Nicolas Le Tourneux

Le Tourneux, Nicolas, was born of poor parents at Rouen, April 30, 1640. The uncommon ability he displayed at an early age attracted the notice of M. du Fosset, Maître des Comptes at Rouen, who sent him to the Jesuits' college at Paris, where he made remarkable progress in his studies. He then retired to Touraine, where he passed some time with a pious ecclesiastic in the practice of prayer and penitential exercises. His friend, observing that he had a gift for preaching, advised him to return to Rouen. This he did, and adopted the clerical profession, and was in 1662 admitted to priests' orders by special dispensation, though still under canonical age. He subsequently removed to Paris, where he employed his time in study, and in 1675 obtained the prize given by the French Academy for prose composition. He was appointed to a canonry at the Sainte-Chapelle, and later became prior of Villiers sur Fere in the diocese of Soissons, and died suddenly on the 28th Nov., 1686. He was the author of several theological and religious works, and wrote some hymns, which were inserted in the Cluniac Breviary of 1686, and the Paris Breviary of 1680. In the Cluniac Breviary, 1686, his signature is " N.T.P.R." [George Arthur Crawford, M.A.]

-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)