Lacordaire

LACORDAIRE, lalfiedar, Jean Baptiste Henri Dominique, French preacher: b. Recy sur-Ource, 12 March 1802; d. Soreze, 22 Nov. 1861. After studying law in Paris he began practice in that city. He was in religion a deist of the Voltairian school, and it was only after reading the of Lamen nais (q.v.) that he came to the conclusion that Roman Catholicism was a primal factor in the development of political life. It was with this view that he determined to become a priest Entering the Seminary of Saint Sulpice in 1824 he was ordained priest in 1827. In 1835 he was appointed preacher at Notre Dame, where his sermons attracted crowded congrega tions. He was, however, bent on a wider proj ect, the revival of the Dominican order, the great order of preachers hi France. With this view he revisited Rome in 1838, and after the usual novitiate became a Dominican. The Do. minican is originally a Spanish order, and was never popular in France, and Lacordaire, who was appointed provincial of the order in 1850, had little success in establishing it there. He

was in 1848 elected a member of the National Assembly. He was, however, rebuked by his bishop for calling himself a Republican and re tired from politics in 1852. His honest indigna tion against the coup d'etat expressed in a ser mon roused the animosity of Napoleon III, and he was driven from the pulpit and became di rector of the Lycee at Soreze. He was elected to the Academy in 1860. A collected edition of his works appeared at Paris in nine volumes in 1872. Consult 'Lives> by Montalembert (1862) • Foisset (2d ed., 1874); Chocarne (8th ed., 1894) ; Greenwell (1877); Lear (1882) ; D'Haussonville (1895); Nicolas, 'Le Pere La cordaire et le Liberalism& (1880) ; Fesch, 'La cordaire, Journalist& (1897).