LE TELLIER, MICHEL. - Jesuit, apologist, b. at Vire, near Cherbourg, on 16 Dec. 1643, d. at La Flèche on 2 Sept. 1719. He taught letters 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 in place of the deceased Fr. F. La Chaise.
In his new office he continued with greater effectiveness his battle against Jansenism and Quesnel; and he was repaid for it with abundant slanders of an insolent and shameless confessor, without either understanding or compassion for his opponents, cunning and vindictive even toward Card. de Noailles. So that, although chosen by Louis XIV as confessor to the young Louis XV, he was instead exiled immediately after the death of the former (1 Sept. 1715) 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 took up the defense of his Order with Défense des nouveaux Chrétiens et des Missionnaires de la Chine (Paris 1687 and 1688), which was later 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 slanders gathered against him by Saint-Simon in his Mémoires and repeated for more than two centuries down to the modernists, history has by now done full justice.