Jean Eudes

Jean Eudes was born on 14 November 1601 in the village of Ri in Normandy, France, the eldest of seven children of Isaac Eudes and Marthe Corbin, farmers of modest means and sincere piety. After early schooling he attended the Jesuit college at Caen. In 1623 he joined the Congregation of the Oratory of France in Paris, the society of priests established by Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle. He was ordained priest on 20 December 1625. Formed in the French school of spirituality, he developed a profound devotion to the mystery of the Incarnation and to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary as symbols of divine love.

From 1627 he devoted himself to preaching parish missions throughout Normandy and other parts of western France, work that occupied him for decades and earned him a reputation as one of the outstanding popular missionaries of the seventeenth century. During the plague epidemics that struck the region in 1627 and 1631 he remained among the sick, administering the sacraments and organizing relief at considerable personal danger. His missions aimed at converting hearts, restoring frequent reception of the sacraments, and combating the lingering effects of Protestantism and religious indifference in the countryside.

In 1641 at Caen he founded a house of refuge for women who wished to leave lives of prostitution; this community developed into the Order of Our Lady of Charity. Two years later, in 1643, he separated from the Oratory in order to establish the Congregation of Jesus and Mary, a society of secular priests without religious vows whose principal works were the direction of seminaries and the preaching of missions. The foundation responded to the requirement of the Council of Trent that each diocese maintain a seminary for the proper formation of clergy. Eudes and his companions opened seminaries at Caen, Coutances, Lisieux and other locations in Normandy.

A prolific spiritual author, Eudes published in 1637 The Life and Kingdom of Jesus in Christian Souls, a treatise that circulated widely and summarized his doctrine of living in and through Jesus Christ. He composed complete liturgical offices for the feast of the Holy Heart of Mary, first celebrated in 1648, and for the Sacred Heart of Jesus, celebrated from the 1670s in houses of his congregations. These texts establish him as a principal architect of the public liturgical cult of the two Hearts. He died in Caen on 19 August 1680. Beatified by Pope Pius X in 1909 and canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1925, he is commemorated liturgically on 19 August. Pope Leo XIII later described him as the father of the liturgical devotion to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.