Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature
pfscl
0343-0758
2941-086X
Narr Verlag Tübingen
121
2009
3671
In Commemoration of the 350th Anniversary of Pascal’s Lettres Provinciales: ’L’Amour de Dieu’, Rhetorical Strategies of the Controversy
121
2009
Christine McCall Probes
pfscl36710529
PFSCL XXXVI, 71 (2009) In Commemoration of the 350 th Anniversary of Pascal’s Lettres Provinciales : ‘L’Amour de Dieu’, Rhetorical Strategies of the Controversy CHRISTINE MCCALL PROBES University of South Florida The controversial concept of “l’Amour de Dieu” at the center of the tenth letter of Pascal’s Provinciales occupied “les grands esprits” of seventeenthcentury France, stimulating works by turns profound, satirical and lyrical. The present study explores rhetorical strategies employed by Pascal and briefly evokes those of Boileau and Bossuet, in defense of the contritionnaires who insisted that love for God and not mere fear was necessary for salvation. Jesus’ words as reported in Matthew 22: 37-40: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind [...],” inspired a defense whose rhetorical strategies embraced the lyric along with the vehement. The link between Pascal, Boileau and Bossuet, as concerns this controversy, extends beyond the thematic, providing a glimpse of a very real network of communication. Boileau, who did not cease to express his admiration for Pascal’s Lettres, vaunting it to partisans of both sides as “le plus parfaict ouvrage qui soit en nostre langue,” 1 and finding therein inspiration for his Épître XII, sent his piece to Bossuet who termed it a “hymne céleste de l’amour divin.” 2 Bossuet himself dedicated a treatise to the subject, his Traité de l’Amour de Dieu nécessaire dans le Sacrement de pénitence, published posthumously in 1736; the theme is also central to his numerous sermons, orations, meditations and letters, presenting to his diverse public, the king and court included, the obligation to love God: “Aimons, aimons [...] Dieu 1 “Lettre à Antoine Arnauld,” juin 1694 in Boileau, Œuvres complètes, ed. Françoise Escal (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1966), pp. 791-94. 2 Letter to l’abbé Renaudot in Correspondance, eds. Levesque and Urbain (Paris: Hachette, 1909-1926) 15 vols. 7: pp. 75-77. Christine McCall Probes 530 de tout notre cœur. Nous ne sommes pas chrétiens, si du moins, nous ne nous efforçons de l’aimer.” 3 Linguists and historians of the French language admire in the Lettres Provinciales “la prose parlée d’un homme du monde, qui cause sur un mode plus ou moins grave.” 4 Walther von Wartburg points out that if a similar text had been written some fifty years earlier it would have been full of crude, vulgar terms (we think of Rabelais, for example, who with great effect joined important theological points to such language). Wartburg writes admiringly of Pascal’s logic and controlled power which also includes moments of lyricism: “les forces [...] se sont transfigurés en musique.” 5 Closer to our day, Erec Koch has argued that “the Provinciales is a landmark in the history of rhetoric for it typifies the shift that that field undergoes in the seventeenth century.” 6 Regarding the Biblical text at the center of the controversy (Jesus’ words in Matthew 22: 37), Pascal’s hermeneutic endeavor was facilitated by the Bibles he had at hand, in Greek and in Latin, as well as the de Sacy Bible (although the publication date is a few years after that of the Lettres Provinciales, we remember that de Sacy was one of the Solitaires and available for consultation). 7 Philippe Sellier reminds us that Pascal was participating in the first discussions about this translation, the New Testament in particular, held at the château de Vaumurier, near Port-Royal 3 “Sermon de Pentecôte de 1654” quoted by Jacques Truchet in his masterful La Prédication de Bossuet (Paris: Cerf, 1960) 2 vols. 1: p. 254. See in particular his chapter “L’Âme chrétienne,” 1: pp. 245-80. 4 Walther von Wartburg, Évolution et structure de la langue française (Berne: Francke, 1969), p. 181. 5 Ibid. 6 “Sacred/ Secular Rhetoric in Pascal’s Lettres provinciales” in Intersections, eds. Faith Beasley and Kathleen Wine (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, Biblio 17, vol. 161, 2005), p. 332. 