L’enfant abandonné comme figure de la concupiscence dans l’opuscule de Bénigne LordelotDe la charité qu’on doit exercer envers les pauvres enfants trouvés (1706)
Abstract: The seventeenth century brings to mind Saint Augustine ; it also evokes lechery, which is viewed as a consequence of original sin, indirectly causing, and casting light on, moral and social disorder. Born in 1639, Lordelot, who was a lawyer at the Dijon Parliament then at the Grand Conseil, refers to lechery to explain the abandonment of children. By presenting the abandoned child as the exemplary figure of an incurable sin that can be fought only with divine grace, he revisits and extends Augustinian Rigorism.
