The Jesuit priest Father Joseph Menoux is remembered today, if at all, chiefly as an adversary of Voltaire. He warrants barely a footnote in the great sea of Voltaire studies or, at best, a repetition of Voltaire's own dismissive caricatures. I decided to try and discover a little more about Menoux's life. It proved to be an interesting exercise, and one which supplies something of an alternative perspective on the world of the Enlightenment writers.
Early life
Sadly, there not a single anecdote or petty detail enlivens the perfunctory outline of Menoux's early life supplied in the biographical dictionaries. We learn only that he was born in Besançon on 14th October 1695 - making him not quite a year younger than Voltaire -, that he belonged to an "excellent famille de robe", and that he was always destined for an ecclesiastical career. He began his studies with the Jesuits at the age of fourteen and remained in the order; we can assume that he attended the Jesuit college in Besançon, the imposing buildings of which still survive today. He entered the Novitiate on 8th September 1711 and, having taught in a number of colleges, was singled out by his eloquence for a career as a preacher.
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| The Jesuit college in Besançon - now College Victor-Hugo https://structurae.net/en/structures/college-victor-hugo |
The preacher
In 18th-century Catholic France a talented preacher could command a great deal of prestige. Jesuits like Bourdaloue, and more recently, Charles Porée (d.1741), star of the Parisian house, attracted huge crowds. They rubbed shoulders with the highest echelons of society, and attracted attention from the Enlightenment world of culture and letters - to which the Jesuits themselves contributed through their Journal de Trévoux edited from the Maison professe in Paris.
