Bossuet et la rhétorique de l’autorité (review)

If the whole of Bossuet’s posthumous reputation seems to be contained in summary within the terms of Anne Régent-Susini’s title, it is worth stressing that this meticulous piece of scholarship is not a general study of his pulpit oratory, but rather a precise and comprehensive investigation into the specific links between the acts of writing, preaching, and teaching as practised by the Bishop of Meaux, and the scriptural, sacramental, and formal justification for their impact. Régent-Susini explores the multiple resonances of her key terms with respect to a vast range of Bossuet’s œuvre, and includes, in so doing, many seminal texts that have not made it into the anthologies (notably the so-called Logique du Dauphin). Her enquiry begins, concessively, by looking at the ways in which Bossuet’s conviction of the unicity of truth apparently militates against rhetoric (in the sense of presentational skills), showing how the simple exposition of evidence is more often than not deemed sufficient to convince the addressee/hearer both of the validity of a doctrine proposed and of the error of any opinions asserted against it. Truth, for Bossuet, is simple, clear, and economical; error, in distinction, diverse, complex, and verbose, so that ‘de même que le vrai s’impose de lui-même, l’erreur se détruit d’elle-même’ (p. 322) — and the exposing of such features is a constant of his polemical writing, whether against Protestantism, Quietism, or the (as he saw it) flawed exegetical experiments of Richard Simon. The argumentational strategies that he employs thus accord a privileged status to such features as syllogism (internally) and biblical and patristic unanimity (externally), alongside a coexistent appeal to consensus and common sense. All this is further supported by what Régent-Susini calls ‘la rhétorique de la certitude’ (p. 335), in the form of a whole battery of assertive stylistic devices, leading the reader to ‘supposer pour vrai ce qui est en question’ (p. 413). In the second part of her argument, Régent-Susini goes on to show how a conjunction of pathos and ethos is deployed, both to strengthen the (potentially vacillating) like-minded through the establishment of a community of belief, and to defeat (or, better again, to convert) the adversary. Sustained critical attention is given to Bossuet’s sacramental authority as priest and bishop, to his erudite claims as scholar, historian, and pedagogue, and finally to the rhetorical devices that underscore the tones of his quasi-prophetic certainty. The book is very clearly written, and both the multiple subdivisions of the material and the extensive annotation (whereby unfamiliar rhetorical terms are carefully defined and differentiated) help to keep the grandes lignes of the argument precise and uncluttered. It is a hard call to make Bossuet accessible, but his capacity to transcend the issues of his day is encapsulated, by virtue of this kind of exposition, in the conclusion that ‘plus Bossuet met en avant sa propre autorité, plus il manifeste que [...] cette autorité n’est pas la sienne’ (p. 752). The potential extensibility of such an axiom is not hard to discern.