RENAUDOT, EUSÈBE. - Born in Paris on 22 July 1648, died there on 1 September 1720; orientalist, liturgist, journalist. R. entered the Oratory on 17 June 1665, received the four minor orders there the following year (12 June), left it on account of illness on 1 April 1672, but always remained the Abbé R. From his youth he applied himself to the study of the Oriental languages; besides Greek and Hebrew, he knew Arabic and Syriac well.
On account of this knowledge he was invited by Arnauld to collaborate on vol. III of the apologetic work Perpétuité de la foi de l'Eglise catholique touchant l'Eucharistie (1674); he himself later published vol. IV (1711), again on the Eucharist, and vol. V (1713) on the other Sacraments. The aim was to prove to the Calvinists that the faith in the Eucharist of the Oriental Christians of every rite was identical with that of Catholics. He also prepared the complete version of the appended texts; he published Gennadii patriarchae Constantinopolitani Homiliae de Sacramento Eucharistiae... (1709) and Liturgiarum orientalium collectio, in 2 vols. (1715-16), reprinted at Frankfurt (1847), a work still indispensable today which contains the Mass of all the Oriental rites, except the Greek and Armenian, with notes and learned studies. His unpublished versions of the Sacraments among the Orientals were widely used by H. Denzinger, Ritus Orientalium... 2 vols., Würzburg 1863-64. R.'s version is good, but he did not always know how to choose the best manuscript for his translation. He knew the East well; his Historia patriarcharum alexandrinorum... (1713) is still consulted; S. Salaville published Eusebii R. dissertatio de liturgii orientalibus, in Ephem. liturg., 51 (1937), pp. 319-
349. For 40 years he directed the Gazette de France founded by his grandfather and thus took an interest in politics, especially that of England and the Papal State. He was a friend of Bossuet, of the Port-Royal group and of the Jansenists, and a member of the French Academy, of the Academy of Inscriptions and an associate of the Accademia della Crusca.