7 For a complete picture of the Bibles that Pascal had at his disposition, see Philippe Sellier’s essay “La Bible de Pascal” in Le Grand Siècle et la Bible, ed. J.-R. Armogathe (Paris: Beauchesne, 1989), pp. 701-719. Sellier refers the reader to O. Barenne’s Une grande bibliothèque de Port-Royal. Inventaire inédit de la Bibliothèque de Issac-Louis Le Maistre de Sacy (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1985) and declares that Pascal’s citations allow us to determine that he worked with at least three Bibles: the Vulgate, the polyglot Bible “dite de Vatable” (containing the Greek, the Vulgate, a modern Latin translation based on the Hebrew - that of Sante Pagnino in 1528 - and the Hebrew text), and the most recent French translation by the theologians of Louvain in 1578 (Sellier remarks that the archaic language of the latter was what decided the Port-Royal scholars to undertake the “magnifique traduction connue sous le nom de Bible de Sacy”, p. 701. ‘L’Amour de Dieu’, Rhetorical Strategies of the Controversy 531 des Champs, in 1656-1657, the very time of the composition of the first letters of the Provinciales. 8 What were the circumstances and the terms at the heart of the debate on “l’Amour de Dieu”? The controversy with its long history began, as far as early modern times are concerned, with the bull Exsurge Domine of June 15, 1520 upheld by the Council of Trent (1545-1549, 1551-1552 and 1562- 1563) which promulgated “une conception plus sociale de la vie chrétienne” focusing on “attrition” or the fear of God accompanied by the sacraments. Furetière would define “attrition” some fifty years later as “le regret d’avoir offensé Dieu, causé par la seule crainte qu’on a de ses châtimens, & des peines de l’enfer,” reminding us briefly of the history of the term and its controversy, from the Church Fathers who saw the usefulness of the concept as a first step or degree of conversion, “une disposition à la repentance,” to certain medieval theologians who accepted the sufficiency of attrition accompanied by the sacraments. 9 With the publication in France of the Jesuit Antoine Sirmond’s Defense de la vertu (1641), the quarrel knew a resurgence. Pascal’s tenth letter, of August 2, 1656, supports the opposite conception, “contrition,” defined by Furetière as the “regret d’avoir offensé Dieu, causé par un parfait amour pour lui [...] une douleur animée de l’amour de Dieu, laquelle tire son origine, non de l’appréhension des supplices de l’enfer, mais du deplaisir d’avoir offensé Dieu, & de lui avoir deplu.” 10 Furetière reminds us of the ambiguity of the Council of Trent’s declarations (Sess. XIV, ch. 4) and that a series of popes had condemned attrition as scandalous (Alexander VII and Innocent XI) or as heretical (Alexander VIII). France’s clergy was divided on this point in the seventeenth century: on May 5, 1667 the Saint-Office declared the opinion of the casuists “plus commune”; in 1676 l’abbé Jacques Boileau, brother of the poet and dean of the Sorbonne’s faculty of theology, published De la contrition nécessaire pour obtenir la rémission des péchez dans le Sacrement de Pénitence; and in 1694 in the Cathéchisme de Méaux, Bossuet insisted on the necessity of loving God to obtain the remission of sins. His Traité de l’Amour de Dieu nécessaire dans le Sacrement de Pénitence similarly argues for contrition. Both Bossuet and le Père de La Chaise approved of Boileau’s Épître XII, the latter insisting on its usefulness to a wide audience (Mme de Maintenon writes to Noailles on September 28, 1696: “J’ay eu ce matin une grande conversation avec le P. de La Chaise sur l’amour de Dieu: il veut que la satire de Despréaux soit 8 Ibid., p. 705. 9 Dictionnaire universel (La Haye and Rotterdam: Arnout et Reinier Leers, 1690, rpt. New York: Georg Olms, 1972). 10 Ibid. Christine McCall Probes 532 donné au public.” As the century drew to its close, Leibnitz remarked on the crucial quality of the controversy: “Ce qui me paroît le plus important dans la dispute qu’il y a entre les Jésuites et les Jansénistes, c’est l’importance de l’amour divin ou de la pénitence sincère, indépendante de la crainte ou de l’espérance.” 