdaloue who were at that time reduced to silence by age. At the end of this year he preached the Advent at the court of Louis XIV — an honour which was in those days highly coveted as the consecration of a preacher’s fame. He justified every hope, and the king wittily declared that, where he had formerly been well pleased with the preachers, he was now very ill pleased with himself. Massillon, by command, once more appeared in the chapel of Versailles for the Lent of 1701. Bossuet, who, according to his secretary, had thought Massillon very far from the sublime in 1699, this time declared himself very well satisfied, as was the king. Massillon was summoned again for the Lent of 1704. This was the apogee of his eloquence and his success. The king assiduously attended his sermons, and in the royal presence Massillon delivered that discourse “On the Fewness of the Elect”, which is considered his masterpiece. Nevertheless, whether because the compromising relations of the orator with certain great families had produced a bad impression on the king, or because Louis ended by believing him inclined — as some of his brethren of the Oratory were thought to be — to Jansenism, Massillon was never again summoned to preach at the Court during the life of Louis XIV, nor was he even put forward for a bishopric. Nevertheless he continued, from 1704 to 1718, to preach Lent and Advent discourses with great success in various churches of Paris. Only in the Advent of 1715 did he leave those churches to preach before the Court of Stanislas, King of Lorraine.
In the interval he preached, with only moderate success, sermons at ceremonies of taking the habit, panegyrics, and funeral orations. Of his funeral orations that on Louis XIV is still famous, above all for its opening: “God alone is great” — uttered at the grave of a prince to whom his contemporaries had yielded the title of “The Great”.
After the death of this king Massillon returned to favour at Court. In 1717 the regent nominated him to the Bishopric of Clermont (Auvergne) and caused him to preach before the young king, Louis XV, the Lenten course of 1718, which was to comprise only ten sermons. These have been published under the title of “Le Petit Carême” — Massillon’s most popular work. Finally, he was received, a few months later, into the French Academy, where Fleury, the young king’s preceptor, pronounced his eulogy.
But Massillon, consecrated on 21 December, 1719, was in haste to take possession of his see. With its 29 abbeys, 224 priories, and 758 parishes, the Diocese of Clermont was one of the largest in France. The new bishop took up his residence there, and left it only to assist, by order of the regent, in the negotiations which were to decide the case of Cardinal de Noailles (q. v.) and certain bishops suspected of Jansenism, in accepting the Bull “Unigenitus”, to assist at the coronation of Louis XV, and to preach the funeral sermon of the Duchess of Orleans, the regent’s mother.
He made it his business to visit one part of his diocese each year, and at his death he had been through the whole diocese nearly three times, even to the poorest and remotest parishes. He set himself to re-establish or maintain ecclesiastical discipline and good morals among his clergy. From the year 1723 on, he annually assembled a synod of the priests; he did this once more in 1742, a few days before his death. In these synods and in the retreats which followed them he delivered the synodal discourses and conférences which have been so much, and so justly, admired. If he at times displayed energy in reforming abuses, he was generally tender and fatherly towards his clergy; he was willing to listen to them; he promoted their education, by attaching benefices to his seminaries, and assured them a peaceful old age by building a house of retirement for them. He defended his clergy against the king’s ministers, who wished to increase their fiscal burdens, and he never ceased to guard them against the errors and subterfuges of the Jansenists, who, indeed, assailed him sharply in their journal “Les Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques”.
