OLIER, JEAN-JACQUES. - French priest, founder of the Society of St. Sulpice, b. in Paris on 20 Sept. 1608, d. there on 2 Apr. 1657. He did his studies at the college of the Trinità dei Gesuiti (1617) and was a bachelor in theology in 1630. He was ordained a priest on 31 May 1633. His spiritual director was St. Vincent de Paul, who encouraged his ardent zeal and who sent him to Auvergne to preach his first mission in the surroundings of Pébrac, of which O. was abbot. He underwent a harsh trial that lasted two years (1639-41): to purify his soul of all self-love, God made him experience the need for his cooperation both in the natural and in the supernatural order. Illness? Supernatural trial? Certainly both. Abruptly begun, the trial also ended abruptly, and after this date (1641) he no longer experienced anything of the kind.
In the same year he attempted to found a seminary at Chartres but without success. On 29 Dec., with de Foix and du Ferrier, he established a seminary at Vaugirard. In 1642 the curé of St. Sulpice, de Fiesque, resigned; O. replaced him. The parish counted more than 150 thousand inhabitants: and it was one of the most depraved in Paris. O. divided the parish into districts, striving to instruct his faithful and to form them in a solid piety. He intensively developed works of charity. The miseries of the two Frondes provided great exercise 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 favor of de Bretonvilliers on 20 June 1652.
The appointment to the curacy of St. Sulpice brought about the establishment of the Seminary next to the parish church. Its characteristics were: the separation between children (minor seminaries) and older boys (major seminaries), the community divided between teachers and pupils who take part in the same exercises, government founded on the spirit of faith, conscience, cordiality, trust and not on disciplinary surveillance. The seminarians, after a more or less long stay in the Seminary, spent one or more years in the parish, as at a school of application.
Some bishops asked O. for priests for the direction of new seminaries: the first were Nantes, Le Puy, Viviers,
Clermont. The spirit of St. Sulpice spread greatly throughout France. With le Royer de la Dauversière, he founded the Company of Our Lady of Montreal, and in the same year of his death he sent de Quelus with some companions for the work that he had glimpsed and that, through a thousand difficulties, prospered in an extraordinary way.
O. died assisted by St. Vincent de Paul. Bossuet said of him: «virum praestantissimum ac sanctitatis odore florentem».
Works: La Journée chrestienne (Paris 1655; Italian trans., Milan 1935); Catéchisme chrétien pour la vie intérieure (Paris 1656; Italian trans., Milan 1941); Introduction à la vie et aux vertus chrestiennes (Paris 1658; Italian trans., Milan 1838); Traité des saints Ordres (Paris 1676; Italian trans., Turin 1884, 1925); Lettres (ibid. 1672); Pietas Seminarii Sancti Sulpitii (critical ed., Bourges 1879); Mémoires, etc., all works throbbing, according to the best tradition of the French Oratory and especially according to the doctrine of Card. de Bérulle and of de Condren, with love toward Christ and mystical union with the incarnate Word. O. can be compared, for the acuteness of his introspection and the fineness of his feeling, to St. Francis de Sales.
Bibliography8 works
Michele Ruggero Jeuné