Speech of Universal History

Speech of Universal History or Discours sur l'histoire universelle in original French (1681) is a work of theology and philosophy from French Roman Catholic bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet. It is regarded by many Catholics as a continuation or actualization of St. Augustine of Hippo’s the City of God (De Civitate Dei). It proposes, much like the City of God, a metaphysical appreciation of universal history as an actual war between God and the Devil.

In this war, God moves (by divine intervention/ Divine providence) those governments, political/ideological movements and military forces aligned (or aligned the most) with the Catholic Church (the City of God) in order to oppose by all means (including military) those governments, political/ideological movements and military forces aligned (or aligned the most) with the Devil (the City of the Devil). While the City of God is always the Church and those movements or governments that support it, the City of the Devil changes significantly with the centuries: the pagan Roman Empire, Barbarians, Muslim expansionism and the fall of Constantinople, Renaissance humanism, Encyclopedist writers and freemasonic revolutions, Communism and the Soviet Union, cultural Marxism/the Frankfurt School, current day Secularism, Feminism, the Homosexual movement, etc.

This concept of universal history is actual part of the official doctrine of the Catholic Church as was most recently stated in the Second Vatican Council' s Gaudium et Spes document: "The Church ... holds that in her most benign Lord and Master can be found the key, the focal point and the goal of man, as well as of all human history...all of human life, whether individual or collective, shows itself to be a dramatic struggle between good and evil, between light and darkness...The Lord is the goal of human history the focal point of the longings of history and of civilization, the center of the human race, the joy of every heart and the answer to all its yearnings."

The Catholic Encyclopedia depicts the key point of Speech of Universal History as follows:

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