LABRIOLLE, PIERRE-HENRI-MARIE CHAMPAGNE de. - Distinguished Latinist and historian of Christian literature, b. at Asnières (Seine) on 18 June 1874, d. at Nantes on 28 Dec. 1940. He taught at Laval University in Montreal, then at the Collège Stanislas in Paris, then at the Lycée of Rennes, which was followed, from 1904 to 1919, by the Catholic University of Fribourg in Switzerland and, from 1926 to 1940, by the University of Poitiers and the Sorbonne. He also founded and directed, from 1911 to 1914, the Bulletin d'ancienne littérature et d'archéologie chrétienne; and from 1916 he was a member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres.
He began his work with Saint Vincent de Lérins (Paris 1906), Saint Jérôme (ibid. 1907) and Saint Ambroise (ibid. 1908); there followed the important dissertation Les sources de l'histoire du montanisme (Fribourg 1910) and the summary work La crise montaniste (Paris 1913); then, the fruit of more than 12 years of teaching, the nimble and vivid Histoire de la littérature chrétienne (ibid. 1920; 3rd ed. edited by G. Bardy, 2 vols., ibid. 1947), admirable for the completeness of its treatment, its broad culture and the limpid order of so many facts. Even earlier he had entirely recast Tivier's Histoire de la littérature française (ibid. 1904). On the strong and insidious literary reaction of paganism against nascent Christianity he wrote La réaction païenne (ibid. 1934), always founded on a full knowledge of the subject combined with clarity and elegance of style.
He collaborated on the Histoire de l'Église of Fliche-Martin (vols. III, IV; ibid. 1936, 1937). His St Agustin. Confessions. Texte établi et traduit (2 vols., ibid. 1925-26) gives a version that exquisitely renders the movement and color of the Saint's style. The same must be said of the Soliloquii (ibid. 1927) and of the De cura pro mortuis gerenda (ibid. 1932) prepared for the same Budé collection.
Bibliography2 works
Celestino Testore