CELLOT, LOUIS. – French Jesuit, born in Paris in 1588, died there on 20 October 1658. A novice in 1605, he taught literature and Holy Scripture, served as rector at Rouen and La Flèche, and was provincial of France (1654–58).
He achieved considerable success with his tragedies and other literary works: Opera poetica (Paris 1630); Panegyrici et orationes (there 1641, various reprints and many partial editions). He subsequently attracted attention through his theological controversies. He took part in the struggle between the secular and regular clergy
with the major work De hierarchia et hierarchis (Rouen 1641), directed against Petrus Aurelius (that is, Saint-Cyran) and Hallier. Condemned by the Assembly of the Clergy for certain novel or strange propositions, he escaped condemnation by the Sorbonne through a recantation: Propositiones aliquos ex libro De hierarchia (Paris 1641), which he later attempted to mitigate in his Hararum subsecivarum liber singularis (there 1648). The De hierarchia was placed on the Index in 1642 «donne corrigatur» (the manuscript documentation of the case is held in the Vatican Library, Barberini collection XXXIX, 54). The same fate befell, much later, in 1732, on account of certain appendices, his vigorous Historia Gottes- chalci praedestinationis (there 1655).