EMERY, JACQUES-ANDRÉ. - Superior general of the Sulpicians, b. at Gex on 26 Aug. 1732, d. at Paris 28 Apr. 1811. Having entered the novitiate of St. Sulpice in Nov. 1757, he was ordained a priest on 11 March 1758. Professor of dogmatic theology at the Seminary of Orléans from 1759 to 1765, and of moral theology at Lyon from 1765 to 1775, he was afterwards superior of the Seminary of Angera (1776-82), and on 10 Sept. 1782 he was appointed superior general of the Company of St. Sulpice, after the resignation of M. Le Gallic. In this office, as also in the work of reforming the seminaries, to which he devoted himself in a particular way, E. gave proof of wisdom, prudence and firmness; qualities that characterize his whole conduct in the troubled era in which he lived.
During the Revolution and the Empire he was truly "the conscience of the French clergy," because of the counsels of moderation that he lavished on the bishops, especially on the fiery Card. Maury and on Card. Fesch, Napoleon's uncle.
The question of the oaths required by the civil authority gave rise to delicate problems that E. had to resolve, in the absence of the bishops who had emigrated abroad. The oath to the civil constitution of the clergy appeared to him as a usurpation on the part of the State; E. refused to take it and all the members of the Company followed his example.
As for the oath of liberty-equality, imposed on 3 Sept. 1792, considered as purely civil and therefore extraneous to religious questions, E. authorized it and took it himself, in the general interest of the Church, while the clergy, especially those who had emigrated, ignoring the state of the Church in France, judged it unlawful. On 15 March 1793, E. made a declaration in which he explained the meaning he gave to the oath he had taken. Nevertheless on 16 July of the same year the Holy See decreed that it should not be taken because it was equivocal.
Meanwhile E. had been imprisoned at St. Pelagia and then released, thanks to the intervention of his cousin Mme de Villèle (19-31 May 1793). He was arrested a second time on 16 July of the same year and remained in prison until 23 Oct. 1794. Released from prison, he was obliged to leave Paris because of the attacks by the constitutionalists in the Annales de la Religion. He withdrew to Gex, then to Nyon, in Switzerland, and wrote to Pope Pius VI to inform him of the conditions in France; he returned to Paris in July 1795.
The coup d'état of Brumaire gave rise to new problems: Card. Maury, in agreement with the Count of Provence (Louis XVIII), was attempting to incite the Court of Rome against the Consulate, and the ecclesiastics who had taken refuge abroad thought to serve the cause of religion by their attachment to the monarchy.
The First Consul meanwhile was already beginning negotiations for the concordat, and E. brought to it the contribution of his prudence. He distrusted Bernier, an ambitious and complaisant negotiator; he entered into relations with Spina, the envoy of Rome; he had audiences with the First Consul, and warned him against those who surrounded him, in particular against Fouché. After the signing of the concordat, he had frequent meetings with the nuncio Caprara, to whom he supplied information on the situation of the Church, and exercised his influence on Portalis, while keeping the intriguer Bernier as far away as possible. Following the resignation of a large part of the bishops of the old regime and the reduction of the number of ancient dioceses, measures consecrated by the brief Tam multa of Pius VII, the episcopal see of Arras was offered to E.: but he refused.
Meanwhile E.'s influence increased among the bishops, and he assumed a role of capital importance in the history of the Church of France. He formally condemned the Organic Articles in the name of theology and canon law; and he gave very wise counsels regarding the retraction to be imposed on the ten constitutional bishops, appointed concordatary bishops, and regarding numerous ecclesiastical questions that arose especially after the death of Portalis.
From Sept. 1800, in order to resume the formation of the clergy, E. had reopened the Seminary of St. Sulpice. Then he reconstituted the Company of the priests of St. Sulpice, and asked the old Sulpicians who had had to leave the seminaries in order to accept other posts to renounce such posts and consecrate themselves entirely to the service of the seminaries and thus resume the Sulpician tradition in all its rigor.
E. also devoted himself directly to the organization of the Church of France for the application of the concordat, and defended the Pope against the pretensions of Napoleon. He therefore criticized the Catéchisme impérial, and in the Nouveaux opuscules de M. l'abbé Fleury in 1807 he set out his doctrine on the liberties of the Gallican Church and on the rights of the Holy See. Meanwhile, by the formal will of the Emperor, E. was appointed a member of the Council of the University. But he had a bitter enemy, Fouché, who provoked the imperial decree of 15 Feb. 1810, to suppress the Company of St. Sulpice. E. therefore had to withdraw to the country residence at Issy. And of this year is the sentence of the ecclesiastical tribunal of Paris on the invalidity of Napoleon's marriage to Josephine of Beauharnais: a sentence that was recognized and approved by E.
The ecclesiastical Commission of 1811 gave rise to delicate problems regarding the canonical institution of the bishops appointed by the Emperor. During the session of 17 March, while the members of the Council hesitated, E., questioned by Napoleon, replied defending the rights and authority of the Holy See; the Emperor congratulated him for the courage he had shown and Talleyrand did the same. At this moment E. was in very poor health: he died a few days later.
Among the works of E. the following deserve to be remembered:
Esprit de Leibnitz, 2 vols., Lyon 1778; L'esprit de s. Thérèse, ibid. 1775, which have had very numerous editions; Pensées de Descartes sur la religion et la morale, ibid. 1801; Nouveaux opuscules de M. l'abbé Fleury, ibid. 1807 and 1809. All these works have been gathered in the volume Oeuvres complètes de M. E., edited by Migne, ibid. 1857.
Bibliography5 works
Giovanni Carreyre