LABADIE, JEAN. — A Quietist and Pietist, born at Bourg (Bordeaux) on 13 February 1610, died at Altona on 13 February 1674. After completing his studies at the Jesuit College in Bordeaux, he entered the Society of Jesus and was ordained a priest in 1635. Because of an illness contracted through excessive penances, he was able to leave the Society in 1639; he was at Abbeville, Bazas, and Toulouse. It was during his life as a wanderer that he became acquainted with the theory and practice of Molinosist mystical Quietism; in November 1649 he was at La Graville; in October 1650, at Montauban, he became a Protestant; in 1659, at Geneva, he founded a small group of his devotees; at Middelburg, in 1666, he gathered other disciples, among them Antonietta Bourignon. The Synod of Naarden demanded that he recant; because of his refusal he was exiled; he died at Altona. His disciples, known as Labadists, survived until the first half of the eighteenth century, having also founded conventicles outside Europe, from Maryland to Surinam.
The work of L. is fundamental for the study of the transition from Quietism to Pietism: in his opposition to the Sacraments and religious practices, L. begins from the sufficiency of mental prayer (as Quietism had affirmed it), arriving at the entirely Pietist affirmation of religious non-confessionalism, precisely because religion is an exclusive matter of the heart.