Is There One Jesuit Style? The Example of Seventeenth-Century French Funeral Orations

By analyzing a number of funeral orations published by Jesuit preachers in seventeenth-century France, this chapter deals with a recurrent question in Jesuit studies: is there one Jesuit way of appropriating this genre, or more broadly speaking this kind of epideictic rhetoric? Jesuits were largely considered the main masters of funeral orations, whose importance in the cultural life of early modern France was primary. Not only did Jesuits perform and publish a number of such speeches, but they also specialized in delivering these speeches before the heart of the deceased, buried separately from the body. Such delivery focused on his/her inner spiritual life. However, this article argues that there is no such thing as a single “Jesuit manner”—but rather a Jesuit way of embracing the infinite art of adaptation that this genre requires.