BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE


Jacque Benigne Bossuet was born at Dijon, in Burgundy, in 1627. In an
illustrious group of French Catholic preachers he occupied a foremost
place. In beginning his sermons he was reserved and dignified, but as
he moved forward and his passionate utterance captured his hearers,
"he watched their rising emotion, the rooted glances of a thousand
eyes filled him with a sort of divine frenzy, his notes became a
burden and a hindrance, and with impetuous ardor he abandoned himself
to the inspiration of the moment."

To ripe scholarship Bossuet added a voice that was deep and sonorous,
an imposing personality, and an animated and graceful style of
gesture. Lamartine says he had "a voice which, like that of the
thunder in the clouds, or the organ in the cathedral, had never been
anything but the medium of power and divine persuasion to the soul; a
voice which only spoke to kneeling auditors; a voice which spoke in
the name of God, an authority of language unequaled upon earth,
and against which the lowest murmur was impious and the smallest
opposition blasphemy." He died in 1704.




BOSSUET 1627-1704

THE FUNERAL SERMON ON THE DEATH OF THE GRANDE CONDÉ