Laurent Drelincourt, Élie Bouhéreau et l’« illustre ami »

Un éclairage épistolaire sur la révision du Psautier de Genève (1674-1679)

Julien Goeury

Abstract

The history of the Psalter of Geneva still has some grey areas, particularly in the Classical Age, where an essential episode took place during the decades 1660-1680 : its linguistic revision, undertaken under the responsibility of Valentin Conrart with the collaboration of a certain number of pastors and scholars who were committed to the cause. What might appear to be one more intervention on the text of the Bible in French, in its verse component, without much at stake either textually or liturgically, nevertheless found itself at the center of many tensions : internal (inside the Reformed Churches of France) and external (in Geneva). All this made this revision, carried out by a small group with militant intentions, an underestimated event. From the unpublished correspondence exchanged between Elie Bouhereau and Laurent Drelincourt, we propose to shed new light on this episode.