MASSILLON, Jean Baptiste, was born at Hyères on June 24, 1663, and died at Clermont on September 28, 1742. He was thus, except Saint-Simon and Fontenelle, the longest-lived of the men of the Siècle de Louis Quatorze. It is noteworthy that, like the majority of the great pulpit orators of his own and the preceding generation, he was a southerner. His father, François Massillon, was a notary, and he appears to have been well educated. In 1681 he joined the congregation of the Oratory, which at that time had a high reputation. But, although he had thus chosen an order where the rules were by no means strict, he was not anxious for easy living or secular renown. The credit which he received for his first efforts at preaching startled him, and he sought a much more severe discipline, one indeed which is said to have been of Trappist rigour. Accident, however, made his literary and oratorical talents known to the Cardinal de Noailles, who determined that,the church should not lose so well qualified a defender. In obedience to the cardinal, Massillon left the abbey of Septfonds, rejoined the Oratory, and was introduced to the Parisian seminary of Saint Magloire in 1696 He was soon set to work to preach in the Paris churches, and his reputation spread rapidly from city to court. He preached before Louis XIV, for the first time in Advent 1699. He made a profound impression, and it is reported that his generous elder, Bourdaloue, from whom Massillon himself had learnt much, said of him, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” His fame, however, did not lead to immediate preferment. In the first place, the Oratorians were on bad terms with the Jesuits, and were considered too liberal to suit the reign of gloomy pietism and severe orthodoxy in which Louis’s dissolute life closed. In the second, Massillon was neither a flatterer, nor did he resort to the abrupt denunciation of vice which had succeeded in the case of some of his predecessors. Indeed, in the last years of the reign there was nothing (so far as the king was concerned) to denounce, unless it were an excess of orthodoxy. Louis’s famous saying that other preachers made him pleased with them, but that Massillon made him displeased with himself, may have been merely a mot, but it may also have expressed an involuntary truth. However this may be, Massillon, who perhaps desired no office, received none as long as the old king lived. The regency was much more favourable to him, and in 1717 he was nominated to the see of Clermont, with the additional honour of being commissioned to preach the next year’s Petit Carême or series of short Lent sermons before the young Louis XV. Bishop in 1717, Lent preacher in 1718, Massillon received in 1719 a yet further honour, though this time a secular one, by being elected to the Academy. Various causes, however, combined to remove him from Paris. His own standard of duty was high, and he was not likely in any case to have acquiesced in the position of a non-resident bishop; the court grew more and more dissolute; and his advance in years must have somewhat disqualified him from preaching and travelling. He delivered but few sermons in Paris after the Petit Carême, and preached there for the last time in 1723, when he pronounced the funeral oration of the duchess-dowager of Orleans. The twenty years of life which remained to him were spent at Clermont, where he was distinguished for all good works, especially for exacting the minimum of episcopal dues and expending the maximum on charity.

Massillon’s works are made up for the most part of sermons, lectures, synodal addresses, and the like. They have been repeatedly edited, and are easily accessible in two large volumes published by Didot. As a pulpit orator, if not as a theologian, Massillon probably deserves the highest rank among Frenchmen. His style is very nearly perfect, uniting the polish of the later age of Louis XIV. with the vigour of the earlier. His thoughts are original and just, and the arrangement of his discourses lucid and orderly without being unduly scholastic. He has usually been contrasted with his predecessor Bourdaloue, the latter having the credit of vigorous denunciation, Massillon of gentle persuasiveness. But few preachers can have excelled him in vigour when he chose to be stern. Besides the Petit Carême, his sermons on the Prodigal Son, on Death, for Christmas Day, for the Fourth Sunday in Advent, may be cited as perhaps his masterpieces. But in truth Massillon is singularly free from inequality. His great literary power, his reputation for benevolence, and his known toleration and dislike of doctrinal disputes caused him to be much more favourably regarded than most churchmen by the philosophes of the 18th century. He acquired the surname of the Racine of the pulpit, but extreme purity of style is almost the only point of contact between the two writ es.