LAMENNAIS, HUGHES FELICITil ROBERT DE, a celebrated politico-religious writer of France during the present century, was born of a family engaged in the shipping trade at Malo, June 6, 1782. With the exception of some instruction in Latin, which he received from his elder brother, Lamennais was, owing to the revolutionary troubles, almost entirely self-taught. His early turn of thought was strongly religious, as well at decidedly and resisting all his father's efforts to fix him in commercial life, he pursued a literary career, and in 1807 received an appointment as teacher of mathematics in the college of his native town. His first work, published in the next year, On the State of the Church in France during the 1801. Century, is written in a strain of high ortho doxy, and directed against the materialistic philosophy of the 18th c., its influence still subsisting in the literature of his own time. A few years later—having meanwhile taken the clerical tonsure—he produced, in conjunction with his brother, a treatise On the Tradition of the Church on the Institution of Bishops, which arose out of the conflict of Napoleon with the Holy See as to the affairs of the church in France. During the Hundred Days he was obliged to flee to England, where he was received by the cele brated alibi; Caron; and on his return to France he entered the seminary of St. Sulpice, where he received priest's orders in 1816. A year afterwards he published h:s most celebrated work on the side of orthodoxy, An Essay on Indirerence in Religion, which is a work of exceeding acuteness, and of great learning and brilliancy. In this work, how ever, he pushes the claim of authority to such a length, and makes all reasoning resolve itself so completely into authority, that even those who agreed in the conclusion at which he arrived, were not surprised at the recoil by which, this principle of authority once abandoned in his after conflict with the church, his mind rushed into the opposite extreme of utter and unlimited unbelief. The celebrity which this work won for hint led to a design on the part of the pope, Leo XII., to promote Lamennais to the cardinal ate. This design, however, was afterwards abandoned. Lameunais's political views, from the first moment of the restoration, had been liberal. Nevertheless, he joined him self to a powerful and active settion of the most distinguished members of the royalist and church party—Chateanbriand, De Ronald, Frayssinous, and others, the organ of which was a journal named the Conservateu•, and afterwards the Defenseur, and the Drapeau Blanc; but he rapidly outstripped the views of most of his colleagues. He was
fined, in 1824, for a work On the Relations of Religion and Politics. After the revolution of 1830, while he adopted in its fullest sense the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, be continued a zealous adherent of the faith of the church; mid, in conjunction with a number of ardent young friends, all of whom subsequently rose to distinction in their various lines—Montalembert, Lacordaire, Gerhet, and others—lie established a journal called L' Avenir, the aim of which was to reconcile liberty and religion. The doctrines of this journal on the separation of church and state and on many other popular topics, gave great offense to the ecclesiastical authorities. They were censured by the pope, Gregory XVI., in 1832; and Larnennais, in obedience to the papal sentence, discontinued his journal, and professed his future submission to authority; but from this date his opinions underwent a rapid change, and in a work which be published in the year 1834, and which obtained an immediate and unprecedented popularity in France, Paroles d'un C•oyant, proclaimed his complete and irreconcilable rupture with the church of which he had long been the champion. The work was immediately condemned at Home; but it passed In France through innumerable editions, and was translated into all the languages of Europe; and the author's reply to the-papal condemnation was in a still more pointedly itggressive work, in 1836, entitled Affitires de Rome. With his characteristic itnpetuos liy, he now threw himself into the arms of the opposite party. His successive publica tions, The Book, of the People (1837); The Country and the Government (1840); On Religion 1841); The Guide of the First Age (1844); A Voice from Prison (1846); were but so many new utterances of the most extreme democratic principles. The revolution in his relig ious sentiments was equally decisive and complete; he not merely ceased to. be a Roman kt, but even a believer. In his last illness, he declined all religious ministrations; and at his death, which occurred Feb. 27, 1854, he gave directions that his interment should not be marked by any religious ceremony. He also directed, by his will, that certain papers which he left ready for press should be published without alteration; and on the refusal of his niece to surrender these papers, a suit-at-law was instituted, which termi nated in an order for the surrender of the papers; and his Posthumous Works were lished accordingly in 1855-59. The most elaborate work of Lamermais' latter period is his Esquisse d'unc Philosophic (4 vols., 1840-46).