Serry, Jacques-Hyacinthe

SERRY, JACQUES-HYACINTHE. - Dominican theologian and polemicist, b. at Toulon in 1658, d. at Padua on 12 March 1738.

He entered the Order at Marseille (around 1673), where a Dominican uncle of his, Tommaso S., was living. He completed his studies in Paris and taught there. Called to Rome in 1690, he was theologian to Cardinals de Boullon and Altieri, and consultor of the Holy Office. On 23 March 1697 he became a doctor of the Sorbonne, and in September of the same year he moved to the chair of theology at the University of Padua, which he held until his death, renouncing that of theologian at the Casanatense (1700-1702).

A prolific and combative writer, known especially for the Historia Congregationum de Auxiliis Divinae Gratiae (Louvain 1700; definitive ed. Antwerp 1709), published under the pseudonym of A. Le Blanc, and for the controversies that preceded and followed it, through which the controversies of a hundred years earlier seemed to revive. Although a moderate Gallican (he had been a disciple of N. Alexandre), the accusation of Calvinism was unjustly advanced against him, and it was asserted that his Historia had been condemned. Other works: Exercitationes historicae, criticae, polemicae de Christo, eiusque Matre (Venice 1719); Praelectiones theologicae-dogmaticae, polemicae-scholasticae... (5 vols., ibid. 1742). In 1770 an edition of the Opera omnia in 6 vols. also appeared at Venice.

Abele Redigonda