Online Encyclopedia

Make a correction

Your email address will not appear on the site. Note, comments may take some time to be approved.

Back to article: EDMOND DEHAULT DE PRESSENSE (1824—1891)

Your email: Article name: Article content:

PRESSENSE, EDMOND DEHAULT DE (1824—1891), French Protestant divine, was born at Paris on the 7th of January 1824. He studied at Lausanne under Alexander Vinet, and at Halle and Berlin under F. A. G. Tholuck and J. A. W. Neander, and in 1847 became pastor in the Evangelical Free Church at the chapel of Taitbout in Paris. He was a powerful preacher and a good political speaker; from 1871 he was a member of the National Assembly, and from 1883 a senator. In 1890 he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences. Pressense laboured for the revival of biblical studies. He contended that the Evangelical Church ought to be independent of the power of the state. He died on the 8th of_April 1891.
He founded in 1854 the Revue chretienne, and in 1866 the Bulletin theologique. His works include: Histoire des trois premiers' siecles de l'eglise chretienne (6 vols. 1856—1877; new ed. 1887—1889), L'Eglise et la revolution francaise (1864; 3rd ed., 1889), Jesus-Christ, son temps, sa vie, son ceuvre (against E. Renan, 1866; 7th ed. 1884), Les Origines, le probleme de la connaissance; le probleme cosmologique (1883; 2nd ed. 1887). See T. Roussel, Notice sur la vie et les oeuvres de Pressense (1894).