- Gaspard Terrasson
Gaspard Terrasson (born at
Lyon , October 1680; died at Paris,2 January 1752 ) was a FrenchOratorian , teaching humanities and afterwards philosophy, and later a well-known preacher.Life
His oratorical talents were revealed at
Troyes , 1711, on delivering the funeral oration of theDauphin , son ofLouis XIV ; but he did not devote himself to preaching till after the death in 1723 of his brotherAndré Terrasson , when he fulfilled several engagements which the latter had made. For five years he preached at Paris, and finally delivered a Lenten course in the Church of Notre Dame.He appealed repeatedly against the
papal bull "Unigenitus "; he was the anonymous author of twelve "Lettres sur la justice chrétienne" (Paris, 1733), in which, to support theJansenists whom the bishops deprived of the sacraments, he endeavoured to prove the inutility ofsacramental confession . This work was condemned by the faculty of theology at Paris (1 Sept., 1734), and by the Archbishops of Sens and Embrun, as containing erroneous, schismatical and heretical assertions.Terrasson had to leave the Oratory and abandon preaching. He withdrew to the
Diocese of Auxerre where the bishop,Charles de Caylus , a well-known Jansenist, confided to him the care ofTreigni . But he was soon arrested (Oct., 1735) by the order of the king for his Jansenistic activities, and was confined during nine years either atVincennes or with theMinims ofArgenteuil . A belated retraction, the authenticity or sincerity of which has never been well established, was attributed to him. He was living in retirement with his family when he died.Works
A volume of his discourses appeared at Utrecht in 1733, but the first real edition was at Paris in 1744 (4 vols.). The sermons of the two brothers were reprinted by
Migne in his "Collection des orateurs sacrés", XXIX (Paris, 1849).References
*CURSAY, Mémoires sur les savants de la famille de Terrasson (Trévoux, 1761);
*Nouvelles ecclésiastiques (1736, 1744);
*Supplément au nécrologe des plus célèbres défenseurs de la vérité (s. l., 1763), 120;
*CANDEL, Les prédicateurs français dans la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1904);
*FÉRET, La Faculté de théologie de Paris, Epoque moderne, VI (Paris, 1909), 144.
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