PRAdES, JEAN MARTIN de. - Anticatholic writer, b. at Castelsarrazin (diocese of Montauban) in 1720, d. at Glogau in 1782. Having gone to Paris to take a degree in theology, he came into contact with the Encyclopedists and accepted their ideas, which he incorporated into his thesis, defended on 18 November 1751. The novelty of his doctrines, unnoticed by his examiners, attracted the attention of the political and cultural world of Paris. The Sorbonne re-examined the thesis and, after lively discussions, on 27 January 1752, censured ten propositions.
In the same month there appeared in the Encyclopédie the long article
Pozzuoli, diocese of — The — Macellum and the — Temple of Serapis s.
or Certitude, written by P., which was to have been the introduction to his Traité sur la vérité de la religion, left, it seems, in manuscript. Within a short time condemnations followed from several bishops and from Benedict XIV. To escape imprisonment, decreed by the Parliament, P. fled to Holland, where he began his Apologie (Amsterdam 1752-53), completed at Potsdam in Voltaire’s house and, it seems, finished by Diderot. Catholics, Jansenists and Protestants quickly responded with polemical writings. Meanwhile P. had gained the favour of Frederick II. Pressed from various quarters, on 6 April 1754 he wrote to the Sorbonne and on the 27th signed the text of his retraction, whose sincerity is called into doubt by what is read in the preface, written by Frederick II, to P.’s last work: Abrégé de l'histoire ecclésiastique de Fleury (Berne 1767).