Edmond de Pressensé

Edmond Dehault de Pressensé (January 7, 1824 - April 8, 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 and Humboldt University, Berlin under Friedrich August Tholuck and August Neander, and in 1847 became a pastor in the Evangelical Church at the chapel of Taitbout in Paris.

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 1891 he was elected a member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques. Pressensé laboured for the revival of biblical studies. He contended that the Evangelical Church ought to be independent of the power of the state.

In 1854 he founded the Revue chrétienne, and in 1866 the Bulletin idéologique. His works include: Histoire des trois premiers siècles de l'Église chrétienne (6 vols. 1856-1877; new ed. 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).

His son Francis de Pressensé was a French politician and man of letters.

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.