Luke Joseph Hooke

Luke Joseph Hooke (* 1716 in Corballis , Donabate ( County Dublin ), † April 16, 1796 Saint-Cloud near Paris) was an Irish theologian and librarian in the Bibliothèque Mazarine . In the late 1720s, he moved to the Paris des Ancien Régime .

Live and act

He was one of three children of the English historian Nathaniel Hooke († 1763) and his wife Mary Gore. His siblings were Thomas Hooke a Vicar of Leek. Yorkshire († 1791) and a sister Jane Mary Hooke († 1793). His grandfather was the judge John Hooke (1655-1712). Luke Joseph Hooke went to Paris with his father, Nathaniel Hooke, to become a priest. They were part of the Jacobite diaspora who fled to France in the late 17th and early 18th centuries . He lived in Paris with his uncle Nathaniel Hooke (1664-1738) a Jacobite and French diplomat and his wife, Lady Eleanor McCarthy Reagh (1683-1731) in the rue St Jacques du Haut-Pas . Due to the existing laws it was no longer possible to complete a Catholic school education in Ireland and so he was sent to the parish of St-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet in Paris. He stayed there until his licentiate . With his Baccalauréat universitaire he then entered the Sorbonne to study and received his doctorate in 1736.

In 1742 he was appointed to a chair in theology . Whose assignments he soon, reportedly, fulfilled with great success and prestige in the eyes of the students. Hooke endeavored to reconcile Newtonian considerations with Catholic beliefs.

Because of the initial approval of Jean-Martin de Prades' doctoral theses , he initially lost his chair. De Prades had put forward a number of theses in his extensive dissertation, which led to a sharp argument with representatives of the theological faculty of the University of Paris. Among other things, de Prades had expressed doubts about the chronological sequence of events in the Pentateuch 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 the preface written by d'Alembert to the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers , des Discours préliminaire , as well as the Pensées philosophiques by Denis Diderot . De Prades was in personal contact with Diderot and had met with him several times for talks. For the second volume of the Encyclopédie published in January 1752, de Prades wrote an approximately fifteen- page article under the heading of certainty, certitude .

De Prades' article was framed by an introduction and an endorsement by Denis Diderot . Against the background of the dispute over his dissertation, the theologians expressed their indignation and accused de Prades of heresy . An arrest warrant was issued against de Prades, he fled to Holland and finally to Berlin. The two first volumes of the Encyclopédie , which had already been published , were banned on February 7, 1752, as were the remaining volumes. Chrétien-Guillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes , chief censor of the Censure Royale , intervened protectively. This ultimately led to the attempt to prevent the publication of the first two volumes of the Encyclopédie . Because on December 15, the commission of the Paris theological faculty dealing with the case determined that the theses expressed in the dissertation, and thus the rigorosum, had to be discarded and that the writing itself fell under the censorship regulations. Hooke had given his approval by his signature when examining the doctoral thesis of de Prades. H. the doctoral dissertation was initially completed in accordance with the rules. Hooke admitted that he had not read the theses of the doctorate and then not only withdrew his signature, but even demanded the condemnation of the paper. Cardinal Pierre Guérin de Tencin suspended Hooke from his theological chair on May 3, 1752 because of the existing lettre de cachet, forcing him to leave the Sorbonne.

In 1754 de Prades was pardoned by Pope Benedict XIV , whereupon Hooke turned to the responsible cardinal and papal secretary to be rehabilitated as well. But he could only get the lettre de cachet recalled . The reigning King Louis XV. however, granted him a pension. In 1762 he was able to resume teaching. But he had almost no students who attended his lectures. His teaching activities were boycotted in favor of a professor appointed by the Parisian Archbishop Christophe de Beaumont . In the same year Hooke was appointed chairman of a committee of his theological faculty, which had the assignment to assess Rousseau's Émile .

Eventually Hooke gave up his theological professorship and took over the chair of Hebrew . A few years later he became a curator at the Bibliothèque Mazarine . He held this position until 1791. He later moved to Saint-Cloud, where he died.

Works (selection)

• Religionis naturalis et revelatæ principia. Paris (1752)
• Lettre à Mgr. L'Archevêque de Paris. Paris (1763)
• Discours et réflexions critiques sur l'histoire et le gouvernement de l'ancienne Rome. Paris (1770–1784)
• Mémoires du Maréchal de Berwick. Paris (1778)
• Principes sur la nature et l'essence du pouvoir de l'église. Paris (1791)

literature

• Thomas O'Connor: An Irish Theologian in Enlightenment France 1714-96, Luke Joseph Hooke. Four Courts Press, Dublin 1995, ISBN 1-85182-139-2 .
• Jacques M. Gres-Gayer: An Irish Theologian in Enlightenment France: Luke Joseph Hooke 1714-96. In: The Catholic Historical Review. April 1998 Vol. 84, No. 2.

Web links

Wikisource: Hooke, Luke Joseph (DNB00)  - Sources and full texts (English)

• Oxford Biography Index.
• The Irish Ecclesiastical Record. Browne and Nolan, 1903, online
• Irish Paris. Luke Joseph Hooke

Individual evidence

1. ↑ according to other sources 1714.
2. ↑ Aubrey Gwynn: A Forgotten Irish Theologian. In: An Irish Quarterly Review. Vol. 63, no. 251 (Autumn, 1974), pp. 259-268.
3. ^ François-Xavier de Feller: Dictionnaire historique. sv; Hurter, Nomenclator; Douais in Revue pratique d'apologétique (July, 1909), p. 501; Gillow, Bibl. Dict. Closely. Cath., Sv
4. ↑ James Livesey: Civil Society and Empire: Ireland and Scotland in the Eighteenth-century Atlantic World. Yale University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-300-15590-7 , pp. 117-118.
5. ↑ Thomas Byrne: From Irish whig rebel to bourbon diplomat: The life and career of Nathaniel Hooke (1664-1738). National University of Ireland Maynooth, October 2006.
6. ^ Catholic Encyclopedia. Luke Joseph Hooke ( Memento of the original from February 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
7. ^ Johanna Borek: Denis Diderot. Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-499-50447-2 , p. 58.
8. ↑ Pierre Lepape: Denis Diderot. A biography. Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-593-35150-1 , p. 198.