Pierre de Bérulle | |
|---|---|
| Cardinal-Priest of Santa Maria della Pace | |
 | |
| Church | Catholic Church |
| In office | 1633–1639 |
| Previous post | Cardinal-Priest of San Lorenzo in Panisperna (1627–33) |
| Orders | |
| Ordination | 5 June 1599 |
| Created cardinal | 30 August 1627 byPope Urban VIII |
| Rank | Cardinal-Priest |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 4 February 1575 |
| Died | 2 October 1629 (aged 54) Paris, France |
| Buried | Trinità dei Monti |
| Alma mater | University of Bologna |
Pierre de Bérulle (French pronunciation:[pjɛʁdəbeʁyl]; 4 February 1575 – 2 October 1629) was aFrench Catholic priest,cardinal and statesman in 17th-century France. He was the founder of theFrench school of spirituality and counted among his disciplesVincent de Paul andFrancis de Sales, although both developed significantly different spiritual theologies.
Bérulle was born in the Château ofCérilly, nearTroyes inChampagne, into two families of distinguished magistrates on 4 February 1575.[1] The château de Cérilly is situated in the modern department ofYonne, while the village adjacent to it,Bérulle, is inAube. He was educated by theJesuits at Clermont and at theSorbonne in Paris. He published his first work, hisBref Discours de l'abnegation interieure, in 1597. Soon after his ordination as a priest in 1599, he assistedCardinal Duperron in his public controversy with theProtestantPhilippe de Mornay, and made numerous converts.
With the co-operation of his cousin, Madame Acarie (Marie of the Incarnation), in 1604 he introduced theDiscalced Carmelitenuns of the reform ofTeresa of Ávila into France.[1]
In 1608, Vincent de Paul moved to Paris, where he came under the influence ofAbbé (later Cardinal) Pierre de Bérulle, whom he took as hisspiritual director for a time. De Bérulle was responsible for De Paul taking up an appointment to theparish of Clichy.[2]
A mainstay of theCounter-Reformation in France, in 1611 Bérulle founded in Paris the Congregation of theFrench Oratory, on the model of the one founded in 1556 byPhilip Neri at Rome. The French congregation, however, varied in important respects from the Italian Oratory.[3]
Bérulle was a chaplain to KingHenry IV of France, and several times declined his offers to be made a bishop. He obtained the necessary dispensations from Rome forHenrietta Maria's marriage toCharles I, and acted as her chaplain during the first year of her stay in England. In 1626, as French ambassador to Spain, he concluded the favourableTreaty of Monzón, to which his enemyCardinal Richelieu found objections. After the reconciliation of KingLouis XIII with his mother,Marie de Medici, through his agency, he was appointed a councillor of state, but had to resign this office, owing to his pro-Habsburg policy, which was opposed by Richelieu. For religious reasons, Cardinal Bérulle favored the allegiance of France with Austria and Spain, the other Catholic powers, while Cardinal Richelieu wanted to undermine their influence in Europe.[4] He was made cardinal byPope Urban VIII on 30 August 1627, but never received the red hat.
Bérulle died October 2, 1629, in Paris, while celebrating Mass, and was buried in the chapel of the OratorianCollege of Juilly.[4]
In the early part of his career, Bérulle was confident of the ability of the individual to both remake society and reform the church. Relying on human reason and diligent effort, he worked to convert the Huguenots through theological treatises and conferences. When his efforts seemed to have little effect, he came to the realization that everything depended on God, and that one should attempt to live in accordance with the will of God without concern for success or failure.[5]
Bérulle is generally regarded as being an initiator of the French School of Spirituality, a powerful spiritual, missionary, and reform movement that animated the church in France in the early seventeenth century. The movement was characterized by a deep sense of God's grandeur and of the Church as the Body of Christ, a pessimistic Augustinian view of man that nonetheless stressed positive potential through God, and a strong apostolic and missionary commitment.[2]Cornelius Jansen andJean du Vergier de Hauranne (the Abbé (Abbot) of Saint-Cyran), key collaborators of Bérulle, worked together to promote an Augustinian penitential theology, hoping that Bérulle’s Oratory would be the means by which the theology would displace that of "laxist" Jesuits.[6]
Bérulle's depiction of the mystical journey through Mary to Christ, and through Christ to theTrinity is a hallmark of the French School of spirituality.[7]
It has been asserted that the term "school" is potentially problematic, though, because at least some other cited members of this "school," such asJean Eudes,Jean-Jacques Olier,Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, andJean-Baptiste de La Salle, do not simply develop the thought of Bérulle, but all have their own significant insights. It has, therefore, been asserted that the "school" does not have simply one founder. However, the many common elements (such as an emphasis on living in the Spirit of Jesus, particular forms of meditative prayer, and, in some measure, a spiritual theology of priesthood taught in seminaries influenced by French School since the 1600s), means that it can be considered as a distinct tradition of spirituality, more recently known as Berullism.[8]
Substantial and polemicized Lutheran, Calvinist, and Counter-Reformation theological and philosophical notions have been noted in Berulle's spiritual theology of priesthood. This spiritual theology created a sea change in the Roman Catholic theology of the priesthood, principally through an over-identification with Christ, according to Clare McGrath-Merkle. Berullian clerical spirituality has been characterized by a negative spiritual anthropology of self-annihilationism and neantism in which the priest must lose his identity to make room for that of Christ.[9]
Bérulle encouragedDescartes' philosophical studies, and it was through him that theSamaritan Pentateuch, recently brought over fromConstantinople, was inserted in Lejay'sBible Polyglotte (1628–45).
Bérulle has been claimed to be an opponent of the abstract school of mysticism that bypassed the humanity of Christ, although his own method of prayer included a focus on adoring the being of Christ himself, considered in the abstract;[10]Pope Urban VIII called him the "apostle of the incarnate Word".
The Carmelite nuns who were brought to France by Bérulle objected to his attempts to influence their spirituality. Nevertheless, Berullian influences did remain within the spirituality of female Carmelite monastic communities and perdured into the 20th century, until Blessed Marie-Eugene OCD visited the communities to provide standard Carmelite spiritual formation.[11]
In hisDiscours de l'état et des grandeurs de Jésus Bérulle emphasized Jesus as the Incarnate Word of God, and the abasement, self-surrender, servitude and humiliation— all Bérulle's words— of hisIncarnation. He even took the Incarnation as the defining characteristic of his spirituality and his Oratory, when he asked Christ "that, in this piety, devotion, and special servitude to the mystery of Your Incarnation and of Your humanized divinity and deified humanity, be our life and our state, our spirit and our particular difference."[12]
The chief works of Cardinal de Bérulle are:
In addition, Bérulle wrote a number of short devotional works (Œuvres de pieté) and documents for the guidance of the Oratory.
Bérulle's works, edited by P. Bourgoing (2 vols., 1644) were reprinted, byMigne in 1857.
A selected modern English translation is available asBérulle and the French School: Selected Writings, trans. Lowell M Glendon, (New York: Paulist Press, 1989).
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Bérulle, Pierre de".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.| General | |
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