Pierre Doré

(AURATUS)

Controversialist, b. at Orléans about 1500; d. at Paris, 19 May, 1559. He entered the Dominican Order in 1514 and won his degrees at Paris, in 1532, after a brilliant examination. Though elected to the office of prior at Blois in 1545, Doré continued to preach throughout the provinces. At Châlons the bishop, who had been captivated by his zeal and eloquence, entrusted him with the reform of the Carthusian monastery of Val des Choux (Vallis Caulium). For the same reasons, Claude de Lorraine, Duke of Guise, and his consort, Antoinette de Bourbon, chose him as confessor. He wrote thirty-five ascetico-theological works, which some think are only redactions of his sermons. Chief among these is "Les voies du Paradis enseignees par notre Sauveur Jesus-Christ en son evangile", which appeared twice at Lyons in 1538 (Paris, 1540; Lyons, 1586; Rome, 1610). In his "Paradoxa ad profligandas haereses ex divi Pauli epistolis selecta", he refuted the Huguenots, but soon turned to writing ascetical commentaries on the Psalms. When Henry II entered Paris in 1548, Doré wrote a Latin ode which won for him the post of court preacher and royal confessor. His famous defence of the Eucharist appeared in 1549, and two years later he published two other apologies on the same subject and another on the Mass. At the same time he prepared his defence of the Faith in three volumes, as also another refutation of the Calvinists. He closed his literary career with two works on Justification.

Though Doré used the vernacular very loosely, and indulged in far-fetched descriptions, which Rabelais (Pantagruel, ch. xxii) ridicules, his works have always been held in high esteem for originality and unassailable orthodoxy. His literal translations of the Eucharistic hymns of St. Thomas Aquinas , his Latin poems, and the Office for a Feast of St. Joseph, which he composed at the command of Paul III, have always been greatly admired.