Antoine Le Maistre

[2][3] At the age of seven, the young Le Maistre moved with his mother and brothers into the household of his grandfather Antoine Arnauld and was brought up there.

[4] Le Maistre quickly became a famous young advocate, with Guez de Balzac writing of him that his "powerful, rich and magnificent harangues would have aroused jealousy in Cicero and Demosthenes".

[5] Later the same year, Le Maistre and others, including two of his brothers, established a Jansenist ascetic group known as les solitaires (the hermits) at Port-Royal des Champs, under the spiritual direction of the abbot of Saint Cyran.

First of the Solitaires, Antoine Le Maistre settled permanently at Port Royal des Champs in August 1639, where he led a quiet and austere life.

In about 1644, he was joined in his ascetic religious community by his uncle Robert Arnauld d'Andilly (1588–1674), a poet and translator whose career had been in the government's service and who became the editor of Saint-Cyran's Lettres chrétiennes et spirituelles (1645).

By taking the form of a servant, he lifted us from servitude; he broke our chains; he made us to walk with our head held high...

The new work was published in 1667 as Le Nouveau Testament de Nostre Seigneur Jesus Christ: traduit en François selon l'edition Vulgate, avec les differences du Grec, and printed in Amsterdam for Gaspard Migeot, a bookseller of Mons.

[2][8][9] [./Https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Antoine_Arnauld(le_Maistre).jpg Le] Maistre's portrait was painted by Philippe de Champaigne (1602–1674), a painter who was closely connected with Port-Royal des Champs.