GARASSE, François. - Jesuit, polemicist, born 4 April 1584 in Angoulême, died 14 June 1631 in Poitiers. A forceful and impetuous preacher, he owed his fame chiefly to his polemical works, which embroiled him with all the enemies of religion—Huguenots, Gallicans, and libertines. Logical, caustic, and impetuous, he spared no one and did not always weigh his words; consequently, instead of winning sympathy for the cause he defended, he inflamed passions and deepened hatreds to such an extent that he was transferred to Poitiers, where he wrote: *Histoire des Jésuites de Paris pendant trois années 1624-26* (ed. A. Carayon, Paris 1864). He died while ministering to those afflicted by the plague.
His principal works include: *Horoscopus Anticotonis* (s.l. 1614; against the enemies of the Jesuits); *Elixir Calvinisticum* (Charenton 1615; against Protestants); *Le banquet des sages* (s. 1617; against the Gallican L. Servin); *Le Rabelais reformé* (Brussels 1619; against the anticlerical minister P. Dumoulin); *La doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits* (Paris 1623; against atheists and free-thinkers, especially the poet T. de Vian); *Somme théologique des vérités capitales de la religion chrétienne* (Paris 1623), dedicated to Richelieu but censured by the Sorbonne and the Jansenists.