BEAUMONT, CHRISTOPHE de. — Archbishop of Paris, b. in 1703, d. in Paris on 12 Dec. 1781, exemplary for the strictness of his morals, for his great spirit of faith and for his profound devotion to the sovereign. He was first named canon and count of Lyon, then, in 1741, consecrated bishop of Bayonne; in 1745 archbishop of Vienne and, the following year, was promoted to the see of Paris. Famous remained his theological dispute against the Jansenists, concerning the papal bull that condemned the work of Fr. Du Quesnel entitled Réflexions morales. He also engaged in lively polemics with some philosophers and wrote various ordinances against books — among them Émile — by J. J. Rousseau, which he deemed to undermine the foundations of religion and of the State. This stance earned him the violent opposition of the Parliament, so much so that Louis XV, to spare him persecution, exiled him first to the Château of La Roque, in Périgord, then to Conflans and finally to a Trappist monastery. No threat could bend him before his adversaries.
B., most rigid against the Jansenists, was instead admirable in private for his moderation, for his gentle temperament and for his great charity toward his neighbor. He devoted himself with generous zeal to the direction of his diocese until the last days of his life. A Recueil de mandements, lettres et instructions pastorales remains of him.
BEAUNEVEU, ANDRÉ. — Painter, miniaturist, sculptor, perhaps architect, b. in France, worked between 1360 and 1403 also in Flanders and in England: in the castle of Barr for Yolande, lady of Cassel (1360), at Valenciennes (1361-62 and 1374), at Mechelen (1374-75; 1383-84), at Ypres (1377), at Cambrai (1378).
The works that can be attributed to him with certainty are the funerary statues (abbey of St. Denis) commissioned from him in 1364 by Charles V, and the twenty-four delightful miniatures of the Psalter of the Duke of Berry (National Library of Paris). Instead, the tomb of Count L. of Flanders (Courtrai, church of Notre-Dame), begun in 1374, remained unfinished.
His style, though following the late Gothic, has realistic touches of great efficacy.