Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-5lx2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-26T18:47:33.689Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Bérulle and Olier: Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

A.D. Wright
A.D. Wright*
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

After the disruption of French Catholicism during the Wars of Religion of the second half of the sixteenth century, the Catholic revival of the seventeenth century famously involved a restoration of Marian piety. When the second monarch of the new Bourbon dynasty, Louis XIII, had dedicated the kingdom to the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1637, the long- and anxiously-looked-for male heir to the throne, the future Louis XIV, was finally born in 1638, easing a sense of crisis which was as much political and religious as purely familial. The widowed Queen Anne of Austria, regent for her son from 1643, subsequently ordered the building of the great Parisian shrine of Val-de-Grace. Yet the conspicuous Marian devotion of the French Catholic revival did not emerge in isolation, but rather in relation to a new and intense Christocentric piety. Central to the latter was the leading figure of the revival, Pierre de Berulle (1575-1629), founder of the French Oratory, and subsequently cardinal. The nature of his piety also led to concentration on the priesthood, seen as an essentially male imitation of Christ. In that further context a second major figure must also be considered, Jean-Jacques Olier (1608-57), who was certainly influenced by Berulle. But in one historic interpretation that influence was altered, in the direction of a Christian pessimism, by the process of transmission via a third figure, Charles de Condren (1588-1641). Yet the relations between these persons and their priestly and pastoral piety may be open to another interpretation, and one in which the place of a complementary Marian devotion has considerable implications for the much-debated history of seventeenth-century and subsequent French Catholicism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 39: The Church and Mary , 2004 , pp. 271 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Cognet, L., La Spiritualite francaisé au XVIIe Stèele (Paris, 1949), 86–92 Google Scholar.

2 Wright, A.D., ‘Introduction: Rome, the Papacy and the Foundation of National Colleges in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries’, in McCluskey, R., ed., The Scots College, Rome 1600-2000 (Edinburgh, 2000), 1–17 Google Scholar; Ortner, F., Reformation, katholische Reform und Gegenreformation im Erzstift Salzburg (Salzburg, 1981), 132 Google Scholar; Bertrand, L., BibliothÈque Sulpicienne ou Histoire litteraire de la compagnie de Saint-Sulpice, 3 vols (Paris, 1900), 1:7–8 Google Scholar.

3 Bremond, H., Histoire litteraire du sentiment religieux en France depuis la fin des guerres de religion jusqu’a nos jours, 12 vols (Paris, 1916-36), 3:419–507 Google Scholar; Thompson, E.H., The Life of M. Olier, Founder of the Seminary of S. Sulpice (1861), 136–7 Google Scholar.

4 Bremond, Histoire litteraire, 3:447, 494-6; Letoumeau, G., Le Ministere pastoral de Jean-Jacques Olier, cure de Saint-Sulpice 1642-1652 (Paris, 1905), 22, 57–64 Google Scholar; Dagens, J., Bèrulle et les origines de la restauration catholique (1575-1611) (Bruges, 1952), 357–9 Google Scholar; Dupuy, M., Se laisser a I’Esprit. L’itineraire spirituel de Jean-Jacques Olier (Paris, 1982), 30, 175–6, 389 Google Scholar; Bellord, J., Monsieur Olier (1608-1657) (1899), 30 Google Scholar.

5 [Anon.], Abrégé de la vie de M. Olier fondateur du séminaire de Saint-Sulpice et de la colonie de Montréal, en Canada (Montreal, 1866), 44, 81, 89, 94, 100; Dupuy, Se laisser À I’Esprit, 188-9, 197; Hamel, C., Histoire de I’église [de] Saint-Sulpice (Paris, 1900), 60–4 Google Scholar; Pourrat, P.,, P.S.S., Jean-Jacques Olier, fondateur de Saint-Sulpice ([Paris], 1932), 131–5, 148 Google Scholar; [Anon.], M. Olier, instituteur et fondateur de la Congregation de Saint-Sulpice (Lille, 1861), 59.

6 Thompson, Life of M. Olier, 13, 26, 29, 54, 110; M. Olier, instituteur et fondateur, 18; G.-M. de Fruges, J.-J. Olier (1608-1657) curé de Saint-Sulpice et fondateur des séminaires. Essai d’histoire religieuse sur le XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1904), 16, 19,33,69, 112.

7 Fruges,J.-J. Olier, 343, 391-3, 443-4; Lettres de M. Olier, curù de la paroisse et fondateur du seminaire de Saint-Sulpice, ed. Levesque, E., P.S.S., 2 vols (Paris, 1935)Google Scholar, I:xxi, 469-76, 2:38-9, 154-5; Hamel, Histoire, 83, 97-8; Thompson, Life of M. Olier, 355.

8 Morgain, S.-M., Pierre de Bérulle et les Carmélites de France. La querelie du gouvernement 1583-1629 (Paris, 1995)Google Scholar; Pourrat, Olier, 122-3, 126; cf. Hamel, Histoire, 91-2; Dupuy, Se laisser À I’Esprit, 175-6.

9 Hamel, Histoire, 59, 68;Pourrat, Olier, 100, 103, 213.

10 Dupuy, Se laisser À I’Esprit, 176; Hamel, Histoire, 60-6; Bertrand, Bihliothéque Sulpkienne, 1:3; Pourrat, Olier, 102, 129-35, 163; Thompson, Life of M. Olier, 115-16, 129, 352, 355; Fruges, J.-J. Olier, III, 170, 297-302, 340, 342-5; Levesque, Letlres de M. Olier, 1:469-76, 2:38-9, 155.

11 von Pastor, L., The History of the Popes, from the Close of the Middle Ages, 40 vols (1891–1953), 29:77, 82–7 Google Scholar;Bremond, Histoire litteraire, 4:202-11.

12 Chatellier, L., the Europe of the Devout. The Catholic Reformation and the Formation of a New Society (Cambridge, 1989), 155–6 Google Scholar.

13 M. Venard, ed., L’Age de raison (1620/30-1750) [= J.-M. Mayer et ah, eds, Histoire du Christianisme, 9] (Paris, 1997), 245, 271, 842-3, 850, 856.

14 Williams, CE., The French Oratorians and Absolutism, 1611-1641 (New York, 1989), 293 Google Scholar.

15 Wanegffelen, T., Une difficile fidélité. Catholiques malgré le Concile en France, XVIe-XVIIe siécles (Paris, 1999), 210 Google Scholar.

16 Venard, M., Reforme protestante, réforme catholique dans la province d’Avignon (Paris, 1993)Google Scholar.

17 Wanegffelen, Une difficile fidelite, 213-16.

18 Chaunu, P.,Foisil, M.,de Noirfontaine, F., Le Basculement retigieux de Paris au XVIIIe siécle (Paris, 1998)Google Scholar: P. Chaunu, ‘Avant-propos’, 15-18, and ‘Livre premier. Les fondements de la crisc’, 19-149; cf. his ‘Postface’, 531-40.

19 Chaunu, ‘Livre premier’, 63-7, 84-5.

20 Chaunu, ‘Postface’, 537-8.

21 Doyle, W., Jansenism. Resistance to Aulhority from the Reformation to the French Revolution (Basingstoke, 2000), 27, 89 Google Scholar.