LE TELLIER, MICHEL. – Jesuit, apologist, born at Vire, near Cherbourg, on 16 December 1643, died at La Flèche on 2 September 1719. He taught literature and philosophy, and for 28 years biblical exegesis at the Collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris, of which he was also rector. Elected provincial in 1708, after a few months he was chosen as confessor to Louis XIV, replacing the deceased Fr. F. La Chaise.
In his new office he continued his battle against Jansenism and Quesnel with greater effectiveness; and he was repaid with abundant calumnies, being portrayed as an insolent and impudent confessor, lacking both understanding and compassion for his adversaries, and cunning and vindictive even toward Cardinal de Noailles. Thus, although chosen by Louis XIV as confessor to the young Louis XV, he was instead exiled immediately after the former’s death (1 September 1715), first to Amiens and then to La-Flèche.
Against the Jansenists he wrote: Avis importants et nécessaires aux personnes qui lisent les traductions du Nouveau Testament (Lyons 1675); Dissertations sur la nouvelle défense de la version française du Nouveau Testament (Rouen 1685); Quesnel séditieux et hérétique dans ses réflexions sur le Nouveau Testament (Brussels 1705 and 1708). On the question of the Chinese rites, he defended his Order in Défense des nouveaux Chrétiens et des Missionnaires de la Chine (Paris 1687 and 1688), which was subsequently placed on the Index (decrees of 22 March and 5 July 1694). He was also one of the founders of the Mémoires de Trévoux. Of the calumnies collected against him by Saint-Simon in his Mémoires and repeated for more than two centuries, down to the Modernists, history has by now fully vindicated him.