Grégoire, Henry Baptiste

(1750– 1831)

   French Catholic Reformer. The Abbé Grégoire was an active leader of the French Revolution, and headed the campaign to grant civic rights to the Jews. His Essay on the Physical, Moral and Political Reformation of the Jews (published in English around 1791) shared first prize in the Royal Society of Metz’ competition on ‘the possibility of making Jews happier and more useful in France’. Appealing for the integration of the Jews within French society, he rejected the age-long charge of deicide. In subsequent years he journeyed through Europe advocating the emancipation of the Jews. In part his attitude was motivated by the prophetic belief in a renewed Jewish Jerusalem at the heart of a new Christian world.