What Kind of Christian is Honnête Homme? Notes on the Dutch and Russian Abbé de Bellegarde

Abstract

The article poses the question who wrote the treatise “Le chrétien honnête home”, which was published in Holland in 1736 as the last work of the Abbé de Bellegarde; in 1743, it was translated into Russian by Sergey Volchkov. The problem of authorship in this case turns out to be directly related to the confessional identity of the text, which should be definitely Catholic, but which was previously characterized by one researcher as Protestant. Given the fact that Russian translation transferred the content of the treatise into an Orthodox context, the choice between Catholic and Protestant bias acquires additional interest. The article suggests that “Le chrétien honnête homme” was written in Holland and reflected a moderate Jansenist point of view, which, precisely because of its moderation, was acceptable to the Russian translator.