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Home > Catholic Encyclopedia > M > Jean-Baptiste Massillon


JEAN-BAPTISTE MASSILLON

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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 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
Orléans, 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.




SOURCES

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).


ABOUT THIS PAGE

APA citation. Dégert, A. (1911). Jean-Baptiste Massillon. In The Catholic
Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10034a.htm

MLA citation. Dégert, Antoine. "Jean-Baptiste Massillon." The Catholic
Encyclopedia. Vol. 10. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911.
<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10034a.htm>.

Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Douglas J. Potter.
Dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. October 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D.,
Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.

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