Thoroughly devoted to all his diocesan flock, he busied himself in improving their condition. This is apparent in his correspondence with the king’s intendants and ministers, in which he does his utmost to alleviate the lot of the Auvergne peasantry whenever there is a disposition to increase their taxation, or the scourge of a bad season afflicts their crops. The poor were always dear to him: not only did he plead for them in his sermons, but he assisted them out of his bounty, and at his death he instituted the hospital of Clermont for his universal heirs, the poor. His death was lamented, as his life had been blessed and admired by his contemporaries. Posterity has numbered him with Bossuet, Fénelon, Fléchier, and Mascaron, among the greatest French bishops of the eighteenth century. As an orator, no one was more appreciated by the eighteenth century, which placed him easily — at least as to preaching properly so called — above Bossuet and Bourdaloue. Our age places him rather lower. Massillon has neither the sublimity of Bossuet nor the logic of Bourdaloue: with him the sermon neglects dogma for morality, and morality loses its authority, and sometimes its security, in the eyes of Christians. For at times he is so severe as to render himself suspect of Jansenism, and again he is so lax as to be accused of complaisancy for the sensibilities and the philosophism of his time. His chief merit was to have excelled in depicting the passions, to have spoken to the heart in a language it always understood, to have made the great, and princes, understand the loftiest teachings of the Gospel, and to have made his own life and his work as a bishop conform to those teachings. During Massillon’s lifetime only the funeral oration on the Prince de Conti was published (1709); he even disavowed a collection of sermons which appeared under his name at Trévoux (1705, 1706, 1714). The first authentic edition of his works appeared in 1745, published by his nephew, Father Joseph Massillon, of the Oratory; it has been frequently reprinted. But the best edition was that of Blampignon, Bar-le-Duc, 1865-68, and Paris, 1886, in four vols. It comprises ten sermons for Advent, forty-one for Lent, eight on the mysteries, four on virtues, ten panegyrics, six funeral orations, sixteen ecclesiastical conferences, twenty synodal discourses, twenty-six charges, paraphrases on thirty psalms, some pensées choisies, and some fifty miscellaneous letters or notes.
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D’ALEMBERT, Eloge de Massillon in Histoire des membres de l’Académie française (Paris, 1787), I; V; BAYLE, Massilion (Paris, 1867); BLAMPIGNON, Massillon d’après des documents inédits (Paris, 1879); L’épiscopat de Massillon (Paris, 1884); ATTAIS, Etude sur Massillon (Toulouse, 1882); COHENDY, Correspondance Mandements de Massillon (Clermont, 1883); PAUTHE, Massillon (Paris, 1908).
ANTOINE DÉGERT. Transcribed by Douglas J. Potter Dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XCopyright © 1911 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, October 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Massillon, Jean Baptiste
prominent among the most eloquent divines of the French Roman Catholic Church, was born at Hieres, in Provence, June 24, 1663. His father was a notary in moderate circumstances, and at first intended his son for the same profession, but subsequently allowed him to receive the instructions of the Fathers of the Oratory, and when eighteen years of age the young man joined that order. Soon after, forsaking the world altogether, he entered an abbey under the rule of La Trappe. Here, however, his talents attracted the attention of the bishop, afterwards cardinal de Noailles, who induced him to re-enter the Oratory, in which he soon achieved great eminence. Yet his success was more the fruit of labor than of spontaneous genius, and his last efforts are much superior to his first. In 1696 he went to Paris as principal of the Seminary of St. Magloire, the renowned school of the Oratory. Here, in the midst of the prevailing laxity of morals, he commenced his career as a pulpit orator, the delivery of his Ecclesiastical conferences to ecclesiastical students affording him an opportunity of developing his talent. He admired the austere eloquence of Bourdaloue, but chose for himself a different style, characterized by profound pathos, and an insight into the most secret motives of the human heart. He was shortly noted as the preacher of repentance and penitence; and it was declared by able contemporaries of his sermons that they reach the heart, and produce their due effects with much more certainty than all the logic of Bourdaloue. He delivered the customary Lent sermons at Montpellier in 1698, and the following year at Paris.
