Pierre François Le Courayer

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Pierre François Le Courayer. The frame inscription designates him as a canon of Sainte-Geneviève, Paris, and professor at Oxford University; it also states the place and date of birth.
Title page of the treatise on the validity of the orders of the English of 1723, which became the turning point of Le Courayer's life.

Pierre François Le Courayer (born November 17, 1681 in Rouen , † October 17, 1776 in London ) was a French Roman Catholic clergyman, Augustinian canon , librarian and theologian . He went into exile in England , where he received a professorship at Oxford University .

Life

Le Courayer's father was a lawyer in Rouen. Pierre François received his first academic education in Vernon and at the age of 14 came to the Collège de Beauvais in Paris . Two years later he entered the Sainte-Geneviève monastery of the Augustinian Canons of Saint Victor . Here he continued his studies and was ordained priest in 1706 . He became a lecturer in theology and in 1711 director of the monastery library, which enabled him to study sources intensively.

In 1718, the Parisian theologian Louis Ellies Dupin (1657-1719) contacted the Archbishop of Canterbury William Wake (1657-1737) in order to bring the French Church closer to the Church of England, which was independent of Rome , on a Gallican basis . Le Courayer was included in this correspondence and began to deal intensively with the Roman Catholic assessment of Anglicanism . Central was the question of the validity of the ordinations and the apostolic succession of the bishops , since according to the Catholic faith the reality of the Eucharist and being a church depended on it.

As an anonymous , Le Courayer published his treatise on the validity of the ordinations of the English and on the [apostolic] succession of the bishops of the Anglican Church in 1723 with the wrong place of printing "Brussels" (in reality Nancy ) . In it he pleaded with historical and theological arguments for the validity of the Anglican ordinations and rejected the usual practice of rededicating converting clergy of the Church of England according to the Roman rite. Although he represented a theological opinion that had not yet been condemned at that time and also firmly adhered to the requirement of unity with Rome as a condition for full being church, his writing met with rejection in the ecclesiastical field. He was violently contradicted by the Parisian Dominican theologian Michel Le Quien in his refutation of 1725. The main reason for the contradiction were Le Courayer's attempts to formulate the ecclesiastical faith with regard to the Eucharist and other controversial topics in such a way that Catholics and Anglicans could find themselves in it; In doing so, according to the judgment of leading Catholic theologians, he revealed essential beliefs such as the sacrificial character of the Eucharist. In 1726 he published a second anonymous treatise on the subject. Identified as the author, he was finally asked by the Parisian Cardinal Archbishop Louis-Antoine de Noailles , who had supported him for a long time, and 22 bishops gathered in Paris to revoke 32 of his theses. With his decree of June 25, 1728, Pope Benedict XIII condemned . the views expressed in the two anonymous writings. In the same year, the collegiate chapter of Sainte-Geneviève unanimously pronounced Le Courayer's excommunication and banned him from teaching and writing. Several of Le Courayer's works were then indexed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ( Défense de la Dissertation and Dissertation sur la validité in 1728, Histoire de Concile de Trente 1740, Défense de la nouvelle traduction 1748). The Anglican University of Oxford, on the other hand, had awarded him a theological doctorate for his treatise as early as 1727. Through the mediation of Francis Atterbury , the Bishop of Rochester who exiled as Jacobite in Paris , Le Courayer fled to England. There he was readily accepted, but did not convert to Anglicanism, but informed the superior general of his Augustinian congregation that he wanted to remain a member of the order.

While the storm against Le Courayer continued for some time in France, he gained a foothold in England and spent the remaining five decades of his long life as a “stranger” in English society, which held him in high regard. Materially he was secured by a generous pension from Queen Caroline and other endowments and brought it to some prosperity. Personally, he lived modestly, supported his siblings who had stayed behind in France and was extremely generous towards the needy, helping particularly destitute prisoners and those released from prison . He continued to work scientifically and theologically with great independence in all directions. To his French translation of Paolo Sarpi's great history of the Council of Trent , he added an extensive annotation that cast doubt on large parts of the Counter-Reformation Catholic positions. Nevertheless, he saw himself as the son of the Roman Catholic Church until his death and attended the service in Warwick Street Church when he was in London . In 1767 he wrote two theological manuscripts which he entrusted to Princess Amelia with the condition that they would not be published until after his death. They show that on key doctrinal points such as the doctrines of the Trinity and of Incarnation and Original Sin he held very idiosyncratic views that seemed to deviate not only from Roman Catholic but also from the positions of the Church of England and other Reformation churches . However, he probably only understood his elaborations as explanations of the secrets of faith and always regarded himself as orthodox. He also took a mediating stance in the dispute over infant baptism , which on the one hand adhered to the early Christian custom and on the other hand showed an understanding of Anabaptist views .

Pierre François Le Courayer was buried in the cloister of Westminster Abbey , where a large Latin epitaph honors him.

Publications (selection)

literature

Web links

Commons : Pierre François Le Courayer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rothomagus , Latin form of Rouen
  2. ↑ The question was not officially approved by the church until 1896 with the letter Apostolicae curae Pope Leos XIII. decided in the sense of invalidity.
  3. ↑ Le Courayer, Pierre-François. In: Jesús Martínez de Bujanda , Marcella Richter: Index des livres interdits: Index librorum prohibitorum 1600–1966. Médiaspaul, Montréal 2002, ISBN 2-89420-522-8 , pp. 523-524 (French, digitized ).
  4. ↑ a b Seager, p. Xlix f.
  5. ↑ Seager, p. Lix f.
  6. ^ Text printed in Seager, p. Lvi f.
  7. ↑ a b Place of printing incorrectly stated, as there was no printing permit in the Kingdom of France.
  8. ↑ The editor of the book and author of the extensive Introduction is not mentioned in the book itself, but z. B. here (note 3).
personal data
SURNAME Le Courayer, Pierre François
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Le Courayer, Peter Francis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French Augustinian canon and theologian, professor at Oxford in exile in England
DATE OF BIRTH November 17, 1681
PLACE OF BIRTH Rouen
DATE OF DEATH October 17, 1776
Place of death London