LA BROISE, RENÉ. - Jesuit, theologian, b. at Laval on 26 March 1860, d. there on 10 Feb. 1906. Prefect of studies at the Scholasticate of Jersey, he was able to exercise over the students of philosophy a wise and discreet direction, but also firm and animating.
His degree theses: Bossuet et la Bible (Paris 1890) and Mameri Claudiani vita eiusque doctrina de anima hominis (ibid. 1890) won the best and unanimous applause. To him is also due in large part the work, which was intended as a homage to Jesus the Redeemer: Un siècle. Mouvement du monde de 1800 à 1900 (3 vols., ibid. 1900), in which, by various authors, all the fields of political, literary and religious culture are reviewed. La B. wrote in it: La religion et les religions (cf. III, pp. 1-31). In 1899 he was called as professor of theology at the Institut catholique of Paris, where he was able to win the esteem and affection of all, colleagues and students alike, through the wonderful clarity, profound erudition and methodical quality of his treatment. But already the following year, because of very weak health, he had to leave the chair and retire to Laval.
But he did not remain idle there, for there he composed and published a Vie de la Ste Vierge (Paris 1904, Italian trans., Rome 1900), which in his intention was to be the compendium of a much larger work, furnished with all the necessary scholarly apparatus. This life, dense with ideas, points of view, facts and explanations, reproduces, even in its brevity, all his qualities as a conscientious researcher, a profound theologian, an ascetic and a perceptive psychologist, and all his sensitive and devout heart. He also collaborated from 1896 with the periodical Études.
Bibliography
Celestino Testore