Breton Catholic agronomist and writer
Gabriel Calloet de Querbrat (or Calloet-Kerbrat, according to the Breton spelling he sometimes used), was born at an unknown date between 1616 and 1620 in Kerbrat-en-Servel (now in the commune of Lannion, Côtes-d'Armor), and died in Lannion on June 30, 1697 aged around 80. He was a Breton Catholic agriculturist and writer. Considered to have introduced the idea of zootechnical improvement through cross-breeding to France, he played an important role in the establishment of "hôpitaux généraux" (lit. French for general hospitals) in the seventeenth century.
Agricultural experiments.
Gabriel Calloet-Kerbrat, a member of the minor nobility of Trégor, was educated at the Jesuit college in La Flèche, before studying law in Paris. On July 21, 1642, he became general counsel at the "Chambre des Comptes de Bretagne" in Nantes, a position he held as a successor, most probably from his relative Antoine Calloet. On July 10, 1646, he was appointed general counsel for the September session, an office newly created by Louis XIV, which he held until 1664. Finally, in 1647, he became State Counselor. His parliamentary career has never been studied, and for this period he can only be credited with writing a eulogy in Latin for Cardinal de La Rochefoucauld, around 1645.
During the 1650s, he devoted himself to agricultural experimentation on his property. He was also passionate about honey production, owning a large orchard and over 800 beehives. To better understand their way of life, he developed the first known glass beehive, and took great pride in having "learned how to manage and heal them in a way that Virgil and all the others who have written about them never did". But he was also involved in sheep, goat, horse and cattle breeding, and cultivated using his methods, his land yielded, according to his estimates, a third more than his neighbors. He successfully experimented with the use of winter sainfoin, i.e. gorse, for fodder, which he would later propagate, and for which he invented a harrow specially designed to loosen the soil so that it could be planted in winter, on a field that had been used for barley. His later writings bear witness to his direct knowledge of agricultural matters, as he sometimes used Breton vocabulary to designate certain plants and practices. He was visibly familiar with horse breeding, as the Breton bishoprics of Tréguier and Léon were major horse exporters at the time.
Calloet-Kerbrat also invented a machine for crushing gorse to extract fodder for livestock, often cited in agronomic literature. He particularly recommended using this plant for newborn foals, as well as cows and sheep. This practice, along with the use of this machine, seems to have spread to Brittany during the eighteenth century, and his feeding advice still appears in nineteenth-century veterinary literature. Among his inventions, it is also worth mentioning his "loge", used to store turnips during the winter, and his turnip chopper for feeding cattle, which are among the first agricultural machines described by their inventor. His drawing plates were regularly reproduced in the 18th century, notably in the "Maison rustique", which ensured their wide distribution.
This desire for practical experimentation is explicit in Calloet-Kerbrat's work, even if it coexisted with other forms of establishing proof: he consulted ancient authorities, mainly Aristotle and Hippocrates, and modern ones, although he was wary of doctors, (with the exception of Juan Huarte), he consulted archives and listened to the opinions of competent people. After listening to the advice of the women of his village on the effect of different wind directions on the birth of roosters, Calloet-Kerbrat conducted experiments on the influence of salt crystals on humidity, and made observations on hair curling, in the process indicting the cost and unhealthiness of wigs. He concluded, in line with his theory, that males from warm, dry semen were favored by north and east winds. On the other hand, when he hadn't experimented with a procedure he reported, he pointed out that it could be used to select the coat of an unborn foal: a carpet of the desired color was painted, and the mare was covered with it from mating to birth. This procedure, applied to sheep, was already used by the prophet Joshua. In all seriousness, then, his approach was that of seventeenth-century science, where experimentation took precedence over the citation of authorities.
Agricultural publications.
Ruined by a lawsuit, Calloet-Kerbrat moved to Paris. Here, from 1666 to 1680, he published a series of pamphlets on the zootechnical improvement of goats, sheep, cows and horses, although he was happy to deal with related subjects such as the choice of sex for children, criticism of the wearing of wigs, advertising for his universal remedy and criticism of legal wrangling (one of the Company of the Blessed Sacrament's favorite themes). These were all short texts, written in a direct, Olivier de Serres-like style, with a touch of humor and numerous references to personal experience and classical culture. Audren de Kerdrel, his first biographer, noted the familiar tone with which Calloet-Kerbrat addressed great people, including the king, attributing this trait to his Breton origins. It could also be attributed to the Company's practices, where precedence based on rank was ruled out.
Calloet-Kerbrat sought to meet Colbert. Several historians considered Calloet-Kerbrat to be the inspiration behind the Controller-General of Finances's policy of improving livestock breeding, and agronomy historian André Jean Bourde himself wrote: "One cannot discuss Colbert's activity in the field of agriculture without saying something about a remarkable agronomic personality, Calloet-Querbrat or Calloet de Kerbrat". Traces of their meeting are nonetheless lacking, but it is indeed probable, since the Bibliothèque nationale preserves a letter, dated February 6, 1666, in which the latter requested an appointment with Colbert, on the recommendation of the Duke of Mazarin, Lieutenant General of Brittany: "Poür ces chevaux, brebis, et vaches, M. le Duc Mazarin, m'a demandé des mémoires, qu'il m'a dit avoir donné vous, et que vous désiriez me parler" ("For these horses, sheep and cows, M. le Duc Mazarin, asked me for some memoirs, which he told me he had given you, and that you wished to speak to me"). He referred to his first pamphlets, which had just been published. One of them was dedicated to the minister, who received a specially printed copy on vellum – now kept at the Bibliothèque nationale – in which Calloet-Kerbrat reminded him that he had written the memoirs at his request.