11 It is important to be reminded of the political aspect of the controversy. Nicolas Caussin, the Jesuit confessor of Louis XIII in 1637, taught that contrition (the repentance which comes from sorrow at having displeased God, not due to fear of punishment) was essential. Louis XIII seems to have had psychological problems which included an incapacity to feel love, in particular toward God. Cardinal Richelieu reassured the king that that attrition was sufficient and exiled Caussin to Quimper, thereby augmenting his own ascendancy with the king. 12 In the tenth letter Pascal marshals logic, deductive reason, sustained interrogation and exclamation, the tactic of pitting Jesuit against Jesuit in his citations, ridicule (“C’est ainsi que nos pères ont déchargé les hommes de l’obligation pénible d’aimer Dieu actuellement.” 695 [italics in Pascal]), even prayer. Expressing astonishment at the teachings of the attritionnaires, “Avant l’Incarnation on était obligé d’aimer Dieu; mais depuis que Dieu a tant aimé le monde qu’il lui a donné son Fils unique [John 3: 16, italics in Pascal], le monde racheté par lui sera déchargé de l’aimer. Étrange théologie de nos jours! ” (696), the author of the tenth letter of the Provinciales concludes with the highly ironic prayer for his interlocutor and collèguespères: “Je [...] prie Dieu qu’il daigne leur faire connaître combien est fausse la lumière qui les a conduits jusqu’à de tels précipices, et qu’il remplisse de son amour ceux qui en dispensent les hommes” (696). Erec Koch, in his masterful Pascal and Rhetoric: Figural and Persuasive Language in the Scientific Treatises, the Provinciales, and the Pensées, has termed the varied tactics of the Provinciales “seductive fictions,” affirming that: Pascal’s genius lies in the use of literary devices in the constitution of a fiction, an affabulation, that does not stand opposed in essence to the truth but rather can serve as its instrument and ornament [...]. Pascal does not merely rely on the literary and rhetorical as sources of ancillary devices, 11 My summary account of the controversy is drawn in part from Boileau, Œuvres complètes, eds. Antoine Adam and Françoise Escal (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1966) notes, pp. 982-984. Adam and Escal cite Maintenon’s letter from Lettres, La Beaumelle 5: 107 and Leibnitz’s letter of July 14, 1690 to Prince Ernest de Hesse-Rhinfelds from Œuvres complètes of Arnauld, 4: p. 202. 12 Michel Le Guern, ed., Pascal. Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1998) 2 vols. 1: pp. notes 1203-1207. Subsequent citations will appear in the text of this article. ‘L’Amour de Dieu’, Rhetorical Strategies of the Controversy 533 but he uses rhetoric as structuring principle for the representation of matters of theological debate. 13 Pascal’s use of the dialogic fiction is compelling in itself. As Montalte-Pascal opens the tenth letter preparing his “provincial reader” for the Jesuit interlocutor’s words, we learn one of the “grands principes” of the Society and a key method: “Vous y verrez les adoucissements de la confession, qui sont assurément le meilleur moyen que ces pères aient trouvé pour attirer tout le monde” (684). Then in instructing the “naïve” narrator, the Jesuit father praises the success of “nos pères” in discovering that a great many things, formerly regarded as forbidden, are [now] innocent and allowable. The reader cannot help but note the pride with which the interlocutor points toward the very “palliatives” Pascal is combating. Antithesis serves irony as the Jesuit explains the expiation of sins, “en rendant la confession aussi aisée qu’elle était difficile autrefois” (684). Elsewhere irony may be supported by antithesis or antiphrasis illuminated by semantics. The irony in the “naïve narrator’s” plea for further enlightenment is unmistakable: “Apprenez-moi donc, je vous prie, mon père, ces finesses si salutaires” (685). Since salvation is at the heart of the debate, to qualify the methods of the Jesuits as “salutaires” underscores the incongruity of both their language and their practice. Already contradictions in the father’s language begin to be apparent as what he had previously termed “easy” (“la manière d’expier facilement”) he now vaunts as “admirable subtleties” or “de pieuses [...] finesses; et un saint artifice de dévotion” (684). A dark humor accompanies narrator Pascal’s use of “finesses.” The Jesuit has been lauding and quoting the “pères de Flandres” for their “finesses.” The seventeenth-century intended reader, the cultivated elite, would not fail to grasp the negative sense - “craft, subtilitie, guile, deceit, cunning, fraud, wiliness, dissimulation.” 