Pierre Daniel Huet

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Censura philosophiae Cartesianae , 1723

Pierre Daniel Huet (lat. Huetius ; born February 8, 1630 in Caen ; † January 26, 1721 in Paris ) was a French clergyman and scholar, bishop of Soissons from 1685 to 1689 and later of Avranches .

PD Huetius

Life

Huet was born in Caen in 1630 and taught at the local Jesuit school. He also received lessons from the Protestant pastor Samuel Bochart . At the age of 20 he was recognized as one of the most promising scholars of his time. In 1651 he went to Paris, where he befriended Gabriel Naudé . The following year Bochart was invited to her court in Stockholm by Queen Christina of Sweden . Huet accompanied his friend on this trip. This trip, during which he got to know Leiden , Amsterdam and Copenhagen as well as Stockholm, led mainly to an exploration of Sweden's Royal Library , where Huet found some fragments of Origen's commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. This gave him the idea of editing Origen , a task he completed in 1668. It finally came to an argument with Bochart, who accused him of suppressing a line from Origen in the Eucharistic controversy.

In Paris he came into close contact with Jean Chapelain . During the famous Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes , Huet sided with the Anciens against Charles Perrault and Jean Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin . Among his friends at the time were Valentin Conrart and Jean Pellisson . His predilection for mathematics led him to study astronomy . His attention was next drawn to anatomy . Since he was nearsighted, his investigations mainly focused on the question of vision and the formation of the eyes. During his studies, he performed more than 800 dissections of eyes. After that, he focused on chemistry and also wrote a Latin poem about salt. During this time he was a regular visitor to Madeleine de Scudéry's salons and artist studios . His scientific research did not interfere with his original studies. He also learned Syriac and Arabic from the Jesuit Adrien Parvilliers . He also wrote a story called Diane de Castro and, with his Traitté de l'origine des romans, provided the first story of the novel - the work that can now be viewed as the trailblazer of modern literary historiography . In 1670 he became the Dauphin's assistant teacher and, with the support of Anne Lefèvre , later Madame Dacier, published the well-known Delphic classics. The series included a comprehensive edition of Latin classics in over 60 issues, and each work was accompanied by a Latin commentary.

Huet was appointed to the Académie française in 1674 . In 1679 he published one of his greatest works, the Demonstratio evangelica . In 1678 the king made him abbot of Aulnay . There he wrote his Questiones Aletuanae (Caen, 1690), his Censura philosophiae Cartesianae (Paris, 1689), his Nouveau mémoire pour servir a l'histoire du Cartesianisme (1692) and his discussion with Nicolas Boileau on the sublime. In 1685 he became bishop of Soissons, but after waiting 4 years for his installation, he took over the diocese of Avranches instead. He gave up the office in his diocese and took what he thought was easier to manage as the post of Abbot of Fontenay, but there he was harassed with incessant trials. When the time was right, he retired on Rue Saint-Antoine in Paris, where he died in 1721. Its extensive library and manuscripts were acquired by the king for the royal library after he left them to the Jesuits.

The Traité philosophique de la faiblesse de l'esprit humain (Amsterdam, 1723) was published posthumously . His autobiography, found in his Commentarius de rebus ad eum pertinentibus , has been translated into English and French.

literature

Histoire du commerce , 1763

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Elena Rapetti: Pierre-Daniel Huet's Origeniana. Origenian Scholarship in Early Modern France . In: Alfons Fürst (ed.): Origen in France. The Origeniana Pierre-Daniel Huets . Aschendorff Verlag, Münster 2017, pp. 35–74.
personal data
SURNAME Huet, Pierre Daniel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Huetius, Pierre Daniel; Huetius, PD; Huet, PD
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French Roman Catholic bishop and scholar
DATE OF BIRTH February 8, 1630
PLACE OF BIRTH Caen
DATE OF DEATH January 26, 1721
Place of death Paris