ACORDAIRE 1 :OUNT D HAUSSONVILLE i 3RARY J. LACORDAIRE LACORDAIRE From a miniature by Mme. Delliens Frontispiece LACORDAIRE BY COUNT D HAUSSONVILLE OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY TRANSLATED BY A. W. EVANS B. Herder Herbert & Daniel 17 South Broadway 95 New Bond St. St. Louis, Mo. London, W. 1913 PREFACE PULPIT eloquence seems, in the history of litera ture, to be a peculiarly French gift. When we seek the finest models of the eloquence of the bar or of the tribune, it is to antiquity that we go, and no name has overshadowed those of Demosthenes and of Cicero. The England of the last two centuries has given us examples of Parlia mentary eloquence that can be compared with those which France has produced during the same epoch, and the speeches of Burke, of Fox, of Brougham, do not yield to those of Mirabeau, of de Serre, or of Berryer. But it is not the same with her preachers, whose inferiority Taine points " out in his History of English Literature," and for pulpit eloquence no country is comparable with the land of Bossuet, of Bourdaloue, and of Massillon. If among the Fathers of the Church we meet with some who can be placed by their side, a Saint John Chrysostom, a Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, on the other hand, they are without rivals in the literature of modern peoples, and of this form of human thought it is assuredly the French language that offers the finest specimens. The ancients, with whose lives eloquence was so constantly mingled, said that the great orator has in him something divine " aliquid divinum." Is not this especially true when he who has received the gift of expressing his thought by speech puts vi PREFACE this gift in the service, not of some human and passing cause, but of that which is eternal and Divine? In truth, he is at once a man of action and a man of thought, for at one stroke he agitates crowds and ideas. While he is labouring for the salvation of souls, he is raising a monument which calls forth the admiration of men of letters, and if " " "the good is his object, "the beautiful is his instrument. Thus, one can say that, of the dif ferent forms of human genius, sacred eloquence is that which gives most complete employment to human faculties, for it supposes in the same man the co-operation of an apostle and of an artist both of whom work in God. With this French gift, with this Divine gift, no one has been more richly endowed than Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire, with the exception, however, of Bossuet. But while Bossuet was a universal genius, superior in everything and by everything, in eloquence, in controversy, in his Lacordaire was an orator I tory, only ; perhaps, dare to say, more of an orator than Bossuet, at least in this respect, that he had in a higher degree "the tones that move, the voice that vibrates and charms, and the gesture which completes speech." Thus one can say of him that he is the type of the preacher, and in this capacity his place was marked out in advance in a series which would gather together all the literary glories of France. But is it solely the preacher in Lacordaire that can interest us? Is it not as much and more the man himself, as he appeared living and throbbing behind the brilliant veil of his oratory, or showing himself with open heart in the intimacy of his cor respondence ? We shall hear all the echoes of PREFACE vii " in that age, everything which he had loved," resounding in the depths of that sonorous soul. From this priest, from this monk, none of our or of our remained alien for passions sufferings ; those with which his experience did not make him acquainted, his intelligence enabled him to divine. Finally, he was one of the precursors and authors of that Catholic renaissance of which our contem poraries to-day are the surprised witnesses, and, among the questions that engage and divide us, one will not find perhaps a single one that has not been debated or anticipated by him. Thus, in studying his epoch and his life, it will be in certain respects our own epoch that we shall believe we see passing in advance before our eyes, and our own life that we shall have the illusion of living again. We shall perceive there, as in a magic mirror, the re flection of our own trials, and the presage of our own restless destinies. 