Jean-Martin de Prades

Jean-Martin de Prades , called Abbé de Prades (* around 1720 in Castelsarrasin , † 1782 in Glogau ) was a French theologian and one of the contributors to the Encyclopédie .

De Prades gained particular fame through the scandal surrounding his dissertation and the encyclopedia article Certitude , as a result of which the first two volumes of the Encyclopédie were banned from publication. After the public burning of his dissertation and violent attacks by the Jesuits , de Prades fled to Prussia , where he served Friedrich II as a personal reader and private secretary. In the Seven Years' War convicted of spying for France, de Prades was initially detained and after the end of the war of Frederick to Silesia banished, where he died nineteen years later.

life and work

Origin and theological training

Jean-Martin de Prades came from a noble family from Castelsarrasin in southwest France. He began his theological training in the provinces and then moved to Paris , where he attended the seminaries of St. Sulpice , Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet and Bons-Enfants. After being ordained a subdeacon , he returned to the south and attended the seminary of the Lazarists in Montauban , where he was ordained a priest. He then took up studies at the Sorbonne in Paris and was soon one of the best students in his field.

The scandal surrounding de Prade's dissertation and the article "Certitude"

Last page of the article “Certitude” in the second volume of the Encyclopédie with Diderot's final words of praise (left column).

From 1751 he shared an apartment with the two Abbés Jean Pestré (1723-1821) and Claude Yvon (1714-1791), who were among the contributors to the first volume of the Encyclopédie , published in June 1751 . De Prade's share in the Encyclopédie comprised an approximately fifteen- page article under the Lemma Certitude ( Eng . "Certainty"), which was published in the second volume in January 1752. The article is framed by an introduction and an endorsement by Diderot . In its treatment of political issues, the article follows a line loyal to the king. De Prades condemns the murder of Henry IV and praises Louis XV. and the victory of the royal army in the Battle of Fontenoy . In the religious field, the article offered a larger target. De Prade's opponents saw in the argument that an intellectual certainty could also be achieved through miracles through characteristics of truth (French: marques de verité ), an attack on Christian doctrine.

The actual scandal surrounding de Prade's theological positions had already ignited in November 1751 in the course of the disputation belonging to the doctoral procedure . In his dissertation, de Prades had put forward a number of theses that led to a sharp argument with representatives of the theological faculty of the University of Paris. As a result, theology professor Luke Joseph Hooke had to resign from his office at the Sorbonne . Among other things, de Prades had expressed doubts about the chronological sequence of events in the Book of Moses and compared the healing miracles of Jesus with those of the Greek god of healing Asclepius . Without naming his role models, de Prades made extensive use of d'Alembert's preface to the Encyclopédie , the Discours préliminaire , and the Pensées philosophiques by Diderot. De Prades was in personal contact with Diderot and had met with him several times for talks.

On December 15, the commission of the Paris Faculty of Theology, which was dealing with the case, stated that the theses expressed in the paper were to be rejected and that the writing itself fell under censorship regulations. When the second volume of the Encyclopédie appeared in January 1752 , the theologians expressed themselves in shock and accused de Prade of heresy . A few days after the publication of the encyclopedia volume, de Prades' dissertation was publicly burned by order of the Archbishop of Paris Christophe de Beaumont . De Prades himself lost all of his university titles. Then when the pamphlet Les Réflexions d'un franciscain, avec une lettre préliminaire adressée à M. ***, author en partie du «Dictionnaire philosophique» by the Jesuit Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy revealed the connections between de Prades, Pestre, Yvon and Diderot Rumors of a conspiracy by the encyclopedists circulated, de Prades, Pestre and Yvon fled abroad.

On February 7, 1752, the first two volumes of the Encyclopédie were withdrawn from the royal council, the Conseil du Roi, of the printing privilege. The reasoning stated that one had not only tried to undermine the authority of the king, but also promoted "the foundations of error, the corruption of morals, irreligiousness and unbelief".

