Lamy became professor of
classics at
Vendôme in 1661, and at
Juilly in 1663. He was ordained in 1667.
After teaching a few years at Le Mans he was appointed to a chair of philosophy in the
University of Angers. Here his teaching was attacked on the ground that it was too exclusively
Cartesian, and
Rebous the rector obtained in 1675 from the state authorities a decree forbidding him to continue his lectures.
He was then sent by his superiors to
Grenoble, where, thanks to the protection of
Étienne Le Camus, he again took up his courses of philosophy. In 1686 he returned to Paris, stopping at the seminary of
Saint Magloire, and in 1689 he was sent to
Rouen, where he spent the remainder of his days to his death in 1715.
Works
His best known work is the Traité de Mécanique (1679), showing the
parallelogram of force. He also wrote Traité de la grandeur en general (1680) and Les éléments de géometrie (1685).
His writings are numerous and varied. Among them may be mentioned:
La Rhétorique ou l'art de parler, (Paris, 1675, Rhetoric, or the art of speaking, English translation 1676) of this twenty editions were published.[1]
Apparatus ad Biblia Sacra, etc. (Grenoble, 1687), translated into French by order of the
Bishop of Châlons under the title Introduction a la lecture de l'Ecriture Sainte (Lyons, 1689).
Harmonia, sive Concordia quatuor Evangelistarum (Paris, 1689, A harmony or concordance of the Four Gospels). In this work he contends that
John the Baptist was twice cast into prison, first in Jerusalem by order of the
Sanhedrin, and later by
Herod in Galilee. He maintains also that the Jesus and his Apostles did not eat the
paschal lamb at the
Last Supper, and that the Crucifixion occurred on the day on which the Jews celebrated the Passover. He considers
Mary Magdalen,
Mary the sister of Lazarus, and the sinner mentioned in Luke, vii, 37 sqq. to be one and the same person. These and other opinions involved him in controversy with
Bulteau, pastor of Rouen,
Jean Piénud,
Le Nain de Tillemont, and others (see Traité historique de l'ancienne Pâque des Juifs, Paris, 1693).
Apparatus Biblicus, which is a development of his introduction (Lyons, 1696; Jena, 1709; Amsterdam, 1710). It was translated into French by
Jean-Baptiste Morvan de Bellegarde (Paris, 1697) and by Boyer (Lyons, 1709). In this work he calls in question the historical character of the book of Tobias and book of Judith, and maintains that even after the
Council of Trent a difference of authority should be recognized between the proto-canonical and
deutero-canonical books of the Bible.
Défense de l'ancien sentiment de l'Eglise latine touchant l'office de sainte Madeleine (Rouen, Paris, 1697).
A volume of commentaries on his previous concordance of the four Gospels (Paris, 1699).
A Latin treatise on the Ark of the Covenant (Paris, 1720), a posthumous work published by Desmollets, who prefixed to the volume a biography of the author.
^Translated in English in 1676; modern edition: John T. Harwood (ed.), The Rhetorics of Thomas Hobbes and Bernard Lamy, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986.
Bibliography
François Girbal, Bernard Lamy (1640-1715), étude biographique et bibliographique, París: PUF, 1964.