ALZON, EMMANUEL d'. - Founder of the Augustinians of the Assumption (q.v.), b. at Le Vigan (Gard, France) on 30 Aug. 1810, d. at Nîmes on 21 Nov. 1880. The sole heir of a noble family deeply devoted to Christianity, overcoming his father’s opposition—Viscount Henri Daudé d’Alzon—on 4 March 1832 he left home to enter the seminary at Montpellier. After two years of prayer and study, declining Lamennais’s invitations to La Chesnaie and those of his friend Salinis to Juilly, he went to Rome. In December 1834 he was ordained priest after painfully severing relations with Lamennais. He then wrote: “I reaffirm certain principles whose importance my journey to Rome has made me understand. The first is that one must always work for Rome, sometimes without Rome, but never against Rome.” Returning to France, he placed himself entirely at the disposal of the bishop of Nîmes, who named him honorary vicar general (8 Dec. 1835). For forty-five years he held this second position in the diocese under four bishops who trusted him completely.
Endowed with rich talents and rare virtues, he devoted himself unstintingly to study, combined with remarkable activity sustained by extraordinary energy. He took a particular interest in the religious of the Assumption and became the counsellor and director of their foundress, Mother Eugénie de Jésus. Having acquired the Assumption boarding school at Nîmes, he made it the cradle of a congregation and adopted the habit and rule of St Augustine. The care of this foundation dominated his entire life. In the sanctuary of Our Lady of Victories (Paris) he privately made his religious profession (1845). The beginnings were modest; vocations were few but of the highest quality. Alongside his care for education—for whose freedom he organized a Catholic league and founded (1871) the Revue de l’Enseignement Chrétien (with a programme set out in its first issue: freedom of education at all levels, freedom of association, freedom to own property)—he nurtured a burning zeal for the fruitful work of Our Lady of Vocations, which he established for poor boys, allowing them at the end of their studies to choose freely between the secular clergy, the missions, or religious life. In 1862 the Pope entrusted him at Rome with the mission of working for the return of Eastern dissidents to the Church. Two years later he founded the Oblates of the Assumption (q.V. ASSUNZIONE, OBLATE dell’), a congregation intended to assist religious in various works, especially in the East. Meanwhile, one of his sons, Fr Pernet, conceived in 1865 the highly popular Work of the Little Sisters of the Assumption (q.V. ASSUNZIONE, PICCOLE SUORE dell’). He was the founder and animator of many associations and religious communities. Among these we may recall the convents of the Refuge and the Carmelites, the orphanages of St Joseph and St Francis de Sales, the Association of Ladies of Mercy for women of the aristocracy, the Society of St Stanislaus for boys of the middle and working classes, the Work for Penitent Women and those known as Magdalens, the Association of the Sacred Heart of Mary for the conversion of sinners, the Work for Soldiers, and the Society of St Maurice. He left: Méditations sur la perfection religieuse, edited by E. Baudouy, 2 vols., Paris 1926–27. The cause of his beatification, opened at Nîmes in 1931, is under way.
AMMA (AMULA), a liturgical vessel: q.V. AMPOLLA; BOCCALE.