The Gospel of the Gospels: Abrege De LA Vie De Jesus Christ (Archives of Ancient Art)

by Blaise Pascal, Carlo Carena, Enrico Castelnuovo

Blaise Pascal, the mathematician, physicist and philospher, spent long years in meditation on the mysteries of Christian life and its leading Protagonist, Jesus Christ. In 1665, in the solitute of Port Royal, Blaise pascal wrote the summary of the Life of Jesus Christ in which he recounts the life of Jesus as told by the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John almost as it it were a stage play, reconstructing the time and place of the historical events. This edition presents Pascal's little-known text in English translation, with opposite it the French original. In an introductory essay, Carena discusses the biographical and philosophical events leading up to the preparation of the Summary. The text is accompanied by nearly one hundred coloured photographs by Massimo Listri of the strained-glass windows in Strasbourg Cathedral, with a commentary by Enrico Castelnuovo. The windows depict the whole cycle of the life of Jesus in great iconographical detail. This volume also includes an essay on the cathedral by Roland Recht. The book provides a fascinating and deeply topical account in words and pictures of the coming to earth of the Son of God.

181 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1846

About the author

Early work of Blaise Pascal of France included the invention of the adding machine and syringe and the co-development with Pierre de Fermat of the mathematical theory of probability; later, he, a Jansenist, wrote on philosophy and theology, notably as collected in the posthumous Pensées (1670).

This contemporary of René Descartes attained ten years of age in 1633, when people forced Galileo Galilei to recant his belief that Earth circled the Sun. He lived in Paris at the same time, when Thomas Hobbes in 1640 published his famous Leviathan (1651). Together, Pascal created the calculus.

A near-fatal carriage accident in November 1654 persuaded him to turn his intellect finally toward religion. The story goes that on the proverbial dark and stormy night, while Pascal rode in a carriage across a bridge in a suburb of Paris, a fright caused the horses to bolt, sending them over the edge. The carriage, bearing Pascal, survived. Pascal took the incident as a sign and devoted. At this time, he began a series, called the Provincial Letters , against the Jesuits in 1657.

Pascal perhaps most famously wagered not as clearly in his language as this summary: "If Jesus does not exist, the non Christian loses little by believing in him and gains little by not believing. If Jesus does exist, the non Christian gains eternal life by believing and loses an infinite good by not believing.”

Sick throughout life, Pascal died in Paris from a combination of tuberculosis and stomach cancer at 39 years of age. At the last, he confessed Catholicism.