Discours de l'état et des grandeurs de Jésus (Grandeurs de Jésus)
Discours de l'estat et des grandeurs de Jésus, par l'union ineffable de la divinité avec l'humanité
Catalogue updated 2026-06-08
A verified public-domain excerpt for this text is still being set. The folio is catalogued and linked below; an original Sub Rosa rendering will follow.
What it is
The principal mystical-theological work of Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle (1575–1629), founder of the French Oratory, published in Paris in 1623 and dedicated to Louis XIII. Bérulle was the documented spiritual confidant of Marie de' Medici, under whose court patronage the Oratory had flourished from 1611, and he personally negotiated the reconciliation of Marie with her son Louis XIII in August 1620. The Discours meditates on the mystery of the Incarnation — Christ's kenotic self-emptying and his interior 'states' — calling the soul to enter a corresponding servitude and adherence to Christ. It profoundly shaped Francis de Sales, Vincent de Paul, and the entire French School of spirituality that grew from the dévot circles surrounding Marie's court.
Why it still matters
An English translation by Lisa Richmond was published by the Catholic University of America Press, making this foundational treatise accessible for modern contemplative and theological reading.
Contemplatio starter guide
A daily portion of stillness
Chosen Portion delivers one short contemplative reading and a guided moment of silence each day — the ascent, one step at a time.
- Daily bite-sized excerpts from the contemplative classics, never a wall of text
- A built-in timed stillness practice that grows from 2 minutes to 10
- Gentle progression through the tradition — the app remembers where you are on the ascent
Kept alongside
Introduction to the Devout Life
Introduction à la vie dévote
Composed initially as spiritual direction letters for Madame Louise de Charmoisy — wife of Claude de Charmoisy, ambassador of the Duke of Savoy — this work was explicitly written for lay people living 'in town, within families, or at court.' It received a royal privilege from Henri IV of France on 10 November 1608 and was first published at Lyon in 1609. Francis de Sales shaped each of its five parts around the practical rhythms of court and household life, treating topics from meditation and vocal prayer to temptation and worldly conversation. The Introduction circulated widely in the dévot circles of the French court and became the devotional manual par excellence for Catholic lay formation in the early modern period.
Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola
Exercitia Spiritualia
The foundational manual of Ignatian spirituality, structured as four 'weeks' of meditations guiding a retreatant from self-knowledge and sin through the life of Christ to apostolic commitment. Eleonora di Toledo, Duchess of Florence and wife of Cosimo I de' Medici, became the primary Medici patron of the Jesuits in Tuscany from the late 1540s: she negotiated with Diego Laínez, whose sustained advocacy led to the first Jesuit school in Florence, and she died in 1562 attended by a Jesuit confessor. The Spiritual Exercises were the foundational formation manual of her Jesuit confessors and spiritual directors, making the connection strongly documented through institutional proximity even though no inventory record confirms Eleonora personally held a copy.
Girolamo Savonarola, Expositio in Psalmum Miserere mei Deus (Infelix ego)
Expositio ac meditatio in Psalmum Miserere mei Deus / Infelix ego
Written by Savonarola in May 1498 while imprisoned in Florence awaiting execution, this meditation on Psalm 51 (Miserere mei Deus) was smuggled from his cell and published in Ferrara the same year, reaching numerous Italian editions before 1500. It proceeds verse by verse through the psalm, weaving personal confession with theological reflection on divine mercy and human unworthiness. Savonarola had been the dominant preacher in Florence throughout the later Medici period, and this text became the most widely circulated spiritual writing in post-Medici Florence, carried by the Piagnoni lay reform movement as their central devotional text. Its composition under sentence of death gives it an intensity matched by few comparable documents of the Italian Renaissance.