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Bourdaloue
1632-1704
Biographical Note
Louis Bourdaloue was born at Bourges, in 1632. At the age of sixteen he entered the order of the Jesuits and was thoroughly educated in the scholarship, philosophy and theology of the day. He devoted himself entirely to the work of preaching, and was ten times called upon to address Louis XIV and his court from the pulpit as Bossuet’s successor. This was an unprecedented record and yet Bourdaloue could adapt his style to any audience, and “mechanics left their shops, merchants their business, and lawyers their court house†to hear him. His high personal character, his simplicity of life, his clear, direct, and logical utterance as an accomplished orator united to make him not only “the preacher of kings but the king of preachers.†Retiring from the pulpit late in life he ministered to the sick and to prisoners. He died in Paris, 1704.