LACORDAIRE, HENRI-DOMINIQUE. - Distinguished Dominican orator and apologist, b. at Recey-sur-Ource (Côte-d'Or) on 12 May 1802, d. at Sorèze on 21 Nov. 1862. Orphaned of his father at the age of 4, he was educated by his mother at Dijon, in whose lycée he received an excellent linguistic formation. In contact with the Voltairian milieu, he had already lost the faith at the beginning of his legal studies (1819). In Paris, where he had gone for the usual apprenticeship as a lawyer, he felt the social problems then so keenly agitated, and found their solution only in the Christian faith, which he embraced again with fervor and ardor. Having entered the Seminary of Issy (1824), from which he passed to that of St. Sulpice (1826), he was ordained a priest on 22 Sept. 1827. Chaplain of the Visitation of Paris (1828) and of the Lycée Henri IV (1829), he made contact with F. de Lamennais and became one of the principal editors of the Avenir.
After the condemnation of the newspaper, L. (1832) was the first to submit to the Pope, and when Lamennais manifested his rebellion in the notorious libel Paroles d'un croyant and in other writings, he refuted his errors in the Considérations sur le système philosophique de M. de Lamennais (Paris 1834) and in the Lettre sur le St-Siège (ibid. 1837).
This trial refined the spirit of L., who, having devoted himself with greater commitment to the interior life, began that intellectual apostolate which is the characteristic of his life. The religious conferences held in the chapel of the Collège Stanislas (1834) met with great success, and the following year L. was invited by Archbishop Quèlen to mount the pulpit of Notre-Dame during Lent. It was a triumph, which was repeated in 1856, the year in which the now celebrated orator decided to become a Dominican. As a preliminary to the realization of this design he wrote the Mémoire pour le rétablissement en France de l'Ordre des Frères Prêcheurs (Paris 1839). Having gone to Rome, he received the religious habit at S. Maria sopra Minerva (9 Apr. 1859) and, having completed his year of novitiate in the Convent of La Quercia (Viterbo), he made his vows on 12 Apr. 1840. In Dec. there appeared the evocative Vie de st Dominique (Paris 1840), which created around the adamantine figure of the Saint and the work of his Order a halo of sympathy and admiration.
Having returned to France, he inaugurated the golden period of his activity (1841-54): he resumed the conferences of Notre-Dame, held applauded courses of preaching in the principal cities (Bordeaux, Nancy, Grenoble, Lyon, Strasbourg, Toulon, Toulouse), founded convents and houses of study, up to the full constitution of the province of France (1850), of which he was named first superior. This province was dismembered in 1858 for the erection of that of Lyon. On this point L. had views different from those of Fr. Danzas and Fr. Jandel, his former disciple, who had become master general of the Order. He also founded the Teaching Third Order (1854), for which he labored with tireless tenacity and to which his predilections always went. It was precisely in the College of this institute, opened at Sorèze (Tarn), that L. spent his last years, wisely making himself small with the little ones. On 2 Feb. 1860 he was admitted to the French Academy: still a little noise was made around this man, who, broken by illness and refined by sorrow, unmindful of the glory of time, aspired to that of eternity.
In his last period he wrote: Lettres à un jeune homme sur la vie chrétienne (Paris 1858): an incomplete work, composed at the request of Perreyve, which is a winged hymn to Christ, whose irresistible fascination the author shows he has undergone and which he transmits to the reader; Vie de ste Marie
Madeleine (ibid. 1860): a work written for the restoration of the sacred places of Provence, where the scant critical sense is compensated by a dazzling style, beneath which vibrate accents of deeply moved piety; De la liberté de l'Eglise et d'Italie (ibid. 1860); Testament du père L. (edited by the Montalambet, ibid. 1870): these are the memoirs dictated in his last illness, concerning the vicissitudes of the restoration of the Order in France. There remain moreover numerous panegyrics, funeral eulogies, occasional discourses published by the author, and many letters and fragments printed posthumously. The complete works (9 vols.) were published several times; the translations of the individual works are innumerable (into almost all languages).
L.'s fortune is linked to his conferences, which unfolded with a strictly logical thread, taking their starting point from the historical and concrete fact of the Church; they are divided into three groups. Those of 1835-36 constitute the prologue, in which the Church is presented as the only authority that can lead man to truth and to God (conf. 1-7); immediately afterward the listener is introduced to consider the doctrine of the Church in general, in its nature and in its sources (conf. 8-13). Those of 1843-46 set forth the effects of Catholic doctrine on the spirit (conf. 14-20), on the soul (conf. 21-28), on society (conf. 29-36); suddenly the audience is carried away to contemplate the living figure of Christ, author of the Church (conf. 37-44). Those of 1848-51 bring the soul close to the massive block of the dogma of the Church: God (conf. 45-52), man's relations with God (conf. 53-59), the fall and the reparation (conf. 60-66), the providential economy of the Redemption (conf. 67-73). The conferences of Toulouse (1854) form a separate part, concerning morality in its relations with the supernatural.
The method introduced by L. in his apologetics is in part new. He himself acknowledges (conf. 27) that he changed tactics; instead of ascending from the base, he started from the summit; he did not dig into the foundations of the pyramid, but, considering its apex, he slowly descended to the most hidden part, which supports the entire edifice. The Apostles saw the Head and believed in the still undeveloped body of the Church; L. saw the body and induced the men of his time to believe in the invisible Head of the Church. The most beautiful and deeply felt conferences are precisely those that treat of Jesus. The figure of Christ, which in 1823 had struck down the young Voltairian, conquered his ardent spirit, grew and became gigantic in the thought and word of this convert, whose life, like that of St. Paul, resolves itself into a lyrical song to the Divine Conqueror. To his song the Romanticism of Chateaubriand gave form and splendor, the theology of St. Augustine and St. Thomas gave vigor and strength, his genius and the character of his native Burgundy gave color and life. If his eloquence is not learned and profound like that of Bossuet and Bourdaloue (nor free from imprecisions), it has nonetheless a more human accent, more spontaneous movements, a crystalline transparency of soul, which draws near, in an animated and lived colloquy, cor ad cor, to his audience, become his interlocutor. L.'s word, while soaring in regions always pure, touched life, that life then tumultuous in the souls of his listeners, and with a stroke of the wing brought it close to the springs of the Gospel. The men of Romanticism, agitated by the religious-social marasmus provoked by the revolution, understood, through the winged and imaginative word of a poet become apostle, how the religion of Christ was not a straitjacket, but a substantial viaticum for the harsh journey of life.
The judgment of posterity on L.'s political attitude has been varied (the phrase is well known: "I die a penitent Christian and an impenitent liberal"), some of his doctrinal affirmations are held to be debatable, yet no one has ever doubted the nobility of his intentions, and all have admired his upright character and the austerity of his life.