, a celebrated French professor of philosophy in the seventeenth
, a celebrated French
professor of philosophy in the seventeenth century, was
born, according to Bayle, in Duuphiny, but more probably at Orange, where, as well as at Die, Nismes, and
Geneva, he taught philosophy, and was accounted the
greatest master of dialectics in his time. The story of
aut Erasmus aut diabolus has been told of him; a stranger
to his person, when puzzled by his arguments, having exclaimed es diabolus aut Dtrodo. In physics he adhered to
the principles of Gassendus. He had been educated in
the protestant religion, but embraced that of popery in
1630, and published his reasons in a volume entitled
“Quatre raisons pour lesquelles on doit quitter la religion
pretendue reformee,
” Paris, quatre raisons
” might have
afforded to the catholics, they were not of permanent influence on his own mind, for he afterwards became again
an adherent to the reformed religion, in which he died.
In 1645 he published in 8vo, his “Disputatio de supposito,
” at Francfort (Orange), in which, Bayle tells us, he
declared for Nestorius against St. Cyril, not in admitting
two persons, but in maintaining that Nestorius does not
admit them, and that St. Cyril confounds the two natures
of Jesus Christ. This was the opinion of Giles Gaillard, a
gentleman of Provence, and an intimate friend of Rodon’s,
whom he often quotes, but without naming. The work
was condemned to be burnt by the parliament of Toulouse,
and the copies are therefore now very rare. Bayle had not
been able to procure one, and is misled by Sorbiere in
thinking that Gaillard wrote a book with the same title as
Rodon’s. But the work of Rodon which made the most
noise was his “Tombeau de la Messe,
” or downfall of the
mass, published at Geneva in Examen de la Theologie de M.
Jurieu, &c.
” and Jurieu’s answers.