BARRÉ, NICOLAS. - Popular educator and ascetical writer, b. at Amiens on 21 Oct. 1621, d. in the odor of sanctity at Paris on 31 May 1686. At the age of twenty he entered the Minims of his city. At Paris, in the convent of Place Royale, he acquired a broad culture in mathematics and theology. He held the chair of theology before his priesthood and held it for many years. A preacher, apostle and director of souls, he was known for piety and austerity. His principal work is the foundation of the "Schools of Charity of the Child Jesus," in which he shows himself a supreme and precursor pedagogue. There was no school open to the children of the people, there were no suitable teachers; B. creates the "normal schools" for the formation of masters and mistresses who consecrate themselves totally to the free school; they must not be priests or religious, so that the sacred ministry or the cloister may not hinder the teaching. Having abolished the individual method, he prescribes the simultaneous one, gradually distributing the pupils into three classes with separation of the two sexes. Instruction must be imparted in the vernacular and not in Latin. The subjects are: reading, writing, arithmetic, drawing, calligraphy, history and geography, Christian doctrine, and, for the girls, needlework. The timetable and the school days are well defined. The lessons are interrupted in the morning for Mass and spiritual hymns and for a school meal. The hierarchical order is constituted by a director general, local directors, and councillors. He further creates the trade schools of handicraft for adults, aimed at supplementing elementary instruction. An organic and complete conception, which has little to envy in modern methods.
B. is followed and imitated by all similar institutions of later times. St. John Baptist de La Salle was advised and spurred by him to devote himself to the Christian schools for boys, not departing from B.'s system. His principal pedagogical treatise is Statuts et règlements des Écoles charitables du st. Enfant Jésus (Paris 1685); the innovations and creations of B. are set forth by G. Blain, the first biographer of St. J. B. de La Salle, in the 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 B.'s death some of his ascetical works were published, among them the Maximes spirituelles du r. p. B. Minime, by the abbot de Servien de Montigny (Paris 1694), and the Lettres spirituelles (Rouen 1697, 2nd ed. Toulouse 1876). In them he teaches total self-denial, confident abandonment, and ardent zeal for the glory of God.
His cause of beatification is in progress, introduced in 1931 before the Sacred Congregation of Rites.
Bibliography7 works
Gennaro Moretti