Jean-Baptiste-Charles-Marie de Beauvais

Jean-Baptiste-Charles-Marie de Beauvais (17 October 1731 – 4 April 1790) was a French writer and the Roman Catholic bishop of Senez.

Quotes

• Le silence du peuple est la leçon des rois.
  • A people's silence is a lesson to their kings.
  • Sermons de Messire J. B. Charles Marie de Beauvais, Evêque de Senez, vol. 4 (Paris, 1807), p. 243 (Oraison Funébre de Louis XV., le Bien-aimé, 8. Denis, Juillet 27, 1774)
  • The passage is as follows:—Le peuple n’a pas, sans doute, le droit de murmurer; mais, sans doute aussi, il a le droit de se taire; et son silence est la leçon des rois.—"The people, no doubt, has not the right to murmur; but, as certainly also, it has the right to hold its peace, and the people’s silence is a lesson to its king." The preacher was contrasting the unpopularity of the king’s latter years with the earlier part of his reign. On the Good Friday previous (1 April 1774), the same prelate in the course of his sermon had said, Sire, mon devoir de ministre d’un Dieu de vérité m’ordonne de vous dire que vos peuples sont malheureux, que vous en êtes la cause, et qu’on vous le laisse ignorer.—"Sire, my duty as minister of the God of Truth compels me to tell you that your people are wretched, that you are the cause of their misery, and that you are left in ignorance of the fact." His text was Jonas iii. 4: "Yet forty days, and Ninive shall be destroyed"; and forty days (to a day) afterwards, 10 May, Louis died—a literal fulfilment to which the orator refers in the Funeral Discourse (Sermons de Beauvais, vol. 4, p. 217). See: Nouvelle Biographie Générale, vol. 5 (Didot, 1852), BEAUVAIS. The bishop’s words were not forgotten, and on the morrow of the taking of the Bastille, 15 July 1789, when the National Assembly (Versailles) was momentarily expecting, with feelings of relief and even of joy, the entry of the King, "one of the members" observed, Qu’un morne respect soit le premier accueil fait au monarque dans un moment de douleur. Le silence des peuples est la leçon des rois. N. J. Hugou, Mémoires de la Révolution de France, vol. 8 (Paris, 1790), p. 269. Thiers, in his Révolution Française (vol. 1, chap. 2), quotes Hugou’s words, and makes the "member" to be Mirabeau. Source: Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (1904), no. 1366

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Jean-Baptiste-Charles-Marie de Beauvais on Wikipedia