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The French School of Spirituality was the principal devotional influence within the Catholic Church from the mid 17th Century through the mid 20th Century not only in France but throughout the church in most of the world. A development of the Catholic Reformation like the Spanish mystics and the Society of Jesus, it focused the devotional life of the Catholic faithful on a personal experience of the person of Jesus and the quest for personal holiness. It was perhaps more concrete than the Iberian example and thus easier to teach, but it shared with the Spanish saints their focus on the Divine Person. This movement in Catholic spirituality had many important figures over the centuries, the first being its founder, Cardinal Pierre de Berulle (1575-1629).


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Disciples of Berulle

One of Berulle's disciples, Jean-Jacques Olier went on to found the Sulpician Order to run seminaries and train future priests in France, Canada and the United States, thus spreading the French school's influence to North America where it would dominate for the next three centuries. Olier's particular strain of the French school's thinking at its most pessimistic is captured in this quote:

"It is necessary for the soul to be in fear and distrust of self; it must testify to this distrust by avoiding occasions and encounters in which it may satisfy the heart by love and delight in some creature. It should make its pleasure and joy depend on sacrificing to Jesus all joy and pleasure which it may have apart from himself. And when taking part in those things in which by Providence it is obliged to be occupied, such as eating, drinking, and conversation with creatures, it must be sparing in all, must discard what is superfluous, and must renounce, in the use of them, the joy and pleasure to be found therein, uniting and giving itself to Jesus as often as it feels itself tempted to enjoy something apart from him and not himself." (Olier, Journée chrétienne, Part 1, as cited in David A. Fleming, The Fire and the Cloud: An Anthology of Catholic Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), pp. 272-73)

Another disciple of Berulle's was Jeanne Chezard de Matel who went on to found the Order of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament in Avignon, France. The express purpose of these cloistered women was to give adoration to Christ incarnate, making liturgy a matter of worshiping God in awe and mystery and through their presence make "an extension of the admirable Incarnation." (John M. Lozano, Jeanne Chezard de Matel and the Sisters of the Incarnate Word, trans. Joseph Daries (Chicago: Claret Center for Resources in Spirituality, 1983), p. 72.

Theological foundation

Berulle's contribution was the absolute focus on Jesus, the incarnate Word of God, both in his sublime divinity and in his complete debasement as God become man. Centered on this person who abased himself willingly to enter the human estate, the devotional end for the faithful was to abandon all ego and vanity so that the person of Christ might become incarnate in the believer. The effect on the Church throughout the era was a heavy devaluing of the this-worldly in favor of the exultation of the heavenly.

Devotional developments

The devotional axes of the French school were

  • exultation of Christ by the faithful and the movement of the will to make oneself Christ's humble servant.
  • meditation and imitation of the sentiments found in scripture of Christ (Sacred Heart) and of Mary (Immaculate Heart)
  • Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament
  • Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary through chaplets (particular rosary-type prayers) and litanies.

Religious communities founded in the French school tradition

Important figures in the movement
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