Making silence speak. Issues and limits of epidictic eloquence in Bossuet's Panegyriques de saint Joseph

In the context of a late but growing French devotion to Saint Joseph, Bossuet delivered two panegyrics on the saint, one to Cardinal Barberini in 1657 and the other to the Queen Mother in 1661. The originality of these texts lies in their character as theological meditations: the art of oratory makes up for the gaps in the biblical text by contemplating the mystery of the Incarnation and portraying Joseph as a privileged custodian in the first text, a model of simplicity and discretion in the second. The simplicity inherent in the figure of the saint is thus treated more radically in the second panegyric, and confronts Bossuet with a rhetorical demand for amplification. The structure of the sermons always takes care to articulate the wisdom of God's designs for this "father in the midst of time" and moral and spiritual exhortation: Bossuet's eloquence thus draws from the difficulties of his subject a wide-ranging reflection on the spiritual and affective particularities of the Holy Family, a concrete space for the preparation of salvation, and an example of the practice of the virtues.