BELSUNCE DE CASTELMORON, HENRI-FRANÇOIS-XAVIER. — Bishop of Marseille, born at the château of La Force (Dordogne) on 8–9 December 1670 to parents of Protestant origin, died at Marseille on 4 June 1755. Baptised by a Protestant minister, he may have abjured in 1685. A Jesuit from 1689 to 1701, he left the Society for reasons of health. He took his degree at Cahors and was ordained priest in 1703. Vicar general of Agen (1704), in 1709 he was appointed bishop of Marseille. A new St Charles Borromeo, during the plague that devastated Marseille in 1720–21 he renewed, to the world’s admiration, the prodigies of charity and zeal. His attachment to the Jesuits, his zeal for the spread of devotion to the Sacred Heart, his devotion to the Holy See, and his intransigence on doctrinal principles—which led him to refuse absolution to those who refused to submit to the bull Unigenitus—made him the victim of relentless persecution by the Jansenists.
Among his publications were: *S. Cypriani de unitate Ecclesiae* (1744), in favour of the primacy of Rome against Gallican doctrines; *L’Antiquité de l’église de Marseille* (3 vols., Marseille 1747–51), not overly critical; *Le combat chrétien*, a translation of St Augustine’s *De agone christiano*; and *L’art de bien mourir*, from St Robert Bellarmine’s *De arte bene moriendi*.