MELUN, ARMAND de. - Viscount, one of the greatest organizers in France of the charitable works of the last century, a 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 ardor to the exercise of charity, under the influence of two holy souls, Mme Swetchine, a Russian convert, and Sister Rosalie Rendu, a Daughter of Charity (1787-1856), whose life M. later (1857) wrote.
In order to give stability and organic structure to the charitable activities that had flourished in France, he created a Comité des oeuvres (1842), a coordinating body, and a Bureau des renseignements, an information body. Parallel to this effort is his editorial activity. Worthy of note is the Manuel des institutions et oeuvres de charité (1841), a kind of guide to charitable institutions and works; the Annales de la charité (1843), a journal later transformed into the Revue d'économie chrétienne and the Contemporain and flanked by a Société d'économie charitable for direction, financing and information.
He also thought of an international organization of charitable assistance, giving life to the Société internationale de la charité (1847). A deputy in Parliament (1849), he used his new office to interest the State in charitable problems through a series of laws, among them the first on social insurance. For him social action (he devoted several of his works to the elevation of the worker) was included in the exercise of charity, the weapon of society's salvation.
Charity, foreign to politics, had to be inspired by religion, which in turn can strengthen itself 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).
Bibliography
Pietro Palazzini