Editing Homiletics (section)

=== Notable French preachers ===
[[Image:Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet 3.jpg|thumb|Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet]]
The French preachers of the classical seventeenth-century period were, according to [[Voltaire]], probably the greatest in pulpit oratory of all time. The best known were [[Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet|Bossuet]], [[Louis Bourdaloue|Bourdaloue]], and [[Jean Baptiste Massillon|Massillon]]; Fénelon burnt his sermons. The first was considered to be the most majestic; the second, the most logical and intellectually compelling; the third, the greatest searcher of hearts, the most like Chrysostom, and, taken all in all, the greatest of the three. We are told that Voltaire kept a copy of his ''Grand Carême'' on his table, side by side with the "Athalie" of [[Jean Racine|Racine]]. In this age Chrysostom was the great model for imitation; but it was Chrysostom the orator, not Chrysostom the homilist. Their style, with its grand [[exordium (rhetoric)|exordium]] and its sublime peroration, became the fashion in the following age. The "Dialogues" of Fénelon, however, remained as a check. Of these "Dialogues" Bishop Dupanloup said: "If the precepts of Fénelon had been well understood, they would have long since fixed the character of sacred eloquence among us." Other principles were laid down by [[Blaise Gisbert]] in his ''L'Eloquence chrétienne dans l'idée et dans la pratique'', by Amadeus Bajocensis in ''Paulus Ecclesiastes, seu Eloquentia Christiana'', and by Guido ab Angelis in ''De Verbi Dei Prædicatione'', all of which sounded a return to the simplicity of style of the [[Church Fathers]].<ref name=CE/>