At the court of Frederick the Great

De Prade's path into exile led him first to the Netherlands and from there - on the mediation of d'Alembert, Voltaire and the Marquis d'Argens - on to Prussia . Shortly after his arrival at the court of Frederick II, Frederick promised him a benefice in Silesia , awarded him a pension and appointed him his reader. A few days after de Prade's first meeting with Voltaire, he wrote to his niece Marie-Louise Denis

“C'est je vous jure le plus drôle d'hérésiarque qui ait jamais été excommuniqué. Il est gai, il est aimable, il supporte en riant sa mauvaise fortune. »

“I swear to you, this is the strangest heretic who has ever been excommunicated. He is cheerful, he is lovable, he endures his bad fate with a laugh. "

In Prussia, de Prades completed a two-part defense of his dissertation under the title Apologie de Monsieur l'abbé de Prades . Diderot wrote a third part under de Prades name and all three parts were secretly printed in Paris. In 1752 a pamphlet was published under the title " Le Tombeau de la Sorbonne " (German: "The grave of the Sorbonne"), in which de Prade's authorship is not conclusively clarified, but is very likely, and which in satirical form pervaded all of them who had condemned de Prade's dissertation. But already in 1754 de Prades changed his position and finally rejected even his own theses. The main reason for this was his financial situation, which he hoped to improve through rapprochement with the Catholic Church. The strategy was successful: Pope Benedict XIV , who had condemned de Prade's dissertation at the beginning of March 1752, accepted him back into the Catholic Church and the theological faculty of the Sorbonne gave him back his academic degrees.

As a reader and private secretary to Frederick II, de Prades had a very close relationship with the Prussian king. In his pride in this influence, he dropped the remark " le roi m'a dit " (German: "the king told me") so often that at court he ended up only saying " l'abbé le roi m'a dit " (German: "The Abbé the King told me") was called.

Espionage, imprisonment and last years in Silesia

Right at the beginning of the Seven Years' War , de Prades was convicted of espionage for France and imprisoned in Magdeburg in 1757 . Diderot and Voltaire were dismayed by de Prade's betrayal of Friedrich. Diderot said to his lover Sophie Volland “What a reprehensible person!” And Voltaire concluded a consideration of the case in a letter to Frederick II with the words “Oh, best of all possible worlds, where are you!”

After the end of the war, de Prades was exiled to Silesia by Friedrich II . With more than 30,000 livres that he had taken from his fellow prisoners while playing while he was in prison in Magdeburg and his church income, he led a comfortable life with his own servants. In 1782 he died of mental derangement in Glogau .

literature

swell

Article Certitude , in: Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers , Volume 2: B - Cézimbra, Paris 1752, pp. 845–862 (also available as a transcription in the ARTFL project).

Apologie de Monsieur l'abbé de Prades , Amsterdam 1753, available online from Gallica , the French national library 's digitization project.

Representations

Prades, abbé Jean-Martin de . In: Frank Arthur Kafker: The encyclopedists as individuals: a biographical dictionary of the authors of the Encyclopédie . Oxford 1988, ISBN 0-7294-0368-8 , pp. 316-319.
John S. Spink: Un abbé philosophe: l'affaire de J.-M. de Prades . In: Dix-huitième siècle , 3 (1971), pp. 145-180.
John S. Spink: The abbé de Prades and the Encyclopaedists: was there a plot? In: French Studies , 24 (1970), pp. 225-236.
Joseph Dedieu: Jean-Martin de Prades . In: Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), full text in the English-language Wikisource project.
Wilhelm Gundlach: Friedrich the Great and his reader Jean Martin de Prades , Hamburg 1892, uni-trier.de (PDF; 2.7 MB)
Prades (Jean-Martin de) . In: Jean Chrétien Ferdinand Hoefer : Nouvelle biographie générale , Volume 40: Philoponus - Preval. Paris 1862, p. 412 f.

