BEAUMONT, CHRISTOPHE DE (1703-1781)

This article appears in Volume V03, Page 591 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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BEAUMONT, CHRISTOPHE DE (1703-1781) , French ecclesiastic and archbishop of Paris, was a

cadet

CADET (through the Fr. from the Late Lat. capitettum, a diminutive of caput, head, through the Provencal form capdet)

of the Les Adrets and Saint-Quentin branch of the illustrious Dauphine family of Beaumont. He became

bishop

of Bayonne in 1741, then arch-

bishop

of Vienne in 1743, and in 1746, at the age of

forty

FORTY

-three, archbishop of Paris. Beaumont is noted for his struggle with the Jansenists. To force them to accept the

bull

Unigenitus which condemned their doctrines, he ordered the priests of his diocese to refuse absolution to those who would not recognize the

bull

, and to deny funeral

rites

RITES

to those who had confessed to a Jansenist priest. While other bishops sent Beaumont their adhesion to his crusade, the parlement of Paris threatened to confiscate his temporalities. The king forbade the parlement to interfere in these spiritual questions, and upon its proving obdurate it was exiled (September 18, 1753). The " royal chamber," which was substituted, having failed to carry on the administration of justice properly, the king was obliged to recall the parlement, and the archbishop was sent into honourable

exile

EXILE (Lat. exsilium or exilium, from exsul or exul, which is derived from ex, out of, and the root sal, to go, seen in salire, to leap,
consul
- CONSUL
- CONSUL (in Gr. generally ihraros,ashortened form of errpavgybs 8hraeos, i.e. praetor maximus)
, &c.; the connexion with solum, soil, country is now generally considered wrong)

(August 1754). An effort was made to induce him to resign the active duties of his see to a coadjutor, but in spite of the most tempting offersincluding a cardinal's hathe refused. On the contrary, to his polemic against the Jansenists he added an attack on the philosophes, and issued a formal mandatory

letter

LETTER (through Fr. lettre from Lat. littera or litera, letter of the
alphabet
- ALPHABET (see also WRITING)
; the origin of the Latin word is obscure; it has probably no connexion with the root of linere, to smear, i.e. with wax, for an inscription with a stilus)

condemning Rousseau's Emile. Rousseau replied in his masterly Lettre a M. de Beaumont (1762), in which he insists that freedom of discussion in religious matters is essentially more religious than the attempt to impose belief by force.
De Beaumont's Mandements, lettres et instructions pastorales were published in two volumes in 178o, the year before his death.

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