Jarrige, Pierre

Jarrige, Pierre a French Jesuit, who was born at Tulle in 1605, is celebrated in history by his desertion from and severe attacks upon the Jesuitical order. He was a very popular teacher and preacher at the time, when he joined the Calvinists in 1647; but, meeting with great opposition in France, and his life even being threatened, he went to Leyden, Holl, where he preached under the auspices of the State Church. Meanwhile the Jesuitical order condemned him to suffer death, first by hanging, then by burning. This provoked the so celebrated work of his, Les Jesuites mis sur l'echlfaud (Leyden, 1649, 12mo, and often), in which he thoroughly exposed the workings of that nefarious clerical order. A controversy ensued, which finally resulted in the return of Jarrige, in 1650, to the Jesuits--due, no doubt, more to the threats against his life than anything else. He certainly turned the table like a zealous Jesuit, and now again condemned as heretics the very Christians with whom he had so lately associated, and whose cause he had professed to have embraced. He died Sept. 20, 1660. See Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Géneralé 26, 383 sq.; Bayle, Historical Dictionary, s.v.