Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 05
History
Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 05
Literature -- Collections
Such were the blessings which a thousand and a thousand times the great
Saint Remi poured upon the French and their kings, whom he always called
his dear children; unceasingly praising God for his kindness, because,
with a view to strengthen the incipient faith of this God-blessed
nation, he had deigned, through his own sinner's hands (these are his
own words), to repeat, before the eyes of all the French and of their
king, the miracles which had burst upon the world in the early
foundation of Christian churches. All the saints then living rejoiced;
and in this decline of the Roman Empire, it seemed to them that there
appeared in the kings of France "a new Light for the whole West." "In
occiduis partibus novi jubaris lumen effulgurat;" and not for the West
alone, but for all the Church, to which this new kingdom promised new
advances. This is what was said by Saint Avitus, the learned and holy
bishop of Vienne, the weighty and eloquent advocate of the Church of
Rome, who was directed by his colleagues, the revered bishops of Gaul,
to recommend to the Romans in the cause of Pope Symmachus the common
cause of the whole episcopacy; "because," so said that great man, "when
the Pope, the chief of all the bishops, is assailed, then not one bishop
alone, but the whole episcopacy is in danger."
OPENING OF THE
FUNERAL ORATION ON HENRIETTA OF FRANCE
_My Lord_[4]:
[Footnote 4: This oration was delivered in the presence of the Duke of
Orleans, son-in-law of Henrietta of France; it is he whom Bossuet
addresses in beginning his speech.]
He who reigns in heaven and who is the Lord of all the empires, to whom
alone majesty, glory, and independence belong, is also the only one who
glories in dictating laws to kings, and in giving them, when it so
pleases him, great and terrible lessons. Whether he raises or lowers
thrones; whether he communicates his own power to princes, or reclaims
it all and leaves them nothing but their own weakness, he teaches them
their duties in a manner both sovereign and worthy of him; for when
giving them his power, he commands them to use it, as he does, for the
good of the world; and he shows them in withdrawing it that all their
majesty is borrowed, and that, though seated on the throne, they are
nevertheless under his hand and supreme authority. Thus does he teach
princes, not only by words but by deeds and examples. "Et nunc, reges,
intelligite; erudimini, qui judicatis terram."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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