LAVOISIER, LAURENT-ANTOINE. — Celebrated chemist, born in Paris on 26 Aug. 1743, died there on 8 May 1794. He was the first to explain the true function of oxygen, discovered by Priestley and Scheele, as the essential element of respiration and combustion, thereby demolishing the erroneous phlogiston theory, which, though it had contributed to the progress of science, had been accepted by contemporary scholars. He clarified the concept of the chemical element and experimentally proved the law of the conservation of mass.
Lavoisier’s discoveries and studies are set forth in the Traité élémentaire de chimie (Paris 1789; 2nd ed. ibid. 1793; 3rd ed. ibid. 1937), collected in the Œuvres complètes de L. A. L. in 6 large volumes edited by J.-B. Dumas (Paris 1857–96) and celebrated in works devoted to him by Grimaux, Dumas, Berthelot, Guareschi and in all treatises on the history of chemistry.
His scientific honesty, his private and public virtues, and his sentiments of humanity and charity (he, as a “fermier général,” i.e. a tax farmer, supported the exemption of the poor from taxes) were confirmed by the philosophical tranquillity and resignation with which he met the sentence imposed on him as an enemy and starver of the people. Born into a religious family, he always maintained the convictions of a Catholic Christian.
Giulio Provenzal
LAVIGERIE, CHARLES-MARTIAL — Oil portrait by an unknown painter. Rome, basilica of St Agnes outside the walls.
In Syria, during which time he had a celebrated meeting with the famous emir ‘Abd el-Qadîr. Above all, Lavigerie then made contact with the East and Islam, indeed discovered within himself a missionary vocation.
On arriving in Rome, he was appointed auditor of the Rota, then consultant to the Congregation for the Oriental Rites, and shortly afterwards bishop of Nancy. In 1867 he accepted the French government’s proposal for the appointment as archbishop of Algiers, with the intention “of making Algeria the cradle of a Christian nation, of diffusing the light of the Gospel and of carrying it beyond the deserts, as far as the heart of the vast continent.”
Struggling with vigour, he won freedom of apostolate among the Muslims of Algeria, and Napoleon III had to yield to his plans. To carry out a discreet but effective ministry among these peoples, Lavigerie founded two missionary congregations: that of the White Fathers and the White Sisters. He sent his missionaries across the Sahara towards Timbuktu; twice they were martyred. The White Fathers were to reach the Sudan only in 1895, following the French army.
Lavigerie had better fortune in apostolic expeditions towards equatorial Africa, and it is his imperishable glory to have opened the heart of the African continent to the Gospel, where the first White Fathers arrived in 1879.
His pastoral care extended also to those closest to him; in the archdiocese of Algiers he built numerous churches and established many religious communities; in Tunisia he revived the ancient see of Carthage, built the cathedral in Tunis and the basilica of St Louis in Carthage. He became Primate of Africa. But once more the East called him: the French government offered him the custody of the sanctuary of St Anne in Jerusalem. Thus were founded the seminaries in which the White Fathers devote themselves to the formation of the Greek-Melchite clergy.
The reward for so many services rendered to the Church was in 1882 his creation as cardinal of the Holy Roman Church by Pope Leo XIII. Of his word, so authoritative and powerful, he made use