Written down gravely in a book: 
     And it is time to say adieu,
     Though more I have to write to you. 
     Another letter this shall tell: 
     So now, my dearest friend, farewell.

JACQUES BENIGNE BOSSUET

(1627-1704)

BY ADOLPHE COHN

Jaques Benigne Bossuet, sacred orator, historian, theologian, and controversialist, was born in Dijon, capital of the then Burgundy, on September 27th, 1627.  There is no question but he is the greatest Catholic divine whom France ever knew, and one of the greatest, some say the greatest, of prose writers and orators of that country.  His importance in the literary history of France is due, moreover, not simply to the high excellence of his productions, but fully as much to their representative character.  The power that was wielded with absolute authority by Louis XIV. found in Bossuet the theorist who gave it a philosophical basis, and justified to the Frenchmen of the seventeenth century the conditions under which they lived.

[Illustration:  BOSSUET]

The future educator of Louis XIV.’s son sprang, like most of the great Frenchmen of that time, from the upper ranks of the bourgeoisie.  The Bossuet family had been for a long time honorably connected with the legal profession and the judiciary:  the father of Jacques Benigne was in 1627 a counselor practicing before the “Parlement de Dijon,” where his own father had sat as “Conseiller,” or Associate Justice.  Later in life he was himself called to a seat on the bench, when a new Parlement was organized in the city of Metz for the province of Lorraine (1638).  Ten years later (January 24th, 1648) Bossuet, who had received his education partly from the Jesuits of Dijon, partly in the celebrated College de Navarre in Paris, and who had been shriven for the Catholic priesthood when only eight years of age, made what may be called his first public appearance when he defended his first thesis in theology.  With this important event of his life we find connected the name of the most brilliant Frenchman of that time, the celebrated Prince de Conde,—­famous already by many victories, though hardly twenty-six years of age,—­who attended the disputation and had allowed the young theologian to dedicate his thesis to him.  Thirty-nine years later, after a long period of close friendship, their names were again associated when the illustrious Bishop of Meaux delivered the funeral oration of the great warrior, and announced, at the close of a magnificent eulogy, that this would be the last occasion on which he would devote his oratory to the praises of any man; a promise which he kept, though he outlived his friend for no less than seventeen years.