Edmond de Pressensé

Edmond Dehault de Pressensé (7 January 1824 – 8 April 1891) was a French Protestant religious leader.

Biography

He was born at Paris, and studied at Lausanne under Alexandre Vinet. He went on to the University of Halle as a pupil of Friedrich August Tholuck and to Humboldt University in Berlin, where he studied under August Neander. In 1847 he became a pastor in the Evangelical Church at the chapel of Taitbout in Paris.^[1][2]

He was a powerful preacher and political orator; from 1871 he was a member of the National Assembly, and from 1883 a life senator. In 1890 he was elected a member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques.^[2] Pressensé laboured for the revival of biblical studies. He contended that the Evangelical Church ought to be independent of the power of the state.

His son Francis de Pressensé was a French politician and man of letters.^[3]

Published works

In 1854 he founded the Revue chrétienne,^[2] and in 1866 the Bulletin idéologique. His works include:

• Histoire des trois premiers siècles de l'Église chrétienne (6 volumes. 1856-1877; new edition 1887-1889).
• L'Église et la Révolution française (1864).
• Jésus-Christ, son temps, sa vie, son œuvre (against Ernest Renan, 1866).
• Les Origines, le problème de la connaissance; le problème cosmologique (1883).

Several of his works were translated into English by Annie Harwood Holmden:

• Jesus Christ : his times, life, and work (1866).
• The early years of Christianity : a comprehensive history of the first three centuries of the Christian church (4 volumes, 1879).
• A Study of origins : or, the problems of knowledge, of being, and of duty (1883).
• The ancient world and Christianity (1888).^[4]

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Pressensé, Edmond Dehault de". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
• HathiTrust Digital Library (published works)