Alexander Natalis

Alexander Natalis (born January 19, 1639, Rouen, France—died August 21, 1724, Paris) was a controversial theologian and ecclesiastical historian who clashed with Rome for expressing Gallicanism, a French position advocating restriction of papal power, and for defending Jansenism, a religious movement of nonorthodox tendencies in France. Natalis joined the Dominicans at Rouen (1655), received a doctorate in divinity from the Sorbonne (1675), and was regent of studies at Saint-Jacques, Paris. Natalis’s chief work, Selecta historiae...