Caussin was born in
Troyes, the son of a physician. He entered the
Society of Jesus in 1609. He taught at
Rouen, La Flèche, and Paris, and became a noted orator. Famous for his 1624
La Cour saincte, in March 1637,
Cardinal Richelieu chose Caussin for the position of
Louis XIII's confessor; and at the same time admonished him to stay out of politics. As a conscientious and rigorous
spiritual director, Caussin drew the king's attention to his strained relations with his mother; the damage caused by France's policies not only in France but in Christendom, the destruction caused by the country's wars, and the high taxes levied to fight them. In particular, he maintained that the war with Catholic Spain was against God's will. Caussin returned to Paris in 1643, following the death of Richelieu. When the Jesuits attacked the
Jansenists as heretics similar to
Calvinists,
Antoine Arnauld wrote in defense the
Théologie morale des Jésuites (Moral Theology of Jesuits), which denounced the "relaxed moral" of Jesuit
casuistry. Caussin was charged by his order with the task of writing a defense against Arnauld's book.
Réponse au libelle intitulé La Théologie morale des Jésuites was issued in 1644. According to Sellier, due to his rigorism and to the formulations in those books justifying the "relaxed moral" concerning
confession, the public generally considered that he had written against his thought by fidelity to his jesuit order. == Works ==