BELSUNCE DE CASTELMORON, HENRI-FRANÇOIS-XAVIER. - Bishop of Marseilles, b. in the castle of La Force (Dordogne) on 8-9 Dec. 1670 to parents of Protestant origin, and d. at Marseilles on 4 June 1755. Baptized by a Protestant minister, he abjured perhaps in 1685. A Jesuit from 1689 to 1701, he left the Society for reasons of health. He took his degree at Cahors and in 1703 was ordained a priest. Vicar general of Agen (1704), in 1709 he was made bishop of Marseilles. A new St. Charles Borromeo, in the plague that devastated Marseilles in 1720-21 he renewed, amid the admiration of the world, its wonders of charity and zeal. His attachment to the Jesuits, his zeal for the spread of the cult of the Sacred Heart, the devotion to the Holy See, the intransigence on doctrinal principles, which made him refuse absolution to those who declined to submit to the bull Unigenitus, made him the victim of a merciless war on the part of the Jansenists.

He published among other things: S. Cypriani de unitate Ecclesiae, (1744) in favor of the primacy of Rome against the Gallican doctrines; L'Antiquité de l'église de Marseille (3 vols., Marseilles 1747-51), not overly critical; Le combat chrétien, trans. from the De agone christiano of St. Augustine; L'art de bien mourir from the De arte bene morienti of St. Robert Bellarmine.

Bibliography4 works

BIBL.: Th. Bérénégier, Mgr. de B. est-il protestant?, in Revue des questions historiques, 30 (1881), pp. 210-16; id., Vie de mgr. de B., 2 vols., Lyons and Paris 1887; Hurter, II, coll. 1464-1465; P. Calendini, s. v. in DHC, VIII, coll. 951-52.

Vito Zolini

@incollection{ec2_belsunce_de_castelmoron_henri, author = {Zollini, Vito}, title = {Belsunce de Castelmoron, henri-françois-xavier}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {II}, pages = {1204--1205}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1949}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/belsunce-de-castelmoron-henri-francois-xavier} }

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Belsunce de Castelmoron, Henri-François-Xavier

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