The Gallican controversy. of Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

In the Gallican controversy, Louis XIV maintained that the French monarch could limit papal authority in collecting the revenues of vacant sees and in certain other matters, while the Ultramontanists held that the pope was supreme. An extraordinary general assembly of the French clergy was held to consider this question in 1681–82. Bossuet delivered the inaugural sermon to this body and also drew up its final statement, the Déclaration des quatre articles (“Declaration of Four Articles”), which was delivered, along with his famous inaugural sermon on the unity of the church, to the assembly of the French clergy in 1682. The articles asserted the king’s independence from Rome in secular matters and proclaimed that, in matters of faith, the pope’s judgment is not to be regarded as infallible without the assent of the total church. They were accepted by all parties of the assembly, and his role in this controversy remained perhaps the most significant of Bossuet’s life.

Concurrently he was engaged in the controversy with the Protestants. Though he opposed persecution and endeavoured to convert the Protestants by intellectual argument, Bossuet supported the king’s revocation in 1685 of the Edict of Nantes, an action that in effect prohibited French Protestantism. In 1688 he published a history of variations in the Protestant churches, Histoire des variations des églises protestantes, which was followed by information and advice to Protestants, Avertissement aux protestans (1689–91).

Although Bossuet had displayed moderation in the Gallican quarrel and in the controversy with the Protestants, he showed himself less tolerant in other cases, condemning the theatre as immoral, for example. Above all, he led an attack on the form of religious mysticism known as Quietism, which was being practiced by the archbishop of Cambrai, François Fénelon. Bossuet was by nature very intellectual and had been nourished on theology, and thus he was unable to understand a form of mysticism that consisted of passive devotional contemplation and total abandonment to the divine presence of God. He wrote such harsh works against the “new mystics” as his statement on Quietism, Instruction sur les états d’ oraison (1697; “Instructions on the Calling of Oration”) and the Relation sur le quiétisme (1698; “Report on Quietism”). After a duel of pamphlets and some unpleasant intrigue, he obtained Fénelon’s condemnation in Rome in 1699.

Reputation.

In the centuries since his death, Bossuet’s reputation has been the subject of much controversy. The only point of agreement is the excellence of his style and eloquence. From a political point of view, he was praised by nationalists and monarchists, but spurned by the liberal tradition. From a religious point of view, he was often quoted as a master of French Roman Catholic thought, but he has been opposed by the Ultramontanists, Catholic progressives and modernists, and many of Fénelon’s numerous admirers. His emphasis on immutability of doctrine and the perfection of the church made him seem old-fashioned in the atmosphere of Catholicism after the second Vatican Council (1962–65).