Theologian · Early modern
Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
1627–1704 · Gallican orthodoxy
Bishop of Meaux; chief author of the Gallican Articles (1682), annulled by Alexander VIII (1690) and repudiated by Louis XIV's clergy (1693); his doctrine of papal fallibility was excluded by Vatican I (1870).
The Eagle of Meaux, tutor to the Dauphin and the greatest preacher of the French classical age, Bossuet defended the Catholic faith against the Protestants in the Exposition and the History of the Variations, and against the Quietists in his campaign against Fénelon. His Politics Drawn from Holy Scripture grounded the absolute monarchy in divine right, and his Discourse on Universal History read all history as providence.
Why he matters: His Variations remain a classic argument from the instability of heresy to the unity of the Church, and his funeral orations are the summit of French sacred eloquence; his Gallicanism shows how a great churchman can be mistaken about the Church's constitution.
Where to be careful
The Four Gallican Articles (the king is independent of the Pope in temporals; councils are above the Pope; the Pope's decrees are reformable without the Church's consent) were condemned and are directly contrary to Pastor Aeternus. His divine-right absolutism is not Catholic doctrine, as Bellarmine and Suárez had already shown.
Reading
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The History of the Variations of the Protestant ChurchesJacques-Bénigne Bossuet · His apologetic masterpiece.
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Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy ScriptureJacques-Bénigne Bossuet (ed. Patrick Riley) · Divine-right monarchy in its most learned form.
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BossuetJacques Truchet (or the chapters in Henri Brémond's Literary History of Religious Thought in France) · For his place in the French school.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.