Maillard, Oliver

, a famous preacher, and a cordelier, was a native of Paris, where he rose to the dignity of doctor in divinity. He was entrusted with honourable employments by Innocent VIII. and Charles VIII. of France, by Ferdinand of Arragon, &c. and is said to have served the latter prince, even at the expence of his master. He died at Toulouse June 13, 1502. His sermons, which remained in manuscript, are full of irreverent familiarities, and in the coarsest style of his times. His Latin sermons were printed at Paris, in seven parts, forming three volumes in 8vo; the publication commenced in 1711, and was continued to 1730. In one of his sermons for Lent, the words hem hem are written in the margin to mark | the places where, according to the custom of those days, the preacher was to stop to cough. Niceron has given some amusing extracts from others of them, which, amidst all their quaintnesses, show him to have been a zealous reprover of the vices of thfe times, and never to have spared persons of rank, especially profligate churchmen. He even took liberties with Louis XI. of France to his face, and when one of the courtiers told him that the king had threatened to throw him into the river, “The king is my master,” said our hardy priest, “but you may tell him, that I shall get sooner to heaven by water, than he will with his post-horses.” Louis XI. was the first who established posting on the roads of France, and when this bon mot was repeated to him, he was wise enough to allow Maillard to preach what he would and where he would. The bon mot, by the way, appears in the “Navis Stultifera,” by Jodocus Badius, and was probably a current jest among the wits of the time. ¹