OZANAM, ANTOINE-FRÉDÉRIC. — Historian and apologist, born in Milan on 23 April 1813 to Giovanni Antonio, a physician, and Maria Nantas of Lyon; died in Marseille on 8 September 1853.
I. LIFE
When the family returned to France in 1816, O. completed his education at the Royal College of Lyon and there obtained his baccalaureate in letters. A brief period of doubt gave rise in him, at the age of eighteen,to the resolve to seek “the demonstration of the truth of the Catholic religion through the antiquity of historical, religious, and moral beliefs,” an argument that, one might say, remained the stimulus and purpose of his studies. After several months of legal practice with a lawyer in Lyon, he went to Paris in November 1831 at his father’s urging to pursue legal studies, and was a guest of the celebrated scientist Ampère. He obtained his doctorate on 30 April 1836, and in December 1839 was entrusted with teaching commercial law in Lyon. He did not, however, abandon his favored studies, to which, in addition to a sure knowledge of the classical languages, he added Hebrew and Sanskrit; he knew German, English, and Spanish, but after studying French it was Italian that particularly attracted him, and when, in January 1839, he took his doctorate in letters, his thesis dealt with the philosophy of Dante.
At the end of 1840, on the advice of Cousin, he entered the competition for a position at the Sorbonne and, appointed substitute for Claudio Fauriel in foreign literatures, began university teaching on the general characteristics of German literature in the Middle Ages; and upon Fauriel’s death, following a recommendation by the academic council, he was appointed full professor on 21 November 1844. In the meantime he had also taught rhetoric at the Collège Stanislas, and in June 1841 he had married Amalia Soulacroix in Lyon, by whom he had a daughter.
From his student years onward, O. took part in the spiritual and scholarly activity flourishing in Paris. Besides Chateaubriand and Lamarime, with whom he had occasional contacts, and Fauriel, O. found himself within the movement of the best Lamennais and of the count of Montalembert, and he formed a particularly close friendship with the abbot, later p. Lacordaire; among the convinced advocates of freedom of education and of the Church’s authority vis-à-vis the civil power, and of restoring the prestige of religion in the eyes of public opinion, he was one of the most earnest promoters, with the archbishop of Paris, of the conferences at Notre-Dame, which began in 1835 with Lacordaire. A convinced believer and practicing Catholic, he never abandoned a spirit of tolerance, both in his conduct and in his writings, which even led the most fervent to accuse him of heterodoxy; he therefore disapproved of the narrow and violent policy of certain Catholic newspapers. In 1848 he took an active part in the agitations of the time, siding in favor of public liberties, convinced of the possibility of a Christian democracy as the culmination of political progress, and convinced that God was leading the world toward II. Thus, although he had collaborated with the Correspondent, he was active in L’Ere nouvelle, concerned that demagogy should not gain the upper hand.
II. WORKS
His delicate health and the illnesses that afflicted him did not deter O. from study