Jacques Bossuet
Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet was Louis XIV's court preacher and the leading theorist of the divine right of kings. Born in Dijon in 1627 into a family of lawyers and officials, he was a precocious student, was given a canonry at thirteen, and studied at the Collège de Navarre in Paris under Vincent de Paul's influence, taking a doctorate in theology. He made his name as a preacher at Metz and then in Paris, and his funeral orations — for Henrietta Maria, for Henrietta of England, for the Prince de Condé — are among the finest prose in French, using a death to reflect on the vanity of greatness while praising the deceased. He was appointed tutor to the Dauphin in 1670 and spent nine years on it, writing books for the purpose. The Discourse on Universal History of 1681 presents history as governed by providence, running from creation through the empires to the Church, and treats the rise and fall of states as the working out of divine purpose. His Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture argues that monarchy is the form of government instituted by God, that the king is accountable to God alone and not to his subjects, and that resistance is therefore always unlawful — while insisting that the king is bound by divine and natural law, and that absolute is not the same as arbitrary. He drafted the Gallican Articles of 1682, asserting the French church's independence of Rome in temporal matters. He supported the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and defeated Fénelon over Quietism in a long and unattractive controversy. He died in 1704. His last years were spent attacking Richard Simon's critical scholarship on the biblical text.
- Lived: 1627 CE – 1704 CE
- Nationality: French
- Roles: bishop, theologian
