HENRI DIDON. - Dominican, orator, born at Touvet (Isère) on 17 March 1840; died at Toulouse on 15 March 1900. From 1865 in Paris, he exercised his strong, effective, and entirely Accordarian activity in various cities (London, Liège, Marseilles, Paris).
But it was his preaching of 1879-80 on divorce and on the reconciliation of Catholicism with the modern world and its progress that, while winning applause, also aroused strong disapproval for his views, which were deemed too broad, and for some intemperate language, as a result of which he had to withdraw to Corbara in Corsica. In October 1881 he returned to Paris, but since he was not permitted to preach, he devoted himself to writing the Vie de Jésus-Christ (2 vols., Paris 1890), in which, while the exegesis is at times inadequate, the geographical, social, and religious setting in which the life of the Redeemer unfolded is reproduced with vigour and wide-ranging information, the fruit of an extensive and careful journey in Palestine. From 1890 he was director of Arcueil (Paris), where he sought to implement, in matters of education, a discipline of broader scope and greater adaptation to the times.
He also wrote: L'enseignement supérieur et les universités catholiques (Paris 1875); Indissolubilité et divorce (ibid. 1880); La Foi en la divinité de Jésus-Christ (ibid. 1894); L'éducation présente (ibid. 1898). Useful for knowledge of D. are also the 4 vols. of Lettres (ibid. 1901-30).