The Philosophical Articles by Abbé Pestré in Diderot's Encyclopédie

T h e P h ilo so p h ica l A rticles b y A b b e P estre in D id ero t’smlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Ency clope d ie W A L T E R E . R E X It was a sobering experience to discover that d’Alembert had not told the truth about abbe M allet.1 The great mathematician had de­ scribed this theologian— one of the original contributors to the E n cyclopedie , the author of some 2,000 articles— as a broad-minded, philosophically oriented, tolerant, impartial churchman. Following this lead, later scholars thought they even detected in his work a de­ lightful sense of humor and good fun. But the harsh reality is that abbe Mallet was a narrow-minded bigot, an enemy of religious toleration, an apologist for persecution,2 mostly devoid of humor, usually against the Jansenists, by temperament distinctly bilious. His style of writing lacks elegance, character, or even moisture. Heaven knows why he was assigned the article “Harmonie de la prose” (VII, p. 52A-B), when his own prose lacked precisely the quality of harmony he was supposed to be so good at explaining.3 Documents show that he was in league with the right wing of the French clergy, and circumstantial evidence suggests that he was a “plant,” that is, someone the Assemblee du Clerge could count on to turn out pure orthodoxy by the columnful, to offset whatever poisonous impieties Diderot and his friends might be concocting. On d’Alembert’s earliest list of con251 252 / WVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA W A L T E R E . R E X trib utors to the E ncyclopedic his name appe ars second, and one suspects that he had been part of the original bargain, part of the price the encyclopedistes had to pay in order to get permission to operate. To discover all this after having trusted in the flattering phrases of d’Alembert’s eulogy of him is certainly enough to make one wary, not only of abbe Mallet’s articles, but of all the clerics who contributed to the early volumes. If abbe Mallet was a right-wing “plant,” so might others be. It is for this reason that I propose to place under close scrutiny one more of the churchmen who were among the original team of contributors to the E ncyclopedic. His name is abbe Pestre, and he is something of a mystery. In the first place we don’t even know his Christian name(s) or the date of his birth. Robert Shackleton found out that he came from the Aveyron, that in the 1750s he was a “peripatetic private tutor,” a man with a career to make, and finally, that he was “in a sense” a client of abbe Raynal.4 Professor Lough adds that in the account books of the publishers of the E ncyclopedic he was listed among those receiving payment.5 But the most intriguing bits of information about abbe Pestre were discovered by Frank Kafker:6 the police had taken note of abbe Pestre during the scandal over the thesis of the abbe de Prades, and although they did not think he had contributed to the actual writing of the condemned thesis, they were convinced that he had corrected the proofs of the A pologie fo r it. In any case, abbe Pestre was not forced into exile after this affair, as others were. Professor Kafker also tells us that abbe Pestre tutored children of the rich, that he was respected by both Turgot and abbe Raynal, and that he lived an almost unbelievably long time, until 1821. One source referred to by Professor Kafker claims that abbe Pestre also contributed some articles to Raynal’s H isto ire. . . des d eu x Indes. However, the articles in ques­ tion are unfortunately not specified, and we have no way to test the truth of the allegation. Indeed, tantalizing though they are, these facts only give us hints of possibilities. They do not bring us close enough to the man or his work to characterize them. Nor is d’Alembert very informative in his D iscours prelim inaire: he refers to...