Jean-Baptiste de Santeuil

SANTEUIL, Jean-Baptiste de. b. Paris, 12 May 1630; d. Dijon, 5 August 1697. Born into a prosperous Parisian family, Jean-Baptiste de Santeuil became a regular canon of the celebrated Abbaye de Saint Victor in Paris, taking the name ‘Santolius Victorinus’. His duties allowed him welcome opportunities for mingling with society, and he gained a reputation as a wit that was reflected, not entirely creditably, in Santeuilliania, a volume of sayings attributed to him that was published, ostensibly at The Hague, in 1708, nearly a decade after his death. When Cardinal Péréfixe and Archbishop Harlay entrusted the revision of the Paris Breviary to his elder brother Claude de Santeuil*, himself a...