Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/650

618 an order where the rules were by no means strict, he was not anxious for easy living or secular renown. The credit which he received for his first efforts at preaching startled him, and he sought a much more severe discipline, one indeed which is said to have been of Trappist rigour. Accident, however, made his literary and oratorical talents known to the Cardinal de Noailles, who determined that the church should not lose so well qualified a defender. In obedience to the cardinal, Massillon left the abbey of Septfonds, rejoined the Oratory, and was introduced to the Parisian seminary of Saint Magloire in 1696. He was soon set to work to preach in the Paris churches, and his reputation spread rapidly from city to court. He preached before Louis XIV. for the first time in Advent 1699. He made a profound impression, and it is reported that his generous elder, Bourdaloue, from whom Massillon himself had learnt much, said of him, "He must increase, but I must decrease." His fame, however, did not lead to immediate preferment. In the first place, the Oratorians were on bad terms with the Jesuits, and were considered too liberal to suit the reign of gloomy pietism and severe orthodoxy in which Louis's dissolute life closed. In the second, Massillon was neither a flatterer, nor did he resort to the abrupt denunciation of vice which had succeeded in the case of some of his predecessors. Indeed, in the last years of the reign there was nothing (so far as the king was concerned) to denounce, unless it were an excess of orthodoxy. Louis's famous saying that other preachers made him pleased with them, but that Massillon made him displeased with himself, may have been merely a mot, but it may also have expressed an involuntary truth. However this may be, Massillon, who perhaps desired no office, received none as long as the old king lived. The regency was much more favourable to him, and in 1717 he was nominated to the see of Clermont, with the additional honour of being commissioned to preach the next year's Petit Carême or series of short Lent sermons before the young Louis XV. Bishop in 1717, Lent preacher in 1718, Massillon received in 1719 a yet further honour, though this time a secular one, by being elected to the Academy. Various causes, however, combined to remove him from Paris. His own standard of duty was high, and he was not likely in any case to have acquiesced in the position of a non-resident bishop; the court grew more and more dissolute; and his advance in years must have somewhat disqualified him from preaching and travelling. He delivered but few sermons in Paris after the Petit Carême, and preached there for the last time in 1723, when he pronounced the funeral oration of the duchess-dowager of Orleans. The twenty years of life which remained to him were spent at Clermont, where he was distinguished for all good works, especially for exacting the minimum of episcopal dues and expending the maximum on charity.

Massillon's works are made up for the most part of sermons, lectures, synodal addresses, and the like. They have been repeatedly edited, and are easily accessible in two large volumes published by Didot. As a pulpit orator, if not as a theologian, Massillon probably deserves the highest rank among Frenchmen. His style is very nearly perfect, uniting the polish of the later age of Louis XIV. with the vigour of the earlier. His thoughts are original and just, and the arrangement of his discourses lucid and orderly without being unduly scholastic. He has usually been contrasted with his predecessor Bourdaloue, the latter having the credit of vigorous denunciation, Massillon of gentle persuasiveness. But few preachers can have excelled him in vigour when he chose to be stern. Besides the Petit Carême, his sermons on the Prodigal Son, on Death, for Christmas Day, for the Fourth Sunday in Advent, may be cited as perhaps his masterpieces. But in truth Massillon is singularly free from inequality. His great literary power, his reputation for benevolence, and his known toleration and dislike of doctrinal disputes caused him to be much more favourably regarded than most churchmen by the philosophes of the 18th century. He acquired the surname of the Racine of the pulpit, but extreme purity of style is almost the only point of contact between the two writers.

 MASSINGER, (1584-1640), one of the most prolific, scholarly, and powerful dramatists among the immediate successors of. He was born in 1584, went to Oxford (St Alban's Hall) in 1602, and left in 1606. This is all that is known of his early life, except that his father, as appears from the dedication of one of his plays (The Bondman), was in the service of the Herberts. That his father's service was not menial is proved by his having once been the bearer of letters from the earl of Pembroke to the queen. The industry of antiquaries has discovered only one little fact about Massinger between his leaving Oxford in 1606 and his having a comedy performed at court in 1621. This fact is that he joined with two dramatists, Field and Daborne, in asking an advance of £5 from the theatrical capitalist, Henslowe. This painful request, the date of which is conjectured to be about 1614, sets forth that the three petitioners were "in unfortunate extremitie." In his part of the document Massinger says that he has "ever found" Henslowe "a true loving friend." The expression seems to point to his having been connected with plays and players for some considerable time. After 1621 many of his plays were acted and published; but from the tone of his dedications it is to be inferred that he was often in straits. The entry in the parish register of St Saviour's—"March 20, 1639-40—buried Philip Massinger, a stranger" may mean only that Massinger was not a resident in the parish; but it is sadly out of keeping with the dramatist's place in the respect of posterity.

In the barrenness of authentic fact, conjecture has been busy with Massinger's life and character. One of the questions that have been raised about him,—whether or not he was a Roman Catholic,—leads to other questions that have more than a personal interest. Attempts to fix the political or the religious creed of a dramatist are generally fanciful; as a rule, when a critic finds an opinion expressed by one of a dramatist's personages with exceptional and striking force, he jumps to the conclusion that the dramatist must have held this opinion himself as a ruling conviction. The evidence that Massinger was a Roman Catholic at a time when the creed was held under pains and penalties is of a more serious kind, though not conclusive. It rests upon three of his plays, The Virgin Martyr (printed in 1622, acted before 1620), The Renegado (acted in 1624), and The Maid of Honour (printed in 1632, but probably acted earlier). In the first of these Massinger was assisted by. Whether or not the author was a Roman Catholic, it is certain that only a Roman Catholic audience could be expected to enter into the spirit of these plays and applaud at the end; and they are very remarkable theatrical phenomena to have appeared in the reign of James.

The Virgin Martyr, founded on the martyrdom of Dorothea in the time of, is, in effect, an old miracle play in five acts. The devil himself appears on the stage,—first in human shape as the servant of a persecutor, hunting out victims and instigating the most cruel tortures; afterwards in "a fearful shape" with fire flashing round him. The page of the martyr Dorothea is an angel in disguise, who also appears in his own proper shape before the end of the play. Dorothea is tortured on the stage in the most revolting fashion, dragged about by the hair, kicked, beaten with cudgels, but her page Angelo stands by, and she is miraculously preserved from hurt. Other miracles are performed on the stage. A persecutor falls down in a fit when about to proceed to subject the martyr's constancy to the foulest trials. In the last act a basket of fruit from paradise is brought on, and the chief persecutor eating of it is wholly changed in spirit, and drives away his diabolic servant by holding up a cross of flowers. At the close the martyrs appear in white robes, transfigured. The Virgin Martyr further resembles the miracle play in the coarseness of the comic scenes intended to illustrate the power of the devil over the most base and grovelling natures. The tone of the play throughout is serious and lofty; the passions of the persecutors and the heroic devotion of the martyrs are given with great dramatic force. This is a very