Jacques de Billy

Who was Jacques de Billy?

Jacques de Billy de Prunay was a French patristic scholar, theologian, jurist, linguist, and Benedictine abbot.

Born in Guise in Picardy, he began his studies at Paris, completed a course of philosophy and theology before he was eighteen years of age, and then, at the request of his parents went to Orléans and later to Poitiers to study jurisprudence. But having no inclination for law, he devoted most of his time to literature. The early death of his parents gave him the opportunity he desired of pursuing unhampered his favorite study of letters.

Quietly withdrawing to Lyon and later to Avignon, de Billy devoted himself, for a period, entirely to the study of Greek and Hebrew. He already held in commendam the Abbey of St.-Léonard of Ferrières in Anjou, and the Priory of Taussigny in Touraine, when his older brother Jean, who had hitherto led a very worldly life, suddenly announced his intention of becoming a Carthusian, and resigned in favour of Jacques his two abbeys, Notre-Dame des Châtelliers and Saint-Michel-en-l'Herm.

After some hesitation de Billy accepted them, then entered the Order of St. Benedict, and later was made a regular abbot.