Pierre Daniel Huet
Encyclopedia
Pierre Daniel Huet was a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 churchman and scholar, editor
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...

 of the Delphin Classics
Delphin Classics
The Delphin Classics was an edition of the Latin classics, intended to be comprehensive, which was originally created in the 17th century.The 25 volumes were created in the 1670s for the Louis, le Grand Dauphin, heir of Louis XIV , and were written in Latin...

, founder of the Academie du Physique in Caen (1662-1672) and Bishop of Soissons from 1685 to 1689 and afterwards of Avranches
Avranches
Avranches is a commune in the Manche department in the Basse-Normandie region in north-western France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department. The inhabitants are called Avranchinais.-History:...

.

Life

He was born in Caen
Caen
Caen is a commune in northwestern France. It is the prefecture of the Calvados department and the capital of the Basse-Normandie region. It is located inland from the English Channel....

 in 1630, and educated at the Jesuit
Society of Jesus
The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...

 school there. He also received lessons from a Protestant pastor, Samuel Bochart
Samuel Bochart
Samuel Bochart was a French Protestant biblical scholar, a student of Thomas Erpenius and the teacher of Pierre Daniel Huet...

. By the age of twenty he was recognized as one of the most promising scholars of his time. In 1651 he went to Paris, where he formed a friendship with Gabriel Naudé
Gabriel Naudé
Gabriel Naudé was a French librarian and scholar. He was a prolific writer who produced works on many subjects including politics, religion, history and the supernatural. An influential work on library science was the 1627 book Advice on Establishing a Library...

, conservator of the Mazarin Library. In the following year Samuel Bochart, being invited by Queen Christina of Sweden
Christina of Sweden
Christina , later adopted the name Christina Alexandra, was Queen regnant of Swedes, Goths and Vandals, Grand Princess of Finland, and Duchess of Ingria, Estonia, Livonia and Karelia, from 1633 to 1654. She was the only surviving legitimate child of King Gustav II Adolph and his wife Maria Eleonora...

 to her court at Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

, took his friend Huet with him. This journey, in which he saw Leiden, Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

 and Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

, as well as Stockholm, resulted chiefly in the discovery, in the Swedish royal library, of some fragments of Origen
Origen
Origen , or Origen Adamantius, 184/5–253/4, was an early Christian Alexandrian scholar and theologian, and one of the most distinguished writers of the early Church. As early as the fourth century, his orthodoxy was suspect, in part because he believed in the pre-existence of souls...

's Commentary on St Matthew, which gave Huet the idea of editing Origen, a task he completed in 1668. He eventually quarrelled with Bochart, who accused him of having suppressed a line in Origen in the Eucharist
Eucharist
The Eucharist , also called Holy Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar, the Blessed Sacrament, the Lord's Supper, and other names, is a Christian sacrament or ordinance...

ic controversy.

Huet was also the cofounder of the Academie du Physique in Caen, the first provincial academy of science to be granted a royal charter (1668). Huet was the initial patron of the academy, and along with Andre Graindorge, directed the work of the group, which focused on the empirical study of nature, with a special emphasis on anatomy and dissections. Huet's presence was critical to the success of the academy, which floundered without his continued presence. He acted as head of the group from 1662-1667, and again in 1668, when he left Caen again for Paris. He also ended his financial support of the academy at this time, as it began to receive royal funding and direction from the royal representative in Normandy, Guy Chamillart.

In Paris he entered into close relations with Jean Chapelain
Jean Chapelain
Jean Chapelain was a French poet and writer.-Biography:Chapelain was born in Paris. His father wanted him to become a notary; but his mother, who had known Pierre de Ronsard, had decided otherwise...

. During the famous "dispute of Ancients and Moderns", Huet took the side of the Ancients against Charles Perrault
Charles Perrault
Charles Perrault was a French author who laid the foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, with his works derived from pre-existing folk tales. The best known include Le Petit Chaperon rouge , Cendrillon , Le Chat Botté and La Barbe bleue...

 and Jean Desmarets
Jean Desmarets
Jean Desmarets, Sieur de Saint-Sorlin was a French writer and dramatist. He was a founding member, and the first to occupy seat 4 of the Académie française in 1634.-Biography:...

. Among his friends at this period were Valentin Conrart
Valentin Conrart
Valentin Conrart was a French author, and as a founder of the Académie française, the first occupant of seat 2.-Biography:He was born in Paris of Calvinist parents, and was educated for business. However, after his father's death in 1620, he began to move in literary circles, and soon acquired a...

 and Paul Pellisson
Paul Pellisson
thumb|Paul Pellisson,Paul Pellisson was a French author.He was born in Béziers, of a distinguished Calvinist family. He studied law at Toulouse, and practised at the bar of Castres. Going to Paris with letters of introduction to Valentin Conrart, a fellow Calvinist, he was introduced to the...

. His taste for mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

 led him to the study of astronomy
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...