14 La Rochefoucauld, writing 13 (Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood P, 1997), pp. 73-74. For further discussion on the “seductive” quality of the petites lettres, see also Louis A. MacKenzie, Jr.’s “Linguistic Displacement in the Lettres Provinciales,” Modern Language Studies 20.1 (1990): pp. 79-94. MacKenzie refers to Roger Duchêne’s L’Imposture littéraire dans les Provinciales de Pascal (Aix-en-Provence: U de Provence, 1984) agreeing that “the Provinciales do continue to seduce, but in the way novels seduce. Readers are pulled into Pascal’s plot and are so enchanted by the fiction [...] that they forget to distinguish the author, Pascal, from his agent/ hero, Louis de Montalte” (MacKenzie 79). Gérard Ferreyrolles has written compellingly of the complex role of Pascal’s fiction, “un jésuite fictif [...] [,] un interlocuteur fictif [...] [, un] Montalte triple” in Blaise Pascal, Les Provinciales (Paris: PUF, 1984), pp. 44-52. 14 Randle Cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (London: Islip, 1611, rpt. Columbia, SC: U of South Carolina P, 1968). The antiphrasis here, “ces Christine McCall Probes 534 in the same decade as Pascal in the Provinciales, elaborates on the quality in his “De la différence des esprits”: “Un esprit de finesse ne va jamais droit, il cherche des biais et des détours pour faire réussir ses desseins. Cette conduite est bientôt découverte: elle se fait toujours craindre et ne mène presque jamais aux grandes choses.” 15 Of course Pascal also wrote on “finesse” in a different sense in his “Géométrie et finesse”: “la finesse [intuition] est la part du jugement, la géométrie celle de l’esprit.” 16 A further irony occurs at this juncture since narrator Pascal’s request that his interlocutor instruct him on these “finesses si salutaires” produces, on the part of the Jesuit father, an exposition revealing the perniciousness of the “finesses.” Instead of explaining the circumstances of sin, penitence, resolution for the future (the avoidance of similar occasions, etc.), the interlocutor’s focus is ironically on the importance of staying in the good graces of the confessor. To bolster his point Pascal has the Jesuit quote “authorities” of his society, Escobar and Suarez, who advise having two confessors for commodity’s sake and the subtlety of lumping a new sin in a “general confession” so that the confessor doesn’t realize it is new. It seems that one authority is never sufficient (although these authorities often are not in agreement as Pascal frequently points out). Koch refers to Pascal’s fifth letter where the Jesuit interlocutor names no fewer than forty-six “docteurs graves” who seemingly have replaced Saint Augustine, Saint Chrysostome, Saint Jerome and the other Church Fathers in matters of “morale.” Koch points out that this “irreducible diversity of voices, clamors like the cacophonous ring of their own names.” 17 Irony may be intensified in association with logic. When narrator Pascal responds in astonishment to a series of citations made by his Jesuit interlocutor (the named authorities advise only confessing in general terms even sins as pernicious as divination and rape) he concludes logically that we should no longer call confession the sacrament of penance (687). The irony in the Jesuit’s rejoinder, “Vous avez tort [...] car au moins on en donne toujours quelqu’une [a penance] pour la forme” (687), reminds us of the etymology of the rhetorical term; the Greek eiron derives from eironeia, finesses si salutaires,” underscores the equivocity of the Jesuits as contrasted to Pascal’s “reverence for the principles of unicity, univocity and truth” so perceptively demonstrated by MacKenzie, p. 92. 15 L. Martin-Chauffier and Jean Marchand, eds. La Rochefoucauld. Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1964), pp. 528-29. 