Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (September 27, 1627 - April 12, 1704) was a French bishop and theologian, renowned for his sermons and o
Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (September 27, 1627 - April 12, 1704) was a French bishop and theologian, renowned for his sermons and other addresses. He has been considered by many to be one of the most brilliant orators of all time and a masterly French stylist. Court preacher to Louis XIV of France, Bossuet was a strong advocate of political absolutism and the divine right of kings. He argued that government was divine and that kings received their power from God. He was also an important courtier and politician. The works best known to English speakers are three great orations delivered at the funerals of Henrietta Maria, widow of Charles I of England (1669), her daughter, Henrietta Anne, Duchess of Orléans (1670), and the outstanding soldier Le Grand Condé (1687). Bossuet was born at Dijon. He came from a family of prosperous Burgundian lawyers - on both his paternal and maternal side, his ancestors had held legal posts for at least a century. He was the fifth son born to Beneigne Bossuet, a judge of the parlement (a provincial high court) at Dijon, and Marguerite Mouchet. His parents decided on a career in the church for their fifth son, so he was tonsured at age 10. The boy was sent to school at the Collège des Godrans, a classical school run by the Jesuits of Dijon. When his father was appointed to the parlement at Metz, Bossuet was left in Dijon under the care of his uncle Claude Bossuet d'Aiseray, a renowned scholar. At the Collège des Godrans, he gained a reputation for hard work: fellow-students nicknamed him Bos suetus aratro an "ox broken in to the plough". His father's influence at Metz allowed him to obtain for the young Bossuet a canonicate in the cathedral of Metz when the boy was just 13 year old. St. Etienne's Cathedral in Metz, where Bossuet was made a canon at age 13 in 1642, Bossuet enrolled in the Collège de Navarre in Paris to finish his classical studies and to begin the study of philosophy and theology.
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