Edmé-François Mallet, also abbé Mallet, was an 18th-century French theologian and encyclopédiste.
Biography
Edmé-François Mallet first received his education by the country priest of his birthplace and later studied at the college of the Barnabites in Montargis, before he went to Paris. There, he was tutor of Ange Laurent Lalive de Jully, a future as well as honorary member of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. He entered into license in 1742 at the Faculty of Theology of Paris and was an Associate in the House and Royal Society of Navarre. It was customary at the end of licenses, that the two first places went to the priors of Sorbonne, the following two to the most talented graduates and the fifth to the best student without diplomas. Mallet won fifth place unanimously. During his studies in Paris, he was also temporarily private teacher of the Fermier GénéralLouis Denis Lalive de Bellegarde. In 1744 he returned by his family in Melun and remained seven years. In 1747, he published an Essai sur l’étude des belles-lettres. After his mother's death in 1751, he moved back to Paris, and took a chair of theology at the Collège de Navarre. In 1753, he published an Essai sur les bienséances oratoires and Principes pour la lecture des Orateurs in three volumes. In 1754, appeared his Principes pour la lecture des Poëtes. He also translated an Histoire de Davila which was published only after his death. He began to gather sources to address two major projects: Histoire générale de toutes les guerres de France de l’établissement de la monarchie jusqu’à Louis XIV and a History of the Council of Trent. For the Encyclopédie by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, he wrote more than a thousand articles with a focus on trading, theology, history and literature but died of angina well before the completion of the project. These articles reported information often from already given texts and reference works. Several of his articles with historical content were revised by Nicolas Lenglet Du Fresnoy and edited by Jean-François Marmontel for their literary aspect.
Controversies
If Abbé Mallet demonstrated a great erudition, his stance in theological articles and categorical tone can lead the reader to wonder why he was chosen as editor for this kind of texts, which were intended to relativize and even ridiculize religion. Indeed, Father Mallet seemed to show an orthodox mind for everything related to religion. He particularly manifested a fierce hatred for all heretical beliefs. It appears that Father Mallet was actually recommended by Jean-François Boyer, the Bishop of Mirepoix, a bitter enemy of the Jansenist and the Philosophes, and it is possible that Mallet was a Trojan Horse in his service. But it is also possible that he acted as a safeguard: If the Encyclopédie in its infancy had exceeded the limits of decency of the time in religion, perhaps the project would have had later many more problems that it actually had.
