Jean-Nicolas Beauregard

Beauregard, JEAN-NICOLAS, celebrated French pulpit orator, b. at Metz in Lorraine, December 4, 1733; d. at the castle of Groningen in Southern Germany, July 27, 1804. He entered the Society of Jesus at Nancy, September 30, 1749. After his noviceship and higher studies, he taught classics and rhetoric with distinction for six years at the colleges of the Society in Nancy, Verdun, Strasburg, and Pont-ii-Mousson. His theological studies, which followed, were made in Strasburg, and after the year of third probation Father Beauregard was back at Nancy for the year 1766-67 as perfect of studies. The next year he was assigned to the task of preaching, which thenceforth became the work of his life. Having gained a wonderful reputation in the lesser towns of France, he was summoned to Paris, where his success was even more phenomenal. Especially noteworthy was the course of sermons preached before the Court during the Lent of 1789, in which Father Beauregard is said to have clearly foretold the evils that were about to engulf France. Father Beauregard escaped the first terrors of the Revolution, but was forced to flee to London in 1794. Later on he established himself at Maastricht, then at Cologne, while his declining years were spent at the castle of the Princess Sophie of Hohenlohe-Bartenstein. His works, which for the most part are still only in manuscript, consist of sermons and letters. A collection of his sermons, made by one of his hearers, was first printed at Paris in 1820, often reprinted, and later embodied in Migne’s “Orateurs Sacres”, vol. LXXI.

JOHN F. X. MURPHY