GURY, JEAN-PIERRE. - Jesuit, moralist and casuist, b. at Mailleroncourt (Haute-Saône) on 23 Jan. 1801, d. at Mercoeur (Haute-Loire) on 18 Apr. 1886, while he was preaching a mission. He taught moral theology at the scholasticate of Vals (Le Puy) from 1834 to 1847; in that same year he was called to Rome for the same post 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 study are two works that remained very famous: Compendium theologiae moralis (2 vols., Lyon-Paris 1850) and Casus conscientiae (2 vols., Le Puy 1862). The Compendium, which follows in the footsteps of H. Busenbaum and St. Alphonsus de' Liguori and relies on the works of Card. Th. de Gousset, is distinguished by particular qualities: brevity, practicality, clarity, order and interconnection of the questions: a concise and exact notion of the subject, exposition of the general principles and their application, particular questions and practical cases 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 of it. There was no lack of criticism, both well-founded and often unfounded. To the former he responded with the updatings made in the successive editions, which multiplied also outside France; indeed he kept ready a work of larger scope, which, however, would have required for publication energies greater than his own; the work was otherwise completed by his colleagues, almost all Jesuits; for Italy: A. Cercià (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 (Lyon 1874), A. Bulot (Paris 1905); for Germany: A. Seitz (Regensburg 1853); for Spain: V. Casajoana (Barcelona 1882), J. B. Ferreres (1902); for the United States: L. Sabetti (New York 1887); many of these editions and adaptations have gone through numerous editions down to our own day. To the latter he responded by defending the sources from which he had drawn.
Other storms afflicted G., having broken out in the French Parliament and in Germany, in which he was cited as the usual example, but a more recent one, of the perfidious morality of the Jesuits; but those false and unfounded assertions were easily refuted.
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