PETIT-PIED
4n
PETRA
qucnt prolate was wholly unsuccessful. At length Louis permitted him to depart, and, leai ing hia w ife and chil- dren in Paris, Petitot proceeded to his native place, where he was soon after joined by his family. Arrived now at eighty years of age, he was sought by such numbers of friends and admirers thai he was forced to remove from Geneva, and retire to Vevay, a small town in the canton of Vaud, where he continued to labor till L691, in which year, while painting a portrait of his wife, he was suddenly attacked by apoplexy, of which he died, - English Cyclop, a. v. For his works of art, s< i Biog. Hist. •>///<■ Fine Arts, s. v.
Petit-Pied, Nicolas (1), a French canonist, was born in Paris Dec. 24, L627. Ho was made doctor of the Sorbonne in 1658, and counsellor-clerk in the Cha- telet in 1662. lie was provided shortly alter with the curacy of Saint-Martial in Paris, united later to that of Saiut-1'ierrc-des-Areis. and tinally became under-choris- tcr and canon of the metropolitan church. In 1678, hav- ing wished, as dean of the counsellors, to preside in the Chatelet in the absence of the lieutenants, he found a violent opposition among the lay-counsellors, who pre- tended that the clergy had not the right to preside and r. I'pon the complaint of Petit-Pied, March 17. 1682, the authorities interposed a decree which gained for him the cause. The researches which he was obliged to make for the pursuit of this affair fur- nished him the occasion for composing an excellent Traill da limit it </,,< ]iri mr/atives des ecclesitisti'/nt.* diin.-i I'mi <li la justice seculiere (Paris, 1705,
it.. . See Journ. des Savans, 1705; Moreri, Diet. Hist .• Descript. Hist, de VEglise de Paris. — Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Generate, xxxix, 719.
Petit-Pied, Nicolas (2), a French theologian, nephew of the preceding, was born in Paris Aug. 1, 1665. After having finished with distinction his ecclesiastical
studies, he was received doctor of the Sorbonne in 1G92, and his reputation caused him to be chosen in 1701 to teach the Holy Scriptures in that celebrated school. Having signed, July 20, 1702, with thirty-nine other doctor-, the famous Cos de conscience, which was con- demned at Rome Feb. 15, 1703, he would not retract, and was therefore exiled to Beaune and deprived of his pulpit. Mr hastened to join in Holland his friend Quesnel, and remained in that country until 171s, pro- ducing each year, for the support of Jansenism, new articles upon the formulary, upon respectful .silence, and upon other analogous matters now forgotten. The bull Unigenitus found in him a formidable adversary: he fought it, in pamphlets, in memoirs, and in more ex- tended works. On his return to France, Petit-Pied passed some time at Troves, and afterwards went to Paris, where, Juno 1 and (i, 1719, the faculty of theology and the Sorbonne established him again in his rights as doctor. On the loth of the same month he was again exiled, and on the 21st a lettre de car/at ordered the cancelling of the conclusion of the faculty in his favor. Petit-Pied had established his home and a new kind ol Protestant I Ihurch in the village of Asnieres, near Paris. There he made a trial of the regulations ami all the lit- urgy practiced by the Jansenists in Holland. Renown published astonishing things of him: people hastened there in crowds from the capital, and Asnieres s, be- came another Charentou. Petit-Pied showed himself from thai time a more obstinate appellant. M. de Lor- raine, bishop of Bayeux, selected him shortly after for his theologian, hut on the death of that prelate, June 9, 1728, Ic retired again to Holland, whence he returned
only in L734. Hi- zeal !..r Jansenism and the fertility
of his pen were not inconsistent in this new exile; hut
from his return to Paris he led a more tranquil life, and
contented himself with composing several work, |.. de- fend the missal given to his diocese by Bossuct, bishop of Tr..ycs. Petit-Pied died in Paris Jan. 7, 1747. The list of all his works would be too long; .Moreri mentions eighty-one, We quote of his works, Examen theolo-
gique de Vvnstructim pastorale apprquvie dans Vassem- I.J., .In clerge . . . pour V acceptation de la bull* Pari-. 1713, 3 vols. l2mo) :- -Examen des faussetes n
parl> P. .1 mil-, in i) (ibid. 1714, 12mo) : -a. id Lettres touchant In matien de Vusure,par rap- port mix contrats des rentes rachetabl (Lille, 1731, It. . Ik- also labored upon the work of Legros, Dogma Ecclesia circa usuram expositum it vin- dicatum (Utrecht, L7S1, 4to). Sarcastic in his works, Petit-Pied was of a mild, sociable character. See Diet, hist, des Auteurs Eccles. vol. iii: Journal di I Calendrier ecclesiastiqut (ibid. 17."»7. 12mo); Nouv. eccles. passim ; Moreri. Diet. Hist. — Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. (Jent- rale, xxxix, 71'.'.
Petosiris (litTooipic), an Egyptian priest and as- trologer, who is generally named along with Nochepsos, an Egyptian king. The two are said to he the found- ers oi astrology, and of the art of casting nativities. Suidas states that Petosiris wrote on the righl mode of worshipping the gods, astrological maxims, Ik twv itpiov fiijSXitov (which are often referred to in con- nection with astrology), and a work on the Egyptian Put we may infer from a statement made by Vetius Valens, of which the substance is given by Marshain (Canon Ckronicus [ed. Lips. Hoi'.1, p. 479), that Suidas assigns to Petosiris what others attributed partly to him and partly to Nechepsos. For hi- Opya- vov 'Aorpovo/iacov, or tyrjpot; otXrjviaicfj, containing astrological principles tor predicting the event of dis- eases, and for his other writings, Fabricius | Bibl. Graze. iv. ICO) may be consulted. To the list given by him maybe added a translation into Latin bj Bede of the astrological letter of Petosiris to Nechepsos, entitled Di Divinatione Mortis et Vita (Led. Opera I