Paul-Yves Pezron (1639, Hennebont, – 9 October 1706, Brie) was a seventeenth-century Cistercian brother from Brittany, best known for his 1703 publication of a study on the common origin of the Bretons and the Welsh, Antiquité de la nation, et de langue des celtes.[1] Pezron was a Doctor of Theology at the Cistercian College of St. Bernard in Paris and abbot of La Charmoie.[2]
In his time, he was known in France as a chronologist. Pezron traced Welsh and Breton origins to the Celts of ancient writers, and traced the Celts further to eponymous hero-patriarchs from Gaul to Galatia. Pezron believed the Welsh language came from a mother tongue called Celtick, a language that was only a theory to other authors. Pezron's fairly unscientific book was popular and reprinted until the early nineteenth century.[3][4]
References
- ^ "The Invention of Tradition", Prys Morgan
- ^ The Gentleman's Magazine, June, 1841, "The Conventual College of the Bernardins at Paris", p. 592-597
- ^ http://courses.ed.asu.edu/gonzalez/Efiles%20&%20folders/Invention%20of%20Tradition/Chapter%203.txt Archived 2005-12-14 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Giants in Western Europe