Calloet-Kerbrat's proposed solutions were inspired by Colbertian ideas. He suggested, for example, sending a flandrin bull to each parish, to crossbreed with local cows to create a larger, more fertile breed, and granting their guardians tax privileges, as was done for stallions in Poitou. Colbert's interest in horses began in 1659, followed by cattle in 1662. He believed in the possibility of improvement through crossbreeding with imported breeding stock, since he was concerned with bringing stallions, rams and bulls to France. On this point, he agreed with the ideas of Calloet-Kerbrat, against the prevailing idea that the animal is a simple reflection of the soil, and that crossbreeding led to rapid degeneration. In other respects, however, he was at the opposite end of the spectrum from the Breton agronomist: while Calloet-Kerbrat proposed doubling the amount of grazed land in the kingdom, Colbert passed the Edict of Triage (1667), which allocated one-third of uncultivated land to the seigneurs – and if there were no seigneurs, to the King – who would generally transform it into cultivated land rather than pasture. Calloet-Kerbrat's influence on Colbertian practice is therefore probable, but limited.
Disdaining local breeds, Calloet-Kerbrat was well informed about breeding methods abroad. He praised the Flandrines cows, imported to Poitou by Bradley's Flemings working to drain the Marais Poitevin; he offered the first French-language description of English sheep, and their successful crossbreeding with Spanish animals and he also mentioned Dutch sheep. His association with the ambassador of Denmark, a country where agricultural science was more advanced than in France, may have played a role in introducing him to the practices of that country, which he often cited as a reference.
Calloet-Kerbrat was thus the first theorist of cross-breeding in France. Renaissance agriculturalists, such as Estienne's "Praedium Rusticum" (1554), Jean Liébault's "Maison rustique" (Rustic house)(1564), or Olivier de Serres' "Théâtre d'agriculture" (Theater of Agriculture) (1600), did not consider this possibility. In keeping with the century's medical thinking, Calloet-Kerbrat placed his thoughts within the Aristotelian framework of hot and cold, dry and wet. At the time, it was widely accepted that animals imported from cold countries degenerated when transported to warm countries. The Breton agronomist, on the other hand, postulated that the initial warmth of each species, linked to its original origin, was invariable – and he took pains to demonstrate that the animals he proposed importing, such as Danish horses, originally came from warm countries. In so doing, he rejected the aforementioned idea of the animal as a mere reflection of the soil. Some authors, notably Solleysel, had already admitted this possibility for horses, but Calloet-Kerbrat seems to be the first to have extended it to non-noble animals, such as cows, goats and sheep. It's possible that the reluctance of seventeenth-century French thinkers to imagine this possibility was linked to social structures: asserting that non-noble animals could be improved by cross-breeding suggested that this could also apply to humans, something difficult to admit even when the aristocratic ideology of the time tended to regard the nobility as a race.
Calloet-Kerbrat's pamphlets were far shorter than the standard agronomic works of the time, in an explicit bid for wide distribution: 
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;When the rich do not have these establishments made, they must at least send this book to their farmers, to teach them how to make more profit than they do from their common cattle, sparing their pastures in summer, &amp; increasing their fodder in winter, by this healthy winter hay &amp; other means marked above.
Calloet-Kerbrat developed a complete agricultural system (distribution of land use, choice of crops and relationships between them). He set himself apart by proposing that livestock farming should be seen not as a necessary evil – as the expression was commonly used – but as a source of profit in its own right. Better still, he suggested that agriculture should be organized around livestock farming, rather than the other way around.
This desire to transform the agricultural system was dominated by Calloet-Kerbrat's central idea: the fight against poverty. He saw his proposals as likely to enrich the peasants, and consequently reduce the burden of taxation on them: "the people are no better off, however fertile the land, if it is exhausted by the Taille and other subsidies without giving them the means to make some extraordinary profit, which is what neighboring states are working on", he wrote, not without lending credence to confidences allegedly made to him by the Maréchal de la Meilleraye – a close associate of the Company of the Blessed Sacrament.
In the eighteenth century, Calloet-Kerbrat's ideas were widely used in agronomic literature, sometimes reproduced in full in works without his name always appearing. In particular, he was featured in Noël Chomel's "Dictionnaire œconomique" (1708) and in the "Nouvelle maison rustique" (1772), while Henri Grégoire praised him in the introduction to his edition of Olivier de Serres' works.
Company of the Blessed Sacrament.
In Paris, Calloet-Kerbrat was in contact with Antoine Barrillon, Marquis de Morangis, who had been an influential member of the Company of the Blessed Sacrament. He became secretary of the charitable assembly of the parish of Saint-Sulpice, which continued the work of this company after it was banned by Louis XIV in 1666. From 1670 onwards, he and two other former members, the Reverend Fathers André Guevarre and Honoré Chaurand – a well-known preacher – launched a campaign for the creation of general hospitals and charity offices for the poor, based on the model proposed in the royal edict of 1662. They quickly won the support of the governors of the Paris hospices, notably Loyseau, who wanted to promote the expansion of a hospital network to avoid taking in the poor from the provinces, and thus lighten their own financial burdens. This campaign, promoted by the Jesuits, was coordinated by Calloet-Kerbrat.
The campaign to develop general hospitals met with some success, with promoters attributing to it almost one hundred and twenty creations – some of them