GURY, JEAN-PIERRE. - Jesuit, moralist and casuist, born at Mailleroncourt (Haute-Saône) on 23 Jan. 1801, died at Mercoeur (Haute-Loire) on 18 Apr. 1866, while preaching a mission. He taught moral theology at the scholasticate of Vals (Le Puy) from 1834 to 1847; in the same year he was called to Rome for the same position at the Gregorian University; but already the following year, because of the revolutionary disturbances, he returned to Vals, continuing his teaching there until his death.
The fruit of his studies are two works that remained quite famous: *Compendium theologiae moralis* (2 vols., Lyons-Paris 1850) and *Casus conscientiae* (2 vols., Le Puy 1862). The *Compendium*, which follows in the footsteps of H. Busenbaum and St. Alphonsus Liguori and relies on the works of Card. Th. de Gousset, is distinguished by particular qualities: brevity, practicality, clarity, order and concatenation of questions; a concise and exact notion of the subject, exposition of general principles and their application, particular and practical questions of immediate use. For this reason it was received with great favor in Europe and beyond, so much so that the author himself published 17 editions. Criticisms were not lacking, some well-founded and others not. To the former he replied with the updates he made to the subsequent editions, which were also multiplied outside France; indeed he was preparing a more extensive work, which however would have required for its printing energies beyond his own; the work was otherwise completed by his colleagues, almost all Jesuits; for Italy: A. Cercia (Naples 1854), A. Ballerini (Turin 1866), G. Melandri (Rome 1872), D. Palmieri (Prato 1894), R. Tummolo (Naples 1919), T. A. Jorio (ibid. 1934); for France: A. Dumas (Lyons 1874), A. Bulot (Paris 1905); for Germany: A. Seitz (Regensburg 1853); for Spain: V. Casajoa (Barcelona 1882), J. B. Ferreres (1902); for the United States: L. Sabetti (New York 1887); many of these editions and adaptations have had numerous reprints up to the present day. To the latter criticisms he replied by defending the sources from which he had drawn.
Other storms afflicted Gury, arising in the French Parliament and in Germany, in which he was cited, as usual, as the most recent example of the perfidious morality of the Jesuits; but those false and unfounded assertions were easily refuted.