The latter were warmly applauded, and induced the king to invite Massillon to preach the Advent at court. On this occasion king Louis XIV paid him the highest compliments. He said, I have heard many talented preachers in my chapel before, and was much pleased with them; but every time I hear you, I feel much displeased with myself. He again preached the Lent sermons before the court during the years 1701 to 1704, but afterwards he received no calls to appear before them until the death of the king: so fearless and plain-spoken a preacher would have been ill suited to the gallant and profligate court of the great king. At the death of Louis XIV, Massillon was requested to preach his funeral sermon; in other words, to pronounce a eulogy of this prince. This was an arduous task for the uncourtierlike preacher; yet he undertook it, and in his discourse lauded the fame and piety of the king, yet deplored the evils suffered by the nation in consequence of the wars and the looseness of morals. Invited now to preach the Lent sermons before the young king, Louis XV, then but eight years of age, he took advantage of the occasion to censure the manners of the court; and morality, rather than the passion of Christ, formed the subject of his sermons. These are tell in number, and being short, to accommodate them to the youth of his royal hearer, are known under the name of Le petite carenie. In 1717 Massillon became bishop of Clermont. and in 1719 member of the French Academy. Two years after he preached at St. Denis the funeral sermon of the duchess Elizabeth Charlotte of Orleans, daughter of the elector of Palatinate, and mother of the regent. This is considered one of the best of his six Oraisons Funebres. Thereafter he remained quietly in his diocese, diligently fulfilling his pastoral duties until his death. Less ambitious than Bossuet, he did not wish to remain connected with the court, or in any way to take part in temporal affairs. His life was a model of Christian virtue and gentleness; he never disputed against any but infidels, and the Roman Catholics will not forgive him for having, in his eulogy of Louis XIV, after praising this monarch for his efforts to destroy heresy, alluded to the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s eve and pronounced it a bloody wrong, to be ever condemned in the name of religion as well as of humanity. Preaching from the fulless of his heart, he did not consider the rank of those lie addressed, but spoke to them with nobleness of purpose in all simplicity and fervor. He carefully instructed the clergy of his diocese by holding numerous conferences and by synodal discourses. He died Sept. 18,1742. D’Alembert pronounced his eulogy before the French Academy.
The fame of this celebrated man stands perhaps higher than that of any preacher who has preceded or followed him, by the number, variety, and excellence of his productions, and their eloquent and harmonious style. Grace, dignity, and force, and an inexhaustible fecundity of resources, particularly characterize his works. His A vent et Carerme, consisting of six volumes, may be justly considered as so many chef-d’oeuvres. His mode of delivery contributed not a little to his success. We seem to behold him still in imagination, said they who had been fortunate enough to attend his discourses, with that simple air, that modest carriage, those eyes so humbly directed downwards, that unstudied gesture. that touching tone of voice, that look of a man fully impressed with the truths which he enforced, conveying the most brilliant instruction to the mind, and the most pathetic movements to the heart. The famous actor, Baron, after hearing him, told him to continue as he had begun. You, said he, have a manner of your own; leave the rules to others. At another time he said to an actor who was with him, My friend, this is the true orator; we are mere players. Voltaire is said to have kept a volume of Massillon’s sermons constantly on his desk, as a model of eloquence. He thought him the preacher who best understood the world whose eloquence savored of the courtier, the academician, the wit, and the philosopher. Massillon’s works, consisting mainly of sermons, have been collected and published under the title (Euves completes (Paris, 1776, 15 vols. 12mo). In English we have, Sermons on the Duties of the Great, translated from the French; preached before Louis XV during his minority; by William Dodd, LL.D. (Lond. 1776, 2d ed. sm. 8vo): Sermons, selected and translated by William Dickson (Lond. 1826, 8vo): Charges, with two Essays, translated by T’heophilus St. John [the Rev. S. Clapham] (Lond. 1805, 8vo): Sermons on Death, Psa 89:47, translated (T. Wimbolt, Sermons): Ecclesiastical Conferences, Synodical Discourses, and Episcopal Mandates, etc., translated by C. H. Boylan, of Mavnooth College (1825, 2 vols. 8vo). See La Harpe, Cours de Litterat.; Maury, Eloquence de la Chaire; F. Theremin, Demosthenes und Meissillon (1845); D’Alembert, Eloge de Malssillon; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries de Lundi; Talbert, Eloge de Massillon (1773); Hoefer, Nouv. Liog. Generale, s.v.; Christian Remembrancer, 1854 (Jan.), p. 104; Presb. Rev. 1868 (April), p. 295. (J. H.W.)