or PETITE, a French word signifying little or small.

PETITE GUERRE, denotes the operations of detached parties and the war of posts. See WAR, Part III.

PETIT Sergeant. See Sergeant.

PETIT Treason. See Treason.

(John), a doctor of the Sorbonne, very early gained to himself a character by his knowledge, and those eloquent orations which he pronounced before the university of Paris. He was employed in the famous embassy which was sent from France to Rome, for the purpose of healing the schism in 1407; but he soon lost all the honour which he had acquired. John Sans Peur, duke of Burgundy, having treacherously contrived to assassinate Louis of France, duke of Orleans, only brother to Charles VI. John Petit, entirely devoted to the views of the murderer, maintained in a public disputation, at Paris, the 8th of March 1408, that the murder was lawful. He had the effrontery to assert, that "it is allowable to employ fraud, treason, and every other method, however base, in order to get rid of a tyrant; and that no faith ought to be kept with him." He dared to add further, that "the man who should commit such an action, not only deserved to be exempted from punishment, but to receive a reward." This sanguinary doctrine was loudly exclaimed against; but the duke of Burgundy's powerful influence sheltered Petit for some time. Some eminent writers, however, of that period, with Gerson at their head, denounced the doctrine to John de Montaigne, bishop of Paris, who condemned it as heretical the 23rd November 1414. It was likewise condemned by the council of Constance the year following at the instigation of Gerson; but no notice was taken either of Petit's name or his writings. In fine, the king, on the 16th of September 1416, ordered the parliament of Paris to pronounce a severe decree against this dangerous performance; and it was also censured by the university. But the duke of Burgundy, in 1418, had interest enough to compel the grand vicars of the bishop of Paris, who then lay sick at St Omer's, to retract the sentence which that prelate had passed in 1414. Petit died three years before, i.e., in 1411, at Heflin; and his apology in favour of the duke of Burgundy, with all the particulars of that infamous transaction, may be seen in the fifth volume of the last edition of Gerson's works. Father Pinchinat, of the order of St Francis, and author of the Dictionary of Heresies, in 410, has endeavoured to vindicate his order from a charge brought by some writers who have called Petit a Cordelier or Franciscan friar. "He proves very clearly (says Abbé Prevot) that he was a secular priest; and adds, that upon the same evidence, Father Mercier, a Cordelier, had a warm dispute in 1717 with M. Dupin, who had given this title to Petit in his Collection of Censures. He represented to him (says he), before a meeting of the Faculty, the falsity of such a claim, and the injury which he offered to the order of St Francis. Dupin, convinced of his error, candidly owned that he was led into it by following some infidel writers, and promised to retract it in the new edition of the Censures, which was published in 1720. M. Fléury, who had committed the same mistake, promised also to make amends for it by a solemn recantation; but dying before he had an opportunity of doing that piece of justice to the Cordeliers, the continuator of his Ecclesiastical History, who had not such opportunities of information, fell into the same fault." (Pour & contre, tom. x. p. 23.) If we take the opinion of L'Advocat's Dictionary, it would appear no fault was committed; for it gives a list of the pensioners of the dukes of Burgundy, in order to prove that John Petit was a Cordelier. Indeed, it is highly probable that if Dupin, Fléury, and Father Fabré, did not alter their opinion, it was owing to a firm persuasion that they had committed no error.

Petit (John Lewis), an eminent surgeon, born at Paris in 1674. He had so early an inclination to surgery, that Mr Littre, a celebrated anatomist, being in his father's house, he regularly attended that gentleman's lectures, from his being seven years of age. He was received master in surgery in the year 1700; and acquired such reputation in the practice of that art, that in 1726 the king of Poland sent for him to his court, and in 1734 the king of Spain prevailed on him to go into that kingdom. He restored the health of those princes; and they endeavoured to detain him by offering him great advantages, but he chose rather to return to France. He was received into the academy of sciences in 1715; became director of the royal academy of surgery; made several important discoveries; and invented new instruments for the improvement of surgery. He died at Paris in 1750. He wrote an excellent Treatise on the Diseases of the Bones, the best edition of which is that of 1723; and many learned Dissertations in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences, and in the first volume of the Memoirs of Surgery.