Renaudot - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

Eusebe RENAUDOT (1646-1720), French theologian and Orientalist, was born in Paris in 1646, and educated for the church. Notwithstanding his taste for theology and his title of abbe, much of his life was spent at the French court, where he attracted the notice of Colbert and was often employed in confidential affairs. The unusual learning in Eastern tongues which he acquired in his youth and maintained amid the distractions of court life did not bear fruit till he was sixty-two. His best-known books are HistoriaPatriarcharum Alexandrinorum (Paris, 1713) and Liturgiarum orientalium collectio (2 vols., 1715-16). The latter was designed to supply proofs of the "perpetuity of the faith" of the church on the subject of the sacraments, the topic on which most of his theological writings turned, and which was then, in consequence of the controversies attaching to Arnauld's Perpetuite de la foi, a burning one between French Catholics and Protestants. Renaudot was not a fair controversialist, but his learning and industry are unquestionable. He died in 1720.