Lacordaire, Jean Baptiste Henri
Lacordaire, Jean Baptiste Henri
(zhäN bätēst` äNrē` läkôrdĕr`), 1802–61, French Roman Catholic preacher and liberal. Ordained in 1827, he came under the influence of LamennaisLamennais or La Mennais, Félicité Robert de, 1782–1854, French Roman Catholic apologist and liberal, b. Saint-Malo. He was largely self-educated by wide, indiscriminate reading.
..... Click the link for more information. and collaborated with him on Avenir, a journal advocating ultramontanismultramontanism
[Lat.,=beyond the mountains, i.e., the Alps], formerly, point of view of Roman Catholics who supported the pope as supreme head of the church, as distinct from those who professed Gallicanism or other tendencies opposing the papal jurisdiction.
..... Click the link for more information. , complete freedom of the church from the state, and a wide program of democratic reform. After papal condemnation of the journal, Lacordaire submitted. He became known as one of the greatest Catholic preachers; his sermons at Notre-Dame in Paris were the literary and social sensation of the day. He entered the Dominican order and was responsible for the revival of that order in France. Always a liberal, Lacordaire greeted the revolution of 1848 with enthusiasm and sat for a time as a deputy on the left. The coup of Napoleon III sent him into voluntary exile after he had attacked the government unsparingly. In 1861 he was elected to the French Academy.
Bibliography
See biography by L. C. Sheppard (1964).