LA COMBE, FRANÇOIS. - Barnabite, b. at Thonon (Haute-Savoie) c. 1640, d. at Vincennes 29 June 1715. Superior of the College at Thonon (1677), then of the house at Vercelli (1684), he was recalled to the Paris house in 1689, where in the following year he was imprisoned in the Bastille as a propagator of Quietism. From there he was banished to the island of Oléron, then to Lourdes, and in 1712 transferred to the hospital at Vincennes because he was suffering from furious mania.
His work: *Oratio mentalis analysis* (Vercelli 1686), first approved as a sound work by the Roman Inquisition, was later vigorously contested by others and placed on the Index in 1688. Some claim that L. introduced M. de Guyon to Quietist mysticism, while others regard him as her humble disciple. It is certain that the two were bound by a strange mystical affection based on “pure love,” which, however, was misinterpreted by the anti-Quietists, relying as they did on words from L. in a letter to Guyon (7 May 1698) that, even if genuine, may admit of a more benign interpretation.