ANNAT, FRANCESCO. - Jesuit, b. at Estain near Annat (Rhodez), on 5 Feb. 1590; d. in Paris on 14 June 1670. Having entered the Society of Jesus on 16 Feb. 1607, after completing his studies he was professor of philosophy and theology at Toulouse; then rector of the colleges of Montpellier and Toulouse; thereafter assistant of the General for France (1648-52), and in 1653 he was elected provincial in Paris. The following year he was chosen as confessor to Louis XIV. In this delicate office, fraught with difficulties, he knew how to conduct himself excellently and spared no vigilance or care, above all to turn the king away from his illicit loves. He would have wished to retire as early as 1663, but he remained in his post, at the desire of his superiors, until a few months before his death.
His great activity as a writer was directed at combating Jansenism, and he did so without sparing himself, with numerous writings in Latin and in French, contesting with the Jansenists the authority of St. Augustine and St. Thomas and contributing to the condemnation of the five propositions of the Augustinus by Innocent X and to the bull of 5 Feb. 1665 of Alexander VII. The Jansenists, therefore, being unable to gain the upper hand in the field of doctrine, did not spare him in their accusations and calumnies, and Pascal made him the object of his barbs in the Lettres Provinciales, especially in the last two, the 17th and the 18th, addressed to him personally.
The many works of A. were collected in 3 vols., Opuscula Theologica, Paris 1866.
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