CLAUSEL de MONTALS, CLAUDE-HIPPOLYTE. - Bishop, b. at Coussergues (Aveyron) on 5 April 1769, d. on 1 April 1857. Having fled from Saint-Sulpice at the time of the storming of the Bastille, he was subsequently imprisoned. An eloquent orator, he was court preacher in the time of Louis XVIII. Chaplain to the Duchess of Angoulême, he delivered the funeral eulogy of the Duke of Berry (1820). He was a canon of the Oratory of Amiens when he was promoted bishop of Chartres (1824); he later resigned the see in 1851. A champion of liberty, he claimed it both for education, under the government of Louis Philippe, publishing on the subject some eighty pamphlets in a diffuse style, at times fanciful and not always clear; and for the Church of France, making himself noticed as an almost fanatical assertor of Gallicanism; he later moderated this and subsequently recanted it. A friend of Lamennais, he later combated his doctrines, as he combated philosophical eclecticism, which he considered particularly harmful to the young.
Of his works are remembered: Réclamation en faveur de l'Eglise de France (Paris 1817); Le concordat justifié (ibid. 1818); Coup d'oeil sur l'Eglise 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.).
Bibliography3 works
Vito Zollini