CLAUDIUS, MATTHIAS. – Protestant poet and writer, born at Reinfeld on 15 August 1740, died at Hamburg on 21 January 1815. After completing his university studies at Jena, he lived in Copenhagen, Hamburg and Wandsbeck, where for four years he founded and edited the well-known newspaper *Wandsbecker Boten*, seeking through it to spread moral and Christian culture.
His political-moral stance toward the French Revolution was one of clear opposition: extolling the pious and modest man, he saw in the Revolution the destruction of the law of love and the exaltation of hatred and the brutality of instinct. A spirit deeply governed by his Pietist mysticism, he composed poems of melodious and immediate lyricism that became common property among the German people as folk songs. He himself summed up his simple yet sure religious faith in one of his best-known poems: “Man lives and exists only for a brief time... One alone is eternal... and we are in His hands.” His activity as a prose writer and edifying author was not without influence on the renewal of religious spirit even in Catholic circles in Austria during the second decade of the 19th century.
CLAUSEL de MONTALS, CLAUDE-HIPPOLYTE. – Bishop, born at Couseruges (Aveyron) on 5 April 1769, died on 1 April 1857. Having fled from Saint-Sulpice at the time of the storming of the Bastille, he was later imprisoned. A gifted orator, he served as court preacher under Louis XVIII. As chaplain to the Duchess of Angoulême, he delivered the funeral oration for the Duke of Berry (1820). He was honorary canon of Amiens when he was promoted to Bishop of Chartres (1824), but resigned in 1851. A champion of liberty, he defended it both for education under the government of Louis-Philippe, publishing about eighty pamphlets on the subject in a diffuse, at times imaginative but not always clear style, and for the Church of France, where he became known as an almost fanatical advocate of Gallicanism, though he later moderated his views and recanted. A friend of Lamennais, he later opposed his doctrines, as he did philosophical eclecticism, which he considered particularly harmful to the young.
Among his works are: *Réclamation en faveur de l'Église de France* (Paris 1817); *Le concordat justifié* (ibid. 1818); *Coup d'œil sur l'Église de France* (ibid. 1818); *La religion éprouvée par la Révolution* (ibid. 1818); *Instruction pastorale au sujet des attaques livrées dans ces derniers temps à la religion et à ses ministres* (ibid. 1826); *Lettre à un de ses diocésains sur un écrit de M. de Lamennais* (ibid. 1826); *Réponse aux quatre concordats de M. de Pradt, ancien archevêque de Malines* (ibid. s.d.).