Web links

Wikisource: Jean-Martin de Prades - Sources and full texts (French)

Individual evidence

↑ Kafker, The encyclopedists as individuals , unlike Hoefer, Nouvelle biographie générale and other older French encyclopedias, gives 1724 as the year of birth.
↑ De Prades wrote: “Prétendez vous, ma-t'on dit, vous servir de ces marques de verité pour les miracles comme pour les faits naturels? Cette question m'a toujoûrs [sic] surpris. Je répons à mon tour: est-ce qu'un miracle n'est pas un fait? Si c'est un fait, pourquoi ne puis-je pas me servir des mêmes marques de vérité pour les uns comme pour les autres? ", Article Certitude , p. 849, here cited after the digitization in the ARTFL project, available online in Image format JPEG.
↑ "M. ***" means Diderot .
↑ "Sa Majesté a reconnu, que dans ces deux volumes on a affecté d'insérer plusieurs maximes tendantes à détruire l'autorité royale, à établir l'esprit d'indépendance & de révolte, &, sous des termes obscurs & équivoques, à élever les fondements de l'erreur, de la corruption des moeurs, de l'irréligion & de l'incrédulité ", in: Arret du Conseil d'État du Roi… Du 7 février 1752 , quoted here after the transcription in the ARTFL project , available online from the University of Chicago Library web pages.
↑ Voltaire's letter to his niece Marie-Louise Denis of August 19, 1752. Quoted here from Kafker, The encyclopedists as individuals , p. 317. The authenticity of the writing is controversial. See André Magnan, Pour saluer “Paméla”: une œuvre inconnue de Voltaire , in: Dix-huitième siècle 15 (1983), p. 362.
↑ This appeared under the title Suite de l'Apologie ... ou Réponse à l'Instruction Pastorale de M. l'Evêque d'Auxerre .
↑ “Quel abominable homme!”, Letter of June 15, 1759, here quoted from Kafker, The encyclopedists as individuals , p. 318.
^ "O meilleur des mondes possibles, où êtes-vous!", Voltaire's letter to Friedrich II. Dated June 5, 1759, here quoted from Kafker, The encyclopedists as individuals , p. 318.

personal data
SURNAME	Prades, Jean-Martin de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Prades, Abbé de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	French theologian, contributor to the Encyclopédie
DATE OF BIRTH	around 1720
PLACE OF BIRTH	Castelsarrasin
DATE OF DEATH	1782
Place of death	Glogau

[1] Kafker, The encyclopedists as individuals , unlike Hoefer, Nouvelle biographie générale and other older French encyclopedias, gives 1724 as the year of birth.

[2] De Prades wrote: “Prétendez vous, ma-t'on dit, vous servir de ces marques de verité pour les miracles comme pour les faits naturels? Cette question m'a toujoûrs [sic] surpris. Je répons à mon tour: est-ce qu'un miracle n'est pas un fait? Si c'est un fait, pourquoi ne puis-je pas me servir des mêmes marques de vérité pour les uns comme pour les autres? ", Article Certitude , p. 849, here cited after the digitization in the ARTFL project, available online in Image format JPEG.

[3] "M. ***" means Diderot .

[4] "Sa Majesté a reconnu, que dans ces deux volumes on a affecté d'insérer plusieurs maximes tendantes à détruire l'autorité royale, à établir l'esprit d'indépendance & de révolte, &, sous des termes obscurs & équivoques, à élever les fondements de l'erreur, de la corruption des moeurs, de l'irréligion & de l'incrédulité ", in: Arret du Conseil d'État du Roi… Du 7 février 1752 , quoted here after the transcription in the ARTFL project , available online from the University of Chicago Library web pages.

[5] Voltaire's letter to his niece Marie-Louise Denis of August 19, 1752. Quoted here from Kafker, The encyclopedists as individuals , p. 317. The authenticity of the writing is controversial. See André Magnan, Pour saluer “Paméla”: une œuvre inconnue de Voltaire , in: Dix-huitième siècle 15 (1983), p. 362.

[6] This appeared under the title Suite de l'Apologie ... ou Réponse à l'Instruction Pastorale de M. l'Evêque d'Auxerre .

[7] “Quel abominable homme!”, Letter of June 15, 1759, here quoted from Kafker, The encyclopedists as individuals , p. 318.

[8] "O meilleur des mondes possibles, où êtes-vous!", Voltaire's letter to Friedrich II. Dated June 5, 1759, here quoted from Kafker, The encyclopedists as individuals , p. 318.