LEGAUDIER, ANTOINE. - Jesuit, writer on asceticism, b. at Château-Thierry on 7 January 1572, d. in Paris on 14 April 1622. He was professor of Sacred Scripture at Pont-à-Mousson and of moral theology at La Flèche, with the additional charge of spiritual director of the communities; then master of novices and instructor of the third year of probation in Paris.
These offices offered him the opportunity to develop, in his domestic exhortations, the various points of asceticism to the point of composing a complete treatise.
To satisfy the desire of his hearers he was induced to publish some parts of it: De sanctissimo Christi Jesu amore opusculum (Pont-à-Mousson 1619), De vera Christi Jesu imitatione (Paris 1620); De Dei praesentia (ibid. 1620); Praxis meditandi a s. p. Ignatio traditae explicatio (ibid. 1920). After his death these and the other works, which had remained unpublished, appeared in one volume under the general title De natura et statibus perfectionis, together with the entire course of the thirty-day spiritual exercises (ibid. 1643; better edition edited by J. Martinov, 3 vols., Paris 1856-58, and Turin 1903, edited by A. M. Micheletto). The work is one of the most complete, philosophical and personal treatises on the subject, and reveals in the author not only a theorist of spirituality, but also the experienced hand of one who sought to live it practically and intimately.
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