Jean-Joseph Grillot

Jean-Joseph Grillot (born March 26, 1708 in Chablis , † September 30, 1765 ibid) was a French theologian . He was Canon of Chablis and exiled from France as a supporter of Jansenism from 1731–49.

Life

Although his parents had a large family to care for, Jean-Joseph Grillot received a careful upbringing. They gave him to a pastor for the first instruction in the sciences. He then learned languages ​​and philosophy in the seminary at Auxerre , where he stayed until he was 14, and then attended the Collège at Sainte-Barbe, where he devoted himself to theology for six years . Here he may have been won over to Jansenist principles, probably more through the attacks on this doctrine, which is considered heretical, than through Jansenist lectures themselves, since these were strictly forbidden in schools.

The more the advocates of this supposed heresy had to hide, the more strictly the authors and distributors of Jansenist writings were persecuted, the more they stood up for it and Grillot was one of the most zealous among them. He considered it a merit to accept the suppressed doctrine, and to devote himself actively to it he regarded as a matter of conscience. So he accepted the dangers that threatened him. At the age of 22 he traveled to Paris , where he arrived on March 2, 1730, and had Jansenist fonts produced in secret printing works. As early as September 24, 1730, he was found in such a printing press and taken to the Bastille . The litigation initiated as a result ended with the fact that he suffered the pillory on March 13, 1731 on the Place de Grève .

This public abuse was only the beginning of further persecution. Grillot only found peace when he was banished from his fatherland. He turned to Holland , where other refugees had also found a sanctuary. It was not until 1749 that he received permission to return to France. He chose Auxerre as his permanent residence and lived there undisturbed, a model of piety and a rare steadfastness in penitential exercises that he imposed on himself. His later life was filled with mortification , which he endured with extraordinary willpower. When he returned to his native Chablis, he died there on September 30, 1765, at the age of 57, of an illness that had afflicted him.

The search for literary fame was not in his humble manner. Several of his works went unprinted. Such a recueil sur l'histoire de la réligion from creation to its time, the size of which in the appendix was perhaps an obstacle to printing. A Réfutation complète de la théologie de Collet , which is said to have been in his estate, seems to have been lost. He himself suppressed his work Vie de M. Creusot, curé de Santa Loup, à Auxerre , so that someone else would be induced to write this biography. Preferring the works of others to his, he participated under Legros' direction in the publication of the Mémoires de Fontaine, Lancelot et Dufossé . He was also one of the main editors of the uvres de M. Colbert, évêque de Montpellier ; He also obtained a greatly increased reprint of a work by Dusaussois, a pastor at Haucourt in Normandy , under the title La vérité rendue sensible à tout le monde (2 volumes, 1743).

Also to be mentioned are:

• Recueil de cantiques spirituels sur les principales vérités de la religion
• Suite au chatéchisme historique et dogmatique

literature

• F. Th. Richter: Grillot (Jean-Joseph) . In: Johann Samuelersch , Johann Gottfried Gruber (Ed.): General Encyclopedia of Sciences and Arts , 1st Section, Vol. 91 (1871), pp. 85 f.