16 Gérard Ferreyrolles and Philippe Sellier, eds. Blaise Pascal. Les Pensées (Paris: Garnier, 2004), pp. 1197-1201, here p. 1201. 17 Koch, Pascal and Rhetoric, p. 81. ‘L’Amour de Dieu’, Rhetorical Strategies of the Controversy 535 “dissembling.” Just as “numbers” rather than truth were stressed earlier (“pour attirer tout le monde” 684), so here “form” trumps truth. The emphasis on “form” is intensified by the logical implication of duplicity on the part of the confessors: the Jesuit father assures the narrator that the confessors absolve as if they believed the penitent’s word as true though, in point of fact, they believe no such thing. The reference both to particular authorities (Suarez and Filiutius) and the use of the official, seemingly authoritative language resuming: “ita docent omnes autores,” only adds to the ridicule and the irony. The reader is impressed by the shifting truth advocated by the Jesuits “de quoi satisfaire tout le monde” (Cinquième lettre, 626) as the Jesuit’s retort to narrator Pascal’s own reference to a Jesuit authority who opposed the seemingly unanimous view illustrates: “cela est maintenant si peu de saison” (689). Koch calls the casuist tradition with its emphasis on numbers and shifting truth a “figural dismemberment of the body and the severance of body and spirit,” contrasting it convincingly with Pascal’s picture of the unified loving body in the Pensées (372/ 404). 18 Logic, humor and still another reference to “numbers” join with irony as narrator Pascal inquires whether the assurance of always having absolution wouldn’t encourage sinners, suggesting instead that the latter be counseled to stay away from the “occasions prochaines” of temptation. This suggestion would also serve to relieve the constant demand for confession, a logical response to the Jesuit’s lament, “nous sommes accablés [...] sous la foule de nos pénitents” (689). Humor gives way to serious exchange and opposition regarding the “occasions prochaines.” While the Jesuit father quoting Father Bauny as authority focuses on externals, avoiding not the “occasions prochaines” but any “incommodité” and appearance of scandal, narrator Pascal focuses on the internal, the conversion of the heart, countermanding the ecclesiastical authority with Jesus’ own instructions in Mark 9 on avoiding “des occasions de chute.” Narrator Pascal’s unrelenting interrogation on this point provokes astonishment on the part of the Jesuit: “Comment! dit-il, ce serait là une véritable contrition! ” (691). The discussion that ensues on attrition versus contrition reveals that narrator Pascal, no longer so naïve seeming, has read and can quote precisely a number of Jesuit authorities (even some whom his interlocutor has alleged as indisputable) who accept that a certain degree of love toward God is essential (attrition should be “mêlée de quelque amour de Dieu” 691). Here again we see astonishment on the part of the Jesuit who realizes 18 Ibid., pp. 82-84. Christine McCall Probes 536 that narrator Pascal has read “nos auteurs.” However, he insists that Pascal needs to do this “avec quelqu’un de nous” so as to interpret them properly (692). Alleged friendship should bolster authority as the interlocutor cites Diana, “notre ami intime,” to establish the evolution of the concept of contrition from necessary after the commission of a “péché mortel” to an obligation on feast days, to the moment of death and even then replaceable by “attrition avec le sacrement” (692). Instead of the interlocutor’s friendship with the “authority” bringing him prestige and credibility in narrator Pascal’s eyes as well as the reader’s, the lengthy quotation brings to light the degradation of doctrine from the supernatural to the natural. Pascal makes a major point by his reminder that to deny the supernatural is a heresy condemned by the Council. The Jesuit father seems to use inverse logic as he refers not to the ultimate ecclesiastical body, but to the fathers of a particular college and their theses, attempting to show that if contrition or true repentance inspired by love of God rather than fear is deemed necessary to the sacrament, it leaves nothing for the sacrament to do. Narrator Pascal’s shocking deduction