Massillon, Jean Baptiste, one of the most distinguished of modern orators, was born at Hyères in Provence, 24th June 1663. His father was a notary and had designed him for his own profession, but at length in 1681 the boy obtained permission to follow his vocation and enter the congregation of the Oratory. Later he subjected himself to a more rigorous discipline in the abbey of Sept-Font. His preaching power was soon discovered, and his funeral oration on M. Villars, the Archbishop of Vienne, established his fame, and led to his being summoned by Cardinal de Noailles to Paris, where he first had the opportunity of hearing Bourdaloue, whose style and manner powerfully influenced the young orator. It is said that the older preacher said when first he heard him, 'He must increase, but I must decrease.' Like Bourdaloue, he avoided the declamatory manner and theatrical action then popular in the French pulpit; and the earnest impressiveness of his face and voice more than counterbalanced the lack of such adventitious aids to effect. He gave a remarkable series of lectures in the seminary of St Magloire, and first preached before Louis XIV. in Advent 1699. It was to him that the king said, 'I have heard great orators in my chapel and have felt satisfied with them, but every time I have heard you I have felt dissatisfied with myself'—a saying which well expresses the characteristics of the fearless eloquence of this great orator, who, more than any of his contemporaries, was able to lay bare the secret springs of human action, and to use the feelings and the passions of his audience as arms against themselves. He was again appointed to preach the Lent at Versailles in 1704; but although the king was again equally warm in his admiration, Massillon was never after- wards invited to preach in his presence. In 1717 Massillon was named Bishop of Clermont, and next year preached before the young king, Louis XV., his celebrated Petit Carême—a series of ten short Lenten sermons. It was not till 1719 that he was consecrated Bishop of Clermont, in which year also he was elected a member of the Academy; and in 1723 he preached the funeral oration of the Duchess of Orleans, his last public discourse in Paris. From this time he lived almost entirely for his diocese, where his charity and gentleness gained him the love of all. He died of apoplexy, 28th September 1742. Bossnet and Bourdaloue contest with Massillon the palm of oratory, yet it is not too much to say that he was a greater preacher than either. By French critics he has been termed the Racine of the pulpit, and the name may pass as regards the purity and elegance of Massillon's language, though it takes no count of his characteristic directness and vigour. For impassioned denunciation of vice marks his preaching, no less than gentle persuasiveness to virtue, although it remains true that he is greatest in the latter. His sermons on the Prodigal Son, on the Deaths of the Just and the Unjust, for Christmas, and for the Fourth Sunday in Advent may be named among his masterpieces.
His sermons were collected by his nephew (15 vols. 1745-48); later editions are those of Renouard (1810), the Abbé Guillon (16 vols. 1828), and Blampignon (4 vols. 1886). See Sainte-Beuve's Causeries du Lundi, vol. ix.