DU PAC, GABRIEL DE BELLEGARDE

French Jansenist historian; b. Bellegarde (Aude), Oct. 17, 1717; d. Utrecht (Holland), Dec. 13, 1789. As a young lawyer he joined the Jansenist party and received appropriate ecclesiastical training from his teachers. He was soon named canon in Lyons, but lost his prebend because of his views. After going to Holland in 1751, he first lived at the seminary of Rijswijk, then at Utrecht. He was a zealous defender of the schismatic Church of Utrecht, but also undertook negotiations in Rome with a view to its reconciliation. As a professional historian, he carried on a wide correspondence in order to obtain documents. In this way he contributed considerably to the archives of the Ancienne Clérésie, which were to prove very precious, and are now preserved temporarily in the royal archives in Utrecht. He carefully published (with historical introductions, critical notes, and supplements) several works of others: Antoine Arnauld, B. Z. van Espen, A. Dorsanne, and the Acts of the Council of Pisa and of the Second Synod of Utrecht. His most important historical works are: Mémoires historiques sur l'affaire de la bulle Unigenitus dans les Pays-Bas (4 v., Brussels 1755), Histoire abrégée de l'Église métropolitaine d'Utrecht (Utrecht 1765; 3d ed., 1852), and the biographies of Van Espen and Arnauld. His Mémoires historiques touchant l'Université de Louvain et les Églises des Pays-Bas, surtout depuis 1680–1713 is preserved in manuscript form in the archives of the Ancienne Clérésie.

Bibliography: j. dedieu, Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, ed. a. baudrillart et al. (Paris 1912) 7:848–850. f. c. de vries, Vredespogingen tusschen… Utrecht en Rome (Assen 1930).

[l. ceyssens]