demonstrates his use of precise logic; if attrition, induced by the mere fear of punishment is sufficient, then a person could be saved “sans avoir jamais aimé Dieu en sa vie” (693). This deduction however is in the form of a question, prolonging the “seductive fiction” of the seemingly naïve narrator seeking instruction and leading the Jesuit interlocutor to trace with an admiring tone the history of the degradation of repentance inspired by love as commanded by Jesus to absolution accorded to the fearing sinner, resuming: “C’est ainsi que nos pères ont déchargé les hommes de l’obligation pénible d’aimer Dieu actuellement” (695). The Jesuit is quoting from a book which was at the very center of the controversy and which had been attacked by Antoine Arnauld since 1641 in his Extrait de quelques erreurs et impiétés contenues dans un livre intitulé “La Défense de la vertu” par le P. Antoine Sirmond (notes 1209). The powerful figure of repetition joins logic and humor, as by reiterated questions, the narrator leads the Jesuit father to trace twice and in detail the doctrine’s degradation from love to fear. The repetition extends to the conclusion drawn; the humor cannot be missed as both narrator and interlocutor agree that the logic would dispense humans from the obligation of loving God (693, 695). In the eleventh letter, Pascal himself justifies thoroughly his use of irony and humor or “raillerie” as both an “action de justice” (he appeals to Christ’s discourses as well as to the examples of the prophets Elijah, Daniel and Jeremiah and the Church Fathers), and a strategy occasioned by “l’esprit de charité” which desires the salvation of one’s adversaries (699, 705). The humor of the Provinciales was not missed by Racine who in ‘L’Amour de Dieu’, Rhetorical Strategies of the Controversy 537 justifying the theatre asks, “Et vous semble-t-il que les Lettres provinciales soient autre chose que des comédies? [...] Le monde en a ri pendant quelque temps, et le plus austère janséniste aurait cru trahir la vérité que de n’en pas rire.” 19 The use of humor or “le plaisir du rire” was essential to Pascal’s intent to reach a wide public. Taking on the persona of the “provincial,” he writes in 1656 of the agreeable quality of the first two letters: “tout le monde les voit, tout le monde les entend, tout le monde les croit. Elles ne sont pas seulement estimées par les théologiens; elles sont encore agréables aux gens du monde, et intelligibles aux femmes mêmes.” An appreciation of the first letter’s “raillerie” follows, in the testimony of a woman, identified by Racine as Madeleine de Scudéry: “elle est tout à fait ingénieuse [...] elle raille finement; elle instruit même ceux qui ne savent pas bien les choses, elle redouble le plaisir de ceux qui les entendent” (605-606 and notes 1151). In his rich essay “Le XVII e siècle et le statut de la polémique,” Gérard Ferreyrolles reminds us of Cicero’s recommendation of humor in polemic as a safeguard to “urbanitas” or civility. 20 Up to this point narrator Pascal has managed to keep his “cool” or composure. Although there have been several moments of astonishment, which to be sure are intended to mirror the desired reaction on the part of the reader, thereby persuading public opinion, here narrator Pascal’s exasperation cannot be contained as he exclaims: “O mon père, il n’y a point de patience que vous ne mettiez à bout, et on ne peut ouïr sans horreur les choses que je viens d’entendre” (695). When the Jesuit attempts to distance himself from the very theologians he has quoted in support of his own reasoning, Pascal reminds him of Paul’s words in Romans 1: 32 to the effect that not only are the authors of evil condemned, but also those who approve of it. Narrator Pascal’s exasperation continues at length as he declares that it is a strange theology of our day that removes both the apostle Paul’s anathema and Jesus’ command to love God. Vehemence is combined here with an expository mode and a highly ironic intercessory prayer, that God would 19 “Lettre aux deux apologistes de l’auteur des Hérésies Imaginaires,” Racine. Œuvres complètes, ed. Raymond Picard (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1960) 2 vols. 2: p. 29. 