Jansenist Poetry: Robert Arnauld d’Andilly, Petrus Tausianus, George Lauder

Abstract: Hecatombe Christiana (1661), the last major literary work by George Lauder, a Scottish émigré army officer and poet resident in the northern Netherlands, is revealed to be a translation of the Poème sur la vie de Iesus-Christ (1634), composed by the Jansenist Robert Arnauld d’Andilly. The same poem was rendered in a Latin paraphrase (1650) by the Gascon priest Petrus Tausianus. This article discusses the literary features of the three versions and considers Lauder’s motives in importing this Jansenist poem into an anglophone cultural context.