Jacques Bridaine (21 March 1701, in Chusclan – 22 December 1767, in Roquemaure) was a French Roman Catholic preacher. Biography Having completed his studies at the Jesuit college of Avignon he entered the Sulpician Seminary of the Royal Missions of St. Charles of the Cross. Soon after his ordination to the priesthood in 1725, he joined the Missions Royales, organized to bring back to the Catholíc faith the Protestants of France. For over forty years he visited as a missionary preacher almost every town of central and southern France. When only in minor orders, he was assigned as Lenten preacher in the Church of Aigues-Mortes. It was at Aigues-Mortes where his extreme youth provoked the derision of the people and when Ash Wednesday arrived, the church was empty. Undismayed, he put on his surplice and went out in the principal streets, ringing a bell, and inviting the people to hear him. He succeeded in filling the church with congregants who came out of curiosity but when he began in a most unusual fashion by singing a canticle about death the congregation burst out in loud laughter; whereupon he denounced the congregation. He was characteristically sensational. He wrote little and gave way to the inspiration of the moment and as a consequence his utterances at times were an incoherent jumble of incongruous figures and ideas, which clashed with each other and were often even grotesque. It was Cardinal Maury who called attention to his exordium in the sermon on Eternity which was said to be improvised. Father Cahour, S.J., inserted it in his Chefs-d'Oeuvre d'éloquence, and Maury who wrote it from memory declared that it was worthy of Bossuet or Demosthenes. It was proclaimed at St. Sulpice before an audience of dignitaries. Nevertheless, Bridaine denounced the assembly as sinners, and bade them to tremble before him, "Today I hold your condemnation in my hand." Opinions were divided about the oratory; some finding a self-consciousness in it which was unapostolic. He was renowned for having a sonorous and penetrating voice that could easily be heard by an audience of ten thousand people. He tended towards great theatrics to engage his audience. A supreme instance of these "methods" as he called them, and which he always insisted upon being carried out, is narrated by Madame Necker in the Nouveaux Mélanges (I, 138). He had just delivered a stirring discourse when addressing himself to