LA COMBE, FRANÇOIS. - Barnabite, born at Thonon (Haute-Savoie) around 1640, died at Vincennes on 29 June 1715. Superior of the College of Thonon (1677), then of the house at Vercelli (1684), he was recalled to the house in Paris in 1689, where the following year he was confined 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 afflicted with violent mania.
His work, Orationis mentalis analysis (Vercelli 1686), first approved by the Inquisition in Rome as sound, was subsequently vigorously challenged by others and placed on the Index in 1688. According to some, L. initiated M.me Guyon into Quietist mysticism; others, on the contrary, make him her humble disciple. Certainly the two were bound by a strange mystical affection based on “pure love,” which, however, was misconstrued by the anti-Quietists, relying on the words of L. in a letter to Guyon (7 May 1698) which, even if genuine, may admit of another, more charitable interpretation.