LE BACHELET, Camille (François-Xavier). - Jesuit, theologian, b. in Paris on 14 Jan. 1855, d. there on 23 Sept. 1925. Having entered the Society of Jesus in 1878 with the intention of going to the China mission (for this reason he straightaway adopted the name Fr. Xavier), once his studies were completed he was instead assigned in 1888 to the teaching of dogma at the Jersey scholasticate, continuing in this role through his various transfers.
More inclined to positive studies than to scholasticism, he was a diligent investigator and examiner of patristic texts and of theologians, whom he did not cite without having read and carefully weighed them; shrewd and reflective in grasping, with regard to the truths he defended, both the patristic tradition and the « sensus Ecclesiae ». He collaborated with numerous articles in the periodicals Etudes, Recherches de sciences religieuses, Gregorianum; to the DThC he contributed on the Immaculate Conception the two masterly studies: L'Immaculée Conception dans l'Écriture et la tradition jusqu'au Concile d'Éphèse (VII, coll. 845-93) and L'Immaculée Conception dans l'Église latine depuis le Concile d'Éphèse (ibid., coll. 979-1218); on the Society of Jesus the two fundamental studies: Les principes de la Compagnie de Jésus sur l'enseignement des sciences sacrées (ibid., VIII, coll. 1012-43); La théologie dogmatique dans la Compagnie de Jésus (ibid., coll. 1043-69). On Bellarmine, besides various articles in cultural periodicals, he left: Bellarmin et la Bible Sixto-Clementine (Paris 1911); Bellarmin avant son cardinalat (1542-98), correspondance et documents (ibid. 1911), which was to be followed by 5 further vols. with the Saint's correspondence; Auctarium Bellarminianum (ibid. 1913).
Bibliography
Celestino Testore