OLIER, JEAN-JACQUES. - French priest, founder of the Society of St Sulpice, born in Paris on 20 Sept. 1608, died there on 2 Apr. 1657. He pursued his studies at the Jesuit college of the Trinity (1617) and became bachelor of theology in 1630. He was ordained priest on 31 May 1633. His spiritual director was St Vincent de Paul, who fostered his ardent zeal and sent him to Auvergne to preach his first mission in the vicinity of Pébra, of which O. was abbot. He underwent a severe trial lasting two years (1639–41): to purify his soul of all self-love, God made him experience the need for His concurrence both in the natural and supernatural orders. Illness? A supernatural trial? Certainly both. Suddenly begun, the trial also ended abruptly, and after that date (1641) he experienced nothing similar again.
In the same year he attempted to found a seminary at Chartres but without success. On 20 Dec., with de Foix and du Ferrier, he established a seminary at Vaugirard. In 1642 the curé of St Sulpice, de Fiesque, resigned; O. took his place. The parish numbered more than 150,000 inhabitants and was one of the most depraved in Paris. O. divided the parish into districts, striving to instruct and form his faithful in solid piety. He developed charitable works intensively. The miseries of the two Frondes provided ample scope for his zeal. The result was magnificent: the parish became one of the most fervent in the capital. But a violent fever forced him to resign in favour of de Bretonvilliers on 20 June 1652.
The appointment to the cure of St Sulpice led to the establishment of the seminary beside the parish church. Its characteristics were: the separation between boys (petits séminaires) and young men (grands séminaires), the community divided between masters and pupils who shared the same exercises, government founded on the spirit of faith, conscience, cordiality, confidence and not on disciplinary surveillance. After a more or less lengthy stay in the seminary, the students spent one or more years in the parish as a school of practical training.
Several bishops requested priests from O. to direct new seminaries: the first were Nantes, Le Puy, Viviers, Clermont. The spirit of St Sulpice spread widely throughout France. With the Royer de la Dauversière, he founded the Company of Our Lady of Montreal, and in the very year of his death he sent de Quelus with some companions for the work he had envisaged, which, despite a thousand difficulties, prospered in an extraordinary manner.
Works: La Journée chrestienne (Paris 1655; II. trans., Milan 1935); Catéchisme chrétien pour la vie intérieure (Paris 1656; II. trans., Milan 1941); Introduction à la vie et aux vertus chrestiennes (Paris 1658; II. trans., Milan 1838); Traité des saints Ordres (Paris 1676; II. trans., Turin 1884, 1925); Lettres (ibid. 1672); Pietas Seminarii Sancti Sulpizii (critical ed., Bourges 1879); Mémoires, etc., all works imbued, in accordance with the finest tradition of the French Oratory and especially the doctrine of Cardinal de Bérulle and de Condren, with love for Christ and mystical union with the incarnate Word. O. may be compared, for the keenness of his introspection and the refinement of his feeling, to St Francis de Sales.