Bible de Port-Royal

Though praised for the purity of its classical form, the work attracted the suspicion of the Jesuits, who discovered in it a latent Protestantism, and was criticized by Richard Simon, a former Oratorian, on text-critical grounds.

[1]: 349 Several Solitaires of Port-Royal,[nb 1] an early Jansenist monastery, had met to consider the viability of a New Testament translation from 1657 to 1660.

One of them, Antoine Le Maistre, began the task of translation in 1657, and his brother, Louis-Isaac Lemaistre de Sacy, continued the work after the former's death in 1658.

[1]: 349  Richard Simon, a textual critic and former Oratorian, complained that the work was more interpretative paraphrase than translation, and noted with disapproval the use of the Vulgate "avec les différences du Grec" ("with corrections from the original Greek")[4]: 200  as the basis of the translation's version of the New Testament.

The philosopher Blaise Pascal, who had seen an early draft of the translation, quoted from its version of the New Testament in his Pensées.