Antoine Augustin Calmet

After entering the Benedictine priory at Breuil at the age of 15, he attended the University of Pont-à-Mousson and studied rhetoric under the Jesuit father Ignace de L’Aubrussel (later the confessor to the Queen of Spain).Calmet was educated at the Benedictine priory of Breuil in the town of Commercy, and in 1688 joined the same Order at the Abbey of Saint-Mansuy at Toul, where he was admitted to profession on 23 October of the following year.These he published separately with nineteen new ones in three volumes, under the title Dissertations qui peuvent servir de prolégomènes à l'Écriture Sainte (Paris, 1720).It extensively studied apparitions of angels, demons and other spirits but also included dissertations on various topics of Magic, sorcery, witchcraft and instances of vampires, revenants and individuals returning from the grave.Although quite critical, Voltaire nevertheless consulted the works of Calmet, and frequently relied on his prodigious scholarship to develop his own writings, especially the Dictionnaire philosophique where it is mentioned: Quoi !Father Dom Augustin Calmet, priest, Benedictine of the congregation of St. Vannes and St. Hydulphe, abbot of Senones, Abbey with rents of hundred thousand livre, neighbor of two other abbeys of the same income,[4] printed and reprinted the history of vampires, with the approval of the Sorbonne, signed by Marcilli!Calmet was given much praise for his work and received many letters and dissertations regarding the subject which prompted him expand his work in two-volumes and published it again in 1751 under a new title Traité sur les apparitions des esprits et sur les vampires ou les revenans de Hongrie, de Moravie, &c. (i.e. "Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and Vampires or Revenants of Hungary, Moravia, etc.").It included further studies of his own as well as several letters and dissertations sent to Calmet as a response to the first publication, and ambiguously considered the possibility of the existence of vampires, although not stating it explicitly.[5][6] In the meanwhile he had prepared two other works closely connected with Biblical exegesis: (1) Histoire de l'Ancien et du Nouveau Testament et des Juifs (Paris, 1718), which went through several editions, and was translated into English (London, 1740), German (Augsburg, 1759) and Latin (ib., 1788); (2) Dictionnaire historique, critique, chronologique, géographique et littéral de la Bible (Paris, 1720, two vols.