Seventeenth-Century Cultural Discourse: France and the Preaching of Bishop Camus.

Gaffney, James

Seventeenth-Century Cultural Discourse: France and the Preaching of Bishop CAMUS. By Thomas Worcester. Religion and Society. New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997. Pp. ix + 306. DM 228.

Worcester's work on Bishop Jean-Pierre Camus (1584-1652) is "a case study of episcopal preaching in France after the Council of Trent" (27), "a seventeenth-century cultural discourse" and a window onto "a religious culture and how a Catholic reformer sought to shape that culture" (242).

Consecrated bishop of Belley in 1609, Camus preached regularly in his small diocese, as well as on pilgrimages, at Paris, and in other towns. He also delivered sermons before the Estates General (1614-1615) to which he was a delegate. The result of his life's work is some 6,500 pages of sermons appearing in numerous printed editions that allow us to study French episcopal preaching after the reception of the Council of Trent in France (1615). Camus's sermons are the most frequently reprinted of any French preacher of this era.

W. situates Camus among those who took to heart Trent's admonition that preaching was the bishop's special duty (praecipuum munus). Like the cardinal-archbishop of Milan, Carlo Borromeo (d. 1585), Camus appears as the new model French bishop in his commitment to Tridentine reform. Herein lies the value of W.'s work. He catches Camus deftly adopting the methods and message of post-Tridentine homiletics--the insistence on brevity, simplicity, and directness in moving discourse, the use of minimal (though effective) "conceits," and above all the "correct" topics, which predominate in other countries of Catholic Europe as well. The widespread printing of Camus's works no doubt had a strong influence upon the religious culture of early-17th-century France, and we might assume changed it significantly.

W.'s study is essentially an inventory of the content of some 400 sermons Camus gave as bishop of Belley from 1609-1629. Though W. does not examine sermons and other homiletic literature in Spain, Italy, and Germany after Trent, he would find numerous topical and rhetorical parallels there. Camus is hardly alone in his discourses on the "model saints" of the Counter Reformation, such as Ignatius Loyola, Carlo Borromeo, Mary Magdalene, the Apostles, Teresa of Avila. These saints--and especially those breaking the bonds of gender--are "safe" ones whose activities, loyalty, and obedience to the Church were impeccable and worthy of imitation. Camus's words on "conversion" (i.e. a change of heart), "cooperating" with grace, the power of the sacraments for the acquisition of virtues (above all humility), the value of pilgrimages, relics and devotions, shunning the seven deadly sins, working for the glory of God, obedience, and instructing the faithful in the truths necessary for salvation--all are current and correct topics for the post-Tridentine preacher. Interestingly, too, Camus seems to find (or assert) that elusive balance between obedience, love, and loyalty for king and country, and the fidelity and obedience to the bishop of Rome. Camus's themes and attitudes, in fact, fall squarely in line with the "new" post conciliar (Tridentine) Church which emphasized the importance of the frequent reception of the Eucharist and of increasing points of contact between the clergy and the laity. Camus also reflects the numerous directives to preachers, such as those regarding heresy, namely, that one might occasionally denounce heretics from the pulpit but consciously avoid correcting heretical errors there. Camus we learn, too, had his own favorite images when preaching to his people, above all the vivid and recurring "alimentary" images that probably reveal as much of Camus's personality as they do of his concept of the Church and its preachers.

As a case study, W.'s work is also a critical review of recent scholarship on medieval and early-modern France. Using Camus's sermons as an index of this era, W. tests (and finds faults) with the conclusions of many scholars, ranging from Jean Delumeau's "interpretative framework on fear and security" (3) to Robert Bireley's comment that "no significant anti-Machiavellian author was French" (191). W. is harshest on Delumeau's conclusion that "fear and reassurance were at the heart of Camus's agenda." He contends that his own quantitative examination of Camus's sermons does not support Delumeau's statement: Camus's preaching "sought to move his audiences beyond fear of hell and expectation of reward to a `pure' love of God" (242).

W. sets forth his inventory of Camus's sermons as a critical measure against which to evaluate contemporary scholarship on early-modern France. The method has merit, but one might question if it is adequate just to register a confirmation or none. That the conclusions of one scholar might not be confirmed by Camus's sermon topics could perhaps tell us more about the innovative nature of Camus's preaching in the unstable world of early-17th-century France, which only in 1615 adopted the decrees of the Council of Trent. W.'s useful inventory of Camus's topics, it seems to me, reflects not only Camus's own preaching material, but the agenda of European post-Tridentine Catholicism which was slowly on its way toward implementation in France. It therefore may be much more a measure of the gap between Camus's own work and vision and the realities of the world in which he labored. In this regard, Camus himself was arguably far ahead of his time, waiting and working for the French Church not just to adopt but fully to appropriate the program of the post-Tridentine Church.