OZANAM, ANTOINE-FRÉDÉRIC — Historian and apologist, b. in Milan on 23 Apr. 1813 to Giovanni and Antoinette, physicians, and Maria Nantas of Lyon; d. in Marseilles on 8 Sept. 1853.
I. LIFE
The family returned to France in 1816, and Ozanam completed his education at the Royal College in Lyon, where he earned the baccalaureate in letters. A brief period of doubt at the age of eighteen led him to resolve to seek “a demonstration of the truth of the Catholic religion through the antiquity of historical, religious, and moral beliefs,” a theme that remained, one might say, the stimulus and purpose of his studies. After several months of legal practice under a Lyon advocate, at his father’s wish, he went to Paris in November 1831 to study law and stayed with the renowned scientist Ampère. He earned his doctorate on 30 Apr. 1836, and in December 1839 he was entrusted with teaching commercial law in Lyon. He did not, however, abandon his preferred studies, for alongside a solid knowledge of the classical languages he added Hebrew and Sanskrit; he knew German, English, and Spanish, but after French it was Italian that especially attracted him, and when in January 1839 he took his doctorate in letters, his thesis dealt with the philosophy of Dante.Toward the end of 1840, on Cousin’s advice, he entered the competition for the Sorbonne and, appointed as substitute for Claude Fauriel in foreign literatures, began university teaching on the general characteristics of medieval German literature; and upon Fauriel’s death, following a recommendation by the academic council, on 21 Nov. 1844 he was named full professor. Meanwhile he had also taught rhetoric at the Collège Stanislas, and in June 1841 he had married Amélie Soulacroix in Lyon, by whom he had a daughter.
From his student years onward Ozanam took part in the spiritual and scientific activity thriving in Paris. Besides Chateaubriand and Lamartine, with whom he had occasional contact, and Fauriel, he was aligned with the best of Lamennais and Count de Montalembert, and he formed a particular friendship with the Abbé (later Cardinal) Lacordaire. Among the convinced advocates of school freedom and the authority of the Church over civil power, and for restoring the prestige of religion in the public mind, he was one of the most ardent promoters with the Archbishop of Paris of the Notre-Dame Conferences, which began in 1835 with Lacordaire. A convinced and practicing believer, he never betrayed a spirit of tolerance, either in his conduct or in his writings, which even earned him, among the more zealous, accusations of heterodoxy; he therefore disapproved of the narrow and violent politics of some Catholic newspapers. In 1848 he took part in the upheavals of the time, aligning himself in favor of public liberties, convinced of the possibility of a Christian democracy as the culmination of political progress, convinced that God was guiding the world toward II. Thus, though he had collaborated with *Le Correspondant*, he was active in *L’Ère nouvelle*, concerned that demagoguery should not prevail.
II. WORKS
Delicate health and the illnesses that afflicted him did not deter Ozanam from study and teaching, which he regarded as his mission. He began his activity as a publicist as early as 1831 with *Réflexions sur la doctrine de Saint-Simon* to counter the propaganda of the Saint-Simonians; he then wrote occasionally on Church property, Buddhism, the origins of socialism, and left notes on commercial law. But the specific field in which Ozanam’s scholarly activity unfolded above all was the Middle Ages. Tempering the Romantic spirit of his age with constant and minute work on sources, he opposed the facile Voltairianism that infested the scholarly environment with acute inquiry in which the apologetic ardor that accompanied it illuminated and warmed the truth without betraying II. With a first group of writings he illustrated the transition from the Roman to the barbarian age in *La civilisation au cinquième siècle* (21 lectures at the Sorbonne published posthumously by Ampère); *La civilisation chrétienne chez les Francs*; *Les Germains avant le christianisme*. A second group is devoted to 13th-century Italy: *Les poètes franciscains en Italie au XIIIe siècle*; *Des sources poétiques de la Divine Comédie*; *Dante et la philosophie catholique au XIIIe siècle*. Of lesser scope: *Un pèlerinage au pays du Cid*; *Les deux chanceliers d’Angleterre* (a comparison between St. Thomas Becket and Francis Bacon of Verulam).Ozanam traveled widely and with particular passion visited Italy; in 1853 he was admitted to the Accademia della Crusca alongside Cesare Balbo, especially in recognition of his Dante studies and those on Franciscanism, of which he was an expert.
III. THE CONFERENCES
In 1833 Ozanam joined the history and philosophy conferences that Bailly had founded the previous year as a gathering for study and discussion. From those conferences, in May 1833, the Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul were begun by Ozanam and seven other companions as an effective instrument of Christian propaganda, on the occasion of a heated discussion with young unbelievers who admitted that in the past the Christian faith had earned great merit through charitable activity, but that now everything was dead because those who professed to be Christians did nothing to demonstrate a living faith. The eight companions, through their Conference of Charity, pledged themselves to visit the poor in their homes, and at their meetings, after prayer and spiritual reading, they would give account of their visits, distribute alms, and end with a modest collection. It was the best way to create contact with the poorest classes and provide for their immediate needs. Indeed, each member had his own poor family to visit and assist. By the end of 1834 the members numbered about a hundred, and this first single Conference had to be subdivided; others were formed throughout France, and there were 415 by 1851; meanwhile others had been founded in Europe and even in America, always through lay initiative, with the motto consistently observed by members: “not to be seen, but to let themselves be seen.” Ozanam was an indefatigable promoter wherever he traveled, up to the eve of his death, and as vice-president he was part of the central council established to coordinate activity and maintain its spirit. The Conferences remain extremely active at the forefront of assistance works and alongside social initiatives, which Ozanam would have welcomed.
Ozanam’s works were collected in eight volumes in Paris in 1856, preceded by a biography by Lacordaire; another volume appeared in 1862 containing a translation of Dante’s *Purgatorio* with a *Commentaire général des huit derniers chants*; two volumes of letters followed in 1869, repeatedly reprinted. Italian translations include *Dante e la filosofia cattolica* by P. Usibinelli (Naples 1842) and an earlier one from 1841; *I poeti francescani* by P. Fanfani (Prato 1854); *La civiltà nel V° sec.* by A. Fabre (Turin 1891) and by A. Coazzini (IV 1933); almost all the works were translated by A. Carraris (Florence between 1857 and 1874); *Lettere scelte* (Treviglio 1920).
BIBL.:
LACORDAIRE, Vie d’Ozanam (Paris 1856);
DUPANLOUP, Notice sur la vie et les travaux d’Ozanam (Paris 1855);
CHOCARNE, Vie d’Ozanam (Paris 1864);
BARON, Ozanam, sa vie et ses œuvres (Paris 1878);
GENOUDE, Notice sur Ozanam (Paris 1855);
G. GOZZADINI, Ozanam e il cattolicismo liberale (Bologna 1904);
P. GRATSOFSKY, Federic Ozanam (Roma 1933);
A. M. GIOVAGNOLI, Il pensiero sociale di Federic Ozanam (Roma 1933).