GARDEIL, AMBROISE. – Dominican theologian, born in Nancy on 29 March 1859, died on 31 August 1931. He entered religious life in 1879 and taught fundamental theology; later, for about twenty years, he expounded the Summa Theologica of S. Tommaso, both in its dogmatic and in its moral sections. For a long time he was rector of the Dominican theological college of the province of France.
In 1893 he helped to found the Revue Thomiste, to which he continued to contribute throughout his life. During the period 1893–96 he published a series of important articles on the subject L'évolutionisme et les principes de St Thomas, and in 1898–99 several masterly studies on the subjects Les exigences objectives de l'action, L'action et ses ressources subjectives, Les ressources du vouloir. These studies constitute a response to Blondel’s work L'action and also embody the substance of the lectures given by G. on the treatises concerning the ultimate end and beatitude according to S. Tommaso.
He wrote numerous articles for the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique: the best-known entries are Appétit (désir naturel de voir Dieu), Bien, Crédibilité, Dons du Saint-Esprit. Finally, he published three works of great importance: La crédibilité et l'apologétique (2nd ed., Paris 1912); Le donné révélé et la théologie (1st ed., ibid. 1915); La structure de l'âme et l'expérience mystique (2 vols., ibid. 1927), which contains an in-depth study of the presence of the Most Holy Trinity in the souls of the just: mystical knowledge is regarded as “the supreme, but normal, blossoming of the state of grace” (II, p. 89).
At the beginning of our century, G. was one of the foremost French theologians, thanks to his profound knowledge of the doctrine of S. Tommaso and S. Agostino. Rather than proceeding from origins to conclusions, he preferred to ascend from conclusions to origins; and, both in philosophy and in theology, he insisted on the higher realism of true wisdom, a realism to which many minds attain only after a more or less prolonged period of scarcely conscious nominalism or conceptualism. The higher aspects of reality manifest themselves only when science becomes wisdom and contemplation.