. He next turned his attention to anatomy
Anatomy
Anatomy is a branch of biology and medicine that is the consideration of the structure of living things. It is a general term that includes human anatomy, animal anatomy , and plant anatomy...

, and, being short-sighted
Myopia
Myopia , "shortsightedness" ) is a refractive defect of the eye in which collimated light produces image focus in front of the retina under conditions of accommodation. In simpler terms, myopia is a condition of the eye where the light that comes in does not directly focus on the retina but in...

, devoted his inquiries mainly to the question of vision and the formation of the eye. In the course of this study, he made more than 800 dissections. He then learned all that was then to be learned in chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....

, and wrote a Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 poem on salt.

All this time he was a frequent visitor to the salons of Mlle de Scudéry
Madeleine de Scudéry
Madeleine de Scudéry , often known simply as Mademoiselle de Scudéry, was a French writer. She was the younger sister of author Georges de Scudéry.-Biography:...

 and the studios of painters; his scientific researches did not interfere with his classical studies, for during this time he was discussing with Bochart the origin of certain medals, and was learning Syriac and Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

 under the Jesuit Adrien Parvilliers.

Huet was admitted to the Académie française
Académie française
L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...

 in 1674. He took holy orders in 1676, and two years later the king made him abbot of Aulnay
Aulnay
Aulnay is the name or part of the name of several communes in France:* Aulnay, Aube, in the Aube département* Aulnay, Charente-Maritime, in the Charente-Maritime département* Aulnay, Vienne, in the Vienne département...

. In 1685 he became Bishop of Soissons, but after waiting for installation for four years he took the bishopric of Avranches instead. He exchanged the cares of his bishopric for what he thought would be the easier chair of the Abbey of Fontenay
Abbey of Fontenay
The Abbey of Fontenay is a former Cistercian abbey located in the commune of Marmagne, near Montbard, in the département of Côte-d'Or in France. It was founded by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux in 1118, and built in the Romanesque style...

, but there he was vexed with continual lawsuits. At length he retired to the Jesuits' House in the Rue Saint-Antoine at Paris, where he died in 1721. His great library and manuscripts, after being bequeathed to the Jesuits, were bought by the king for the royal library.

Works

He translated the pastorals of Longus
Longus
Longus, sometimes Longos , was the author of an ancient Greek novel or romance, Daphnis and Chloe. Very little is known of his life, and it is assumed that he lived on the isle of Lesbos during the 2nd century AD...

, wrote a tale called Diane de Castro, and gave with his Traitté de l'origine des romans
Traitté de l'origine des romans
Pierre Daniel Huet's Trai[t]té de l'origine des Romans can claim to be the first history of fiction. It was originally published in 1670 as preface to Marie de la Fayette's novel Zayde. The following will give extended excerpts from the English translation by Stephen Lewis published in 1715...

(1670), his Treatise on the Origin of Romances the first world history of fiction. On being appointed assistant tutor to the Dauphin in 1670, he edited, with the assistance of Anne Lefêvre
Anne Lefèvre
Anne Le Fèvre Dacier , better known during her lifetime as Madame Dacier, was a French scholar and translator of the classics....

, afterwards Madame Dacier, the well-known edition of the Delphin Classics. This series was a comprehensive edition of the Latin classics in about sixty volumes, and each work was accompanied by a Latin commentary, ordo verborum, and verbal index. The original volumes have each an engraving of Arion
Arion
Arion was a kitharode in ancient Greece, a Dionysiac poet credited with inventing the dithyramb: "As a literary composition for chorus dithyramb was the creation of Arion of Corinth," The islanders of Lesbos claimed him as their native son, but Arion found a patron in Periander, tyrant of Corinth...

 and the Dolphin, and the appropriate inscription in usum serenissimi Delphini.

He issued one of his major works, the Demonstratio evangelica, in 1679. At Aulnay he wrote his Questiones Aletuanae (Caen, 1690), his Censura philosophiae Cartesianae (Paris, 1689), his Nouveau mémoire pour servir à l'histoire du Cartésianisme (New Memoirs to Serve The History of Cartesianism, 1692), and his discussion with Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux was a French poet and critic.-Biography:Boileau was born in the rue de Jérusalem, in Paris, France. He was brought up to the law, but devoted to letters, associating himself with La Fontaine, Racine, and Molière...

 on the Sublime.

In the Huetiana (1722) of the abbé d'Olivet will be found material for arriving at an idea of his prodigious labours, exact memory and wide scholarship. Another posthumous work was his Traité philosophique de la faiblesse de l'esprit humain (original spelling: Traité philosophique de la foiblesse de l’esprit humain) (Amsterdam, 1723), which he considered to be his best work. His autobiography, found in his Commentarius de rebus ad eum pertinentibus (Paris, 1718), has been translated into French and into English.

Legacy

The lycée in Herouville Saint Clair, Calvados
Calvados
The French department of Calvados is part of the region of Basse-Normandie in Normandy. It takes its name from a cluster of rocks off the English Channel coast...

, was formerly named after Huet, though it has now ceased to be so.
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