20 Littératures classiques 59 (2006): pp. 5-27, here p. 21. In his demonstration of the extensive polemic dimensions of the seventeenth century, Ferreyrolles reminds us of Emmanuel Bury’s “idée stimulante” to substitute a “périodisation fondée sur les querelles” for the usual literary ones, in his “Frontières du classicisme” Littératures classiques 34 (1998): pp. 217-35. Christine McCall Probes 538 grant to the Jesuit interlocutor and to the doctors of his society the very love from which they have dared to give man a dispensation (696). 21 While an exhaustive study of the rhetorical strategies used by all participants in the controversy surrounding “l’Amour de Dieu” is well beyond the scope of the present study, my longer study will undertake, as a complement, an analysis of Boileau’s Épistre XII and of Bossuet’s Traité de l’amour de Dieu. While a highly diverse rhetoric permitted Pascal to reach (convaincre and agréer) his intended broad readership, some were appalled by his raillerie, not only those attacked but also, as Arnauld noted, “des dévots et des dévotes, et même de nos meilleurs amis, qui croyaient que cette manière d’écrire n’était point chrétienne.” 22 To the letters being placed on the Index in 1657, Pascal would write in the “Manuscrit Périer,” fragment 746: “Si mes Lettres sont condamnées à Rome, ce que j’y condamne est condamné dans le ciel.” 23 Although Boileau had long pondered and defended “le vrai amour de Dieu,” he nevertheless refers to himself as “le Theologien temeraire” in the preface to the Épistres nouvelles (X, XI and XII). 24 His intended readership extends well beyond the “first reader” or dédicataire, l’abbé Renaudot, who is however not forgotten among the throng addressed directly in Épistre XII: “confesseurs insensés,” “ignorans seducteurs,” “Docteurs,” “Aveugles dangereux,” and the general reader to whom a series of interrogations inspired by several New Testament passages is directed. The multiplicity of rhetorical strategies employed in this emphatic “Discours” (v. 135) or “Prosopopée” (v. 236) underscores the protean quality of the genre 25 itself: highly dramatic tableaux or mises en scène, often antithetical; reiterated apostrophes and antiphrases; lyrical passages; proof texts and careful definitions of key 21 In his recent article “L’éthique polémique de Pascal,” Olivier Jouslin includes an analysis of Pascal as an “ironiste polémique” who rather than being a “satirique, un froid exécuteur” is instead “un ironiste philosophe qui investit dans le dialogue polémique son véritable destinataire, le public, qu’il prend bien soin de dissocier de son adversaire,” Littératures classiques 59 (2006): pp. 117-39, here p. 137. 22 Cited by Ferreyrolles, Blaise Pascal. Les Provinciales, p. 95. 23 Ferreyrolles and Sellier, eds. Blaise Pascal. Les Pensées, p. 569. 24 Lettre à Brossette of 15 November 1709, cited in Boileau, Œuvres complètes 983 notes and préface pp. 138-40, here p. 138. Boileau’s concern about the theological content of the epistle is genuine; he submitted it for approval to Bossuet, Noailles and le père de La Chaise among others, notes p. 982. 25 For an illuminating treatment of this “genre protéiforme aux virtualités multiples, non seulement métamorphique [...] mais [...] ‘gigogne,’ capable d’enchâsser une diatribe satirique, une tirade élogieuse ou un retour sur soi élégiaque,” see Alain Génetiot’s essay, “L’épître en vers mondaine de Voiture à Mme Deshoulières,” Littératures classiques 18 (1993): pp. 103-114, here pp. 104-105. ‘L’Amour de Dieu’, Rhetorical Strategies of the Controversy 539 terms; imperatives and interrogatives; rime-words which highlight either the central doctrine extolled or its adversaries (“infame/ flamme,” for example). The topos of love - man’s loving response to God’s love - is a constant in Bossuet’s colossal œuvre, whether inspirational, hortative, didactic, poetic, theoretical, directive, or polemic. Addressing by turns “la cour et la ville,” Protestant or Catholic theologians, as well as his numerous correspondants, he would remind his listeners of love’s role in the Incarnation: “C’est [...] l’amour qui l’a fait descendre pour se revêtir de la nature humaine. Mais quel cœur aura-t-il donné à cette nature humaine, sinon un cœur tout pétri d’amour? [...] ‘Dieu est charité; et qui persévère dans la charité demeure en Dieu, et Dieu en lui’ [I John 4: 16].” 