Claude-François Nonnotte

Claude-François Nonnotte
Born	Claude-François Nonnotte (1711-07-29)29 July 1711 Besançon, Kingdom of France
Died	Besançon, Kingdom of France
Occupation	Priest, writer, philosopher, historian
Language	French
Notable works	The Errors of Voltaire
Philosophy career
Era	Age of Enlightenment
Region	Western philosophy French philosophy
Main interests	Political philosophy, literature, historiography, apologetics

Claude-François Nonnotte SJ (8 June 1711 – 3 September 1793), sometimes referred to as Claude-Adrien Nonnotte, was a French Roman Catholic priest, preacher, philosopher and writer, remembered today especially as an adversary of Voltaire and the philosophes party.

Biography

Claude-François Nonnotte was born in Besançon, the younger brother of Donat Nonnotte. On 7 September 1730, Claude-François joined the Society of Jesus and did his novitiate in Avignon (Vaucluse). At the end of his spiritual and theological training, he was ordained a priest, probably in 1742.

During his career, he taught in several colleges and made a name for himself as a preacher (in Amiens, Versailles and the Kingdom of Sardinia, among other places). Father Nonnotte became superior of the Jesuit residence at Paray-le-Monial in 1755, when the Jesuits were banished from France.

With the Jesuit communities dissolved, Nonnotte returned to his native Besançon, where he devoted the rest of his life to defending the Church against contemporary philosophes. He was one of Voltaire's most notable contemporary antagonists, alongside such people as Abbé Coger, Berthier, Pompignan, Guenée and the learned Larcher. In 1781 he became a member of the Academy of Besançon.

Works

When Voltaire began to publish his Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations (1754), Nonnotte anonymously edited an Examen critique ou Réfutation du livre des mœurs (Critical examination or refutation of the book of manners); and when Voltaire finished its publication (1758), Nonnotte updated his book and republished it in Avignon (1762), refuting all the errors in history and doctrine that he was busy pointing out in Voltaire's work. This work was still to be extended to a sixth edition in 1774, and Voltaire replied in his Éclaircissements historiques (Historical Clarifications), so that the controversy continued for twenty years. To allude to him Voltaire slightly modified his name out of derision, as he used to do with his other enemies.

The book was translated into Italian, German, Polish and Portuguese. After the suppression of his order by Louis XV in 1764, Nonnotte retired to Besançon and in 1779 added a third volume to the two he had already composed under the title Erreurs de Voltaire. L'esprit de Voltaire dans ses écrits (The Errors of Voltaire. The Spirit of Voltaire in His Writings), for which he could not obtain the approval of the Paris censor but which was printed all over Europe, including Spain, translated in 1771 by the Mercedarian and royal preacher Pedro Rodríguez Morzo. Against the Philosophical Dictionary in which Voltaire had collected all his attacks against Christianity, Nonnotte edited a Philosophical Dictionary of Religion (1772), where he answered all his objections against religion. This work was translated into Italian, Polish by Tadeusz Brzozowski, German and Spanish under another title: Diccionario anti-filosófico ó Comentario y correctivo del diccionario filosófico de Voltaire, y de otros libros que han salido a luz en estos últimos tiempos contra el cristianismo (1793), by an anonymous translator and also much later (1850) by the Jesuit Joaquín María de Parada. Towards the end of his life, Nonnotte published Les philosophes des trois premiers siècles de l'Église ou portraits historiques des philosophes payens, qui, ayant embrassé le christianisme, en sont devenus les défenseurs par leurs écrits (The Philosophers of the First Three Centuries of the Church or Historical Portraits of the Pagan Philosophers Who, Having Embraced Christianity, thus Became Its Defenders by their Writings, 1789), in which he opposed the ancient philosophers, but also made room for the modern ones. This book was translated into German.

He also wrote Lettre à un ami sur les honnêtetés littéraires (Letter to a Friend on Literary Honesties, 1766) and Réponse aux Éclaircissements historiques et aux additions de Voltaire (Reply to Voltaire's Historical Clarifications and Additions, 1774), publications which earned their author a commendation from Pope Clement XIII (1768) and the congratulations of Saint Alphonsus Liguori, who assured that he always had at hand these "golden works" where the essential truths of the faith were defended with erudition and relevance against the objections of Voltaire and his friends. Nonnotte is also the author of L'emploi de l'argent (The Use of Money, 1787), translated from the original Italian of Francesco Scipione Maffei, and Le gouvernement des Paroisses (The Government of Parishes, 1802). All these works were published under the title Œuvres de Nonnotte (1819). In Spain he is particularly important because Nonnotte had a noted follower in Fernando de Zeballos (1732–1802), author, among other works, of a two-volume Last Judgement of Voltaire, published posthumously in 1852.

In popular culture

His polemics against Voltaire are mentioned in Antonio Bresciani's novel Ubaldo and Irene (1858). Nonnotte was mentioned in similar fashion in Azorín's novella La Voluntad (1902).

See also

• Nicolas-Sylvestre Bergier
• Le Coq de Villeray

References

• Backer, Augustin de; Aloys de Backer (1851). "Nonnotte, Claude-François." In: Bibliothèque des écrivains de la compagnie de Jésus ou notices bibliographiques, Vol. 4. Liège: Grandmont-Donders, pp. 481–83.
• Delpiano, Patrizia (2021). "Enlightenment History and Antiphilosophie: Voltaire and Nonnotte in France, Spain and Italy," Diciottesimo Secolo, Vol. VI, 121–31.
• Everdell, William R. (1987). Christian Apologetics in France, 1730-1790: The Roots of Romantic Religion. Lewiston: E. Mellen Press.
• Monod, Albert (1916). De Pascal à Chateaubriand; les défenseurs français du christianisme de 1670 à 1802. Paris: Félix Alcan

External links

• Works by Claude-François Nonnotte at Gallica
• Works by Claude-François Nonnotte at Internet Archive
• Works by Claude-François Nonnotte at Open Library