Nicolas Caussin

Nicolas Caussin
Father Nicolas Caussin
Born	1583 Troyes, France
Died	July 2, 1651 (aged 67–68)
Occupations	Jesuit priest and orator
Known for	confessor to King Louis XIII of France
Notable work	treatise, The Holy Court

Nicolas Caussin (1583 – July 2, 1651) was a French Jesuit, orator; and for a time, confessor to King Louis XIII of France. His treatise, The Holy Court, a guide for courtiers in living a Christian life, was published in 1624. Caussin was removed from his position as royal confessor after only nine months and exiled to Quimper when his spiritual counsel seemed to clash with Cardinal Richelieu's political policies.

Life

Caussin was born in Troyes, the son of a physician. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1609. He taught at Rouen, La Flèche, and Paris, and became a noted orator. Famous for his 1624 La Cour saincte, in March 1637, Cardinal Richelieu chose Caussin for the position of Louis XIII's confessor; and at the same time admonished him to stay out of politics.

France and Spain had been at war since 1635. In the summer of 1637, Richelieu ordered an inquiry into secret communications between Anne of Austria and her brother, Philip IV of Spain. The queen had been a long-time opponent of the Cardinal. While her household was replaced by people loyal to the king and cardinal, Caussin's counsel was crucial in obtaining royal clemency for the queen. He encouraged the king to honor his conjugal obligations and after twenty years of marriage and four miscarriages, an heir, Louis XIV, was born the following September.

As a conscientious and rigorous spiritual director, Caussin drew the king's attention to his strained relations with his mother; the damage caused by France's policies not only in France but in Christendom, the destruction caused by the country's wars, and the high taxes levied to fight them. In particular, he maintained that the war with Catholic Spain was against God's will.

In December of that same year, Richelieu exiled Caussin to Quimper.

Caussin returned to Paris in 1643, following the death of Richelieu. When the Jesuits attacked the Jansenists as heretics similar to Calvinists, Antoine Arnauld wrote in defense the Théologie morale des Jésuites (Moral Theology of Jesuits), which denounced the "relaxed moral" of Jesuit casuistry. Caussin was charged by his order with the task of writing a defense against Arnauld's book. Réponse au libelle intitulé La Théologie morale des Jésuites was issued in 1644. According to Sellier, due to his rigorism and to the formulations in those books justifying the "relaxed moral" concerning confession, the public generally considered that he had written against his thought by fidelity to his jesuit order.

Caussin became confessor to Louis, Grand Condé. He died July 2, 1651.

Jansenist Antoine Arnauld said that the reason for Caussin's fall from grace was that he spoke against the efficacy of Imperfect contrition. This cause was re-asserted by Philippe Sellier and Gérard Ferreyrolles in their 2004 edition of Pascal's works.

Works

• De Eloquentia sacra et humana
• Tragœdiae sacrae, 1620.
• "De symbolica Aegyptiorum sapientia", 1623.
• La Cour sainte
• Apologie pour les religieux de la Compagnie de Jésus, à la reine régente, 1644.
• Réponse au libelle intitulé La Théologie morale des Jésuites, 1644.
• https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Caussin%2C%20Nicolas%2C%201583%2D1651

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Nicolas Caussin — A famous Jesuit preacher and moralist; b. at Troyes in France, in 1583; d. at Paris, 2 July, 1651. His father, a physician of extensive practice, was able from a competent income to aid materially in the development of the remarkable talents that his son early displayed. Young Caussin's success in oratory, particularly after his entry into the Society of Jesus (1609), was brilliant, and drew to him the attention of the royal family. When the kingdom of Henry IV was fast declining under the impotent sway of the queen-regent, Marie de' Medici, Louis XIII came to the throne. Richelieu summoned Caussin to court to direct the young king's conscience. The task was a difficult one in those disturbed times, but Caussin, with scrupulous earnestness, gave his heart and soul to the work. The king, who relied implicitly on him, was made to realize that peace would once more reign in his realm and in his own soul when he recalled the queen-mother and other members of the royal family from the banishment in which they were languishing. Richelieu disliked this advice and accused Caussin of raising false scruples in the king's mind, and even of holding communications that savoured of treachery or that were at all events disloyal to his sovereign, with another of the royal chaplains. Caussin was at once banished to Quimper-Corentin in Brittany, where he remained until the death of Richelieu in 1643, when he returned to Paris to prepare his works for the press.

Many false statement regarding Caussin's disgrace were current. The Jansenist Arnauld claims that "it was well known from persons intimately connected at the former court of Louis XIII, that Father Caussin considered himself obliged to tell His Majesty that attrition, arising from the fear of hell alone, was not sufficient for justification, as there could be no justification without love of God, and this was what caused his disgrace." Many more surmises were engaged in by other Jansenists, but the reason given above is admitted by unfriendly biographers of the father. Among his works are: "La Cour Sainte" (5 vols.)—"A comprehensive system of moral maxims, pious reflections and historical examples, forming in itself a complete library of rational entertainment, Catholic devotion, and Christian knowledge." It was translated into several languages and has done much to perpetuate his fame. The English translation was printed in Dublin in 1815. "Le parallèle de l'éloquence sacree et profane"; "La vie de Sante Isabelle de France, soeur du roi St. Louis"; "Vie du Cardinal du Richelieu"; "Thesaurus Græcæ Poeseos." For his other works see De Backer, "Bibl. des écriv. de la c. de J." (Liège, 1855), and Sommervogel (new ed., Liège), II Feller, Biog. Univ. (Paris 1834); Duhr, Jesuiten Fabelen (4th ed., 1904), 670 sqq.; Cherot in Dict. de théol. cath., s.v.

Bibliography

• G.-D. Hocking: A Study of the 'Tragœdiae sacrae' of Father Caussin, Baltimore, 1943.