1 1 There exist two very complete and very interesting- biogra phies of Father Lacordaire. One of them is due to Father Chocarne, who was one of his brothers in Saint Dominic, the other to M. Foisset, his oldest and closest friend. M. de Monta- lembert has also devoted to him some admirable pages under the title of "A Nineteenth-Century Monk." I am naturally much indebted to these three works, but also to Father Lacordaire s correspondence, which was almost entirely unpublished at the time they appeared, and which to-day comprises no fewer than eight volumes. I have also had access to a certain number of un published letters, and I thank those who have been good enough to entrust me with them. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH . i II. THE SEMINARY FIRST RELATIONS WITH LAMENNAIS . 14 III. THE "AVENIR" . 32 IV. RUPTURE WITH LAMENNAIS MONTALEM- BERT AND MADAME SWETCHINE . 51 V. THE STANISLAS LECTURES AND THE FIRST SERMONS AT NOTRE-DAME . 77 VI. THE RESTORATION OF THE ORDER OF SAINT DOMINIC . 92 VII. THE SERMONS AT NOTRE-DAME AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON CONTEMPORARY PREACH ING . ... 108 VIII. LACORDAIRE IN PRIVATE LIEF THE FRIEND AND THE PRIEST . .132 IX. THE REPUBLIC AND THE EMPIRE LAST YEARS . 159 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS LACORDAIRE Frontispiece From a miniature by Mme. Delliens TO FACE PAGE LACORDAIRE, AGED THIRTY-FIVE .... 20 From a drawing by Des Robert CHARLES DE MONTALEMBERT ..... 32 LACORDAIRE 102 From the painting by Theodore Chasseriau (1840) LACORDAIRE IN 1840 118 From a drawing by Hippolyte Flandrin LACORDAIRE 148 From an engraving by Martinet of Bonnassieux s portrait (1841) LACORDAIRE . 168 From a lithograph by Llanta (1848) LACORDAIRE 184 From the bust by Bonnassieux . LACORDAIRE . CHAPTER I CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH BY a singular coincidence, Burgundy has had the honour of giving birth to the three greatest Christian orators of whom France boasts. Saint Bernard was born at near Fontaine, Dijon ; Bossuet in Dijon itself; Lacordaire at some leagues from Dijon, in the village of Recey-sur-Ource, on the twenty-second day of the month of Floreal in the year Ten of the French Republic, as his certificate of birth says, or on the I3th of May, 1802, as we would say to-day. His father, Nicolas Lacordaire, practised at Recey the profession of medical officer. He was a man of rather liberal opinions, but in spite of this, during the Revolution he concealed in his house the parish priest of Recey, who had been proscribed for refusing to take the oath to the Constitution, and, according to Father Chocarne, it was by this very parish priest that Lacordaire was baptised. Nicolas Lacordaire died four years after the birth of this son, leaving his widow, Anne Marie Dugied, burdened with four children who were still young. Madame Lacordaire was the daughter of a councillor of the Parliament of Dijon. " Christian, courageous, and vigorous," her son has called her, but her piety had in it nothing mys- B LACORDAIRE tical or fanatical, and she gave her children a virile and rather stern education. She read Corneille to them as much as the Gospel, and spoke to them as much of honour as of God. Perhaps it is to this early teaching that we must attach the very keen feeling of honour which Lacordaire held through out his life, a feeling more human than ecclesi astical, but one which, none the less, came to his aid at several junctures of his sacerdotal career. Madame Lacordaire was, however, far from neglecting the religious education of her children. When Henri was seven years old, she herself brought him for his confession to the parish " priest of Saint Michael s of Dijon. I do not know what I said to him or what he said to has " but the of me," Lacordaire written, memory that first interview between my soul and the repre sentative of God left a pure and profound im pression upon me. I have never since gone into the sacristy of Saint Michael s of Dijon, nor have I ever breathed its air, without my first confession appearing before me under the form of that fine old man and the simplicity of my own childhood." Lacordaire passed at that time through a period of childish fervour which found expression in rather odd manifestations. His favourite plea sure was to preach in a pretended chapel which his mother had fitted up for him. His brothers and his nurse were his congregation. When the latter, alarmed by the vehemence of his gestures and the trembling of his voice, would say to him : to hurt "Oh, Master Henri, you are going your much" " self; do not excite yourself so ; No," he would answer, "too many sins are committed; at still fatigue is nothing," and he would go on a greater rate with his tirades about departing faith and declining morals.