26 Although in his later conferences, 27 treatises and theoretical writings Bossuet would make fine distinctions as he interpreted ecclesiastical decrees such as those of the Council of Trent, he consistently communicates man’s response to God in terms of both an obligation and a tribute: “Le Dieu de tout l’univers ne devient notre Dieu en particulier que par l’hommage de notre amour.” 28 Specific events such as La Vallière’s profession excited broad interest in the theme, 29 central to Bossuet’s sermon of her vêture of June 4, 1675, in which he exhorts his listeners: “Laissez-lui [le Saint-Esprit] remuer au fond de vos cœurs ce secret principe de l’amour de Dieu” and constructs his argument around St. Au- 26 “Panégyrique de saint Jean, Apotre” (1658), Bossuet, Œuvres, eds. l’abbé Velat and Yvonne Champailler (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1961) pp. 413- 29, here pp. 427-28. 27 Truchet in his La Prédication (1: 258, n.3) refers to Bossuet’s “remarquable conférence sur l’amour de Dieu (qui semble dater de 1699 ou de 1700) publiée dans la Revue Bossuet (année 1904).” My future study on rhetorical strategies in Bossuet’s theoretical writings, notably in his posthumously published Traité de l’Amour de Dieu, will include an examination of this conference. 28 “Sermon de l’Annonciation” (1662) in Bossuet, Œuvres oratoires, ed. Lebarq revised by Urbain et Levesque (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1914-1926) 7 vols. 4: pp. 284-90. 29 In his remarkable monograph, La Chair et l’âme: Louis XIV entre ses maîtresses et Bossuet (Grenoble: PU de Grenoble, 1995), Georges Couton provides important documentation on the public’s fascination with La Vallière’s and Montespan’s “péripéties,” resuming: “ce sermon [de la vêture de La Vallière] semble avoir dérouté les contemporains” (131). Couton also cites at length two texts of this same year on love for God, Bossuet’s letter to Louis XIV of May 1675 and his Instruction sur les devoirs des rois découlant de la nécessité d’aimer Dieu. See in particular Couton’s chapter, “Les grands espoirs déçus de Pâques 1675,” pp. 103- 53, here pp. 126-28. Christine McCall Probes 540 gustine’s definition of two loves: “Amor sui usque ad contemptum Dei; amor Dei usque ad contemptum sui” [De civitate Dei 14. 28]. 30 The fact that the writings considered in this study extend over the latter half of the seventeenth century demonstrates both the intensity and duration of the controversy. The polemic writings provide a powerful example of what Jean Mesnard terms “la vraie contestation.” 31 Finally, today’s reader of another kind of letter, a “news-bearing” one (as Michèle Longino has so aptly qualified Madame de Sévigné’s 32 ) can glimpse a lively scene depicting the controversy. Reporting in 1690 to her daughter a conversation at a dinner attended by Racine, Bourdaloue and Boileau among others, Sévigné recounts the latter’s admiration of a “moderne qui surpassoit [...] et les vieux et les nouveaux.” At the insistence of the Jesuit in attendance, Boileau names the moderne - it is Pascal. Hearing the Jesuit’s rejoinder, “Pascal est beau autant que le faux peut l’être,” Boileau alludes to what he considers the false doctrine of some of the Jesuit’s co-religionnaires, “qu’un chrétien n’est pas obligé d’aimer Dieu.” In the face of the Jesuit father’s argument, “Monsieur [...], il faut distinguer,” Boileau replies in consternation: “Distinguer [...] distinguer, morbleu! Distinguer, distinguer si nous sommes obligés d’aimer Dieu! ” 33 30 Œuvres oratoires 4: pp. 36-54. 31 “Pascal et la contestation” in La Culture du XVII e siècle: enquêtes et synthèses (Paris: PUF, 1992), pp. 393-404. Mesnard specifies as a requirement the “référence à un absolu” or “une même référence, constituée par la révélation, par le message évangélique” (403). 32 “Writing Letters, Telling Tales, Making History: Vatel’s Death Told and Retold,” French Review 66.2 (1992): pp. 229-242. 33 Madame de Sévigné. Lettres, ed. Émile Gérard-Gailly (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1963) 3 vols. 3: pp. 648-52, here pp. 651-52.
