MELUN, ARMAND de. – Viscount, one of the greatest organizers in France of the charitable works of the last century, precursor of Christian social action, b. at Brumetz (Aisne) on 24 Sept. 1807, d. in Paris on 24 June 1877. From 1838 he devoted himself with particular zeal to the practice of charity, under the influence of two saintly women, M. me Swetchine, a Russian convert, and Sister Rosalia Rendu, Daughter of Charity (1787–1856), whose life M. later (1857) wrote.
To give stability and organic structure to the charitable activities flourishing in France, he created a Comité des oeuvres (1842), a coordinating body, and a Bureau des renseignements, an information bureau. Parallel to this effort was his publishing activity. Worth mentioning are the Manuel des institutions et oeuvres de charité (1841), a kind of guide to institutions and charitable works; the Annales de la charité (1843), a journal later transformed into the Revue d'économie chrétienne and the Contemporain and supported by a Société d'économie charitable for its direction, financing, and the provision of information.
He also conceived an international organization for charitable assistance, bringing the Société internationale de la charité into being (1847). Elected to Parliament (1849), he used his new office to draw the State’s attention to charitable issues through a series of laws, including the first laws on social insurance. For him, social action (he devoted several of his works to the advancement of the worker) was included in the practice of charity, the weapon of society’s salvation.
Charity, being foreign to politics, was to be inspired by religion, which in turn can be strengthened only under a regime of freedom. Of M.’s defense of this freedom of the Church there remains an essay in his pamphlet: La question romaine devant le Congrès (3rd ed., Paris 1860).