BARRE, NICOLAS. - Popular educator and ascetical writer, born at Amiens on 21 Oct. 1621, died in the odour of sanctity in Paris on 31 May 1686. At the age of twenty he entered the Minim friars in his native city. In Paris, at the convent of Place Royale, he acquired a wide culture in mathematics and theology. He held the chair of theology even before his ordination and kept it for many years. As a preacher, apostle and spiritual director, he was renowned for his piety and austerity.
His principal work was the founding of the “Charity Schools of the Child Jesus,” in which he revealed himself as a supreme pedagogue and a pioneer. There was no school open to the children of the common people, nor were there suitable teachers; Barre created “normal schools” for the training of male and female teachers who would devote themselves entirely to free schooling; they were not to be priests or religious so that sacred ministry or enclosure might not hinder their teaching. Abolishing the individual method, he prescribed the simultaneous method, gradually distributing the pupils into three classes with separation of the sexes. Instruction was to be given in the vernacular and not in Latin. The subjects taught were: reading, writing, arithmetic, drawing, penmanship, history and geography, Christian doctrine, and for girls, needlework. The timetable and school days were carefully laid down. Classes were interrupted in the morning for Mass and spiritual songs and for a school meal.
The hierarchical organization consisted of a general director, local directors and counsellors. He also established trade schools for adult artisans, designed to supplement elementary instruction. His was an organic and complete conception, little inferior to modern methods.
Barre was followed and imitated by all similar institutions that came after. St John Baptist de La Salle was advised and encouraged by him to devote himself to the Christian schools for boys, not unrecognized in the system of Barre. His principal pedagogical treatise is Statuts et règlements des Écoles charitables du st. Enfant Jésus (Paris 1685); the innovations and creations of Barre are set forth by G. Blain, the first biographer of St John Baptist de La Salle, in Discours pour l’institution des maîtres et des maîtresses d’écoles chrétiennes et gratuites, prefixed to the Vie de M. de La Salle (Rouen 1733). After Barre’s death some of his ascetical works were published, including the Maximes spirituelles du r. p. B. Minime, by the Abbé de Servien de Montigny (Paris 1694), and the Lettres spirituelles (Rouen 1697, 2nd ed. Toulouse 1876). In these he teaches total self-denial, confident abandonment and burning zeal for the glory of God.
His cause of beatification is under way, introduced in 1931 before the Sacred Congregation of Rites.