Dominique Bouhours

Dominique Bouhours

French Jesuit author, born at Paris, 15 May, 1632; died 27 May, 1702. Entering the Society of Jesus at sixteen, he taught grammar and rhetoric at Paris, Tours, and Rouen. A number of works which he composed against the Jansenists, notably "Lettre à un seigneur de la cour" and "Lettre a Messieurs de Port-Royal," has a large circulation, and gained him a prominent place among the critics and littérateurs of the seventeenth century. He also translated the new Testament into French, and his translation has often been reprinted. He is best known to English readers, however, by his "Vie de S. Ignace" (Paris, 1679), "Vie de S. Francois-Xavier" (Paris, 1682). these two biographies were translated into English and published at London in 1686 and 1688 respectively. A new translation by a clergyman of the Diocese of Philadelphia was published at Philadelphia by E. Cummiskey in 1840, and for a number of years these two works of Bouhours' were the most widely circulated biographies of the two saints. The only other of the author's works done into English is "La manière de bien penser dans les oeurves d'esprit," which appeared in London in 1705 under the title, "The Art of Criticism."

Doncleux, Un jesuite homme de lettres au xviie siecle (Paris, 1886); Bibliotheque. de la c. de J., VII, 1886; Dutouquet in Dict. de theol. cath., II, 1091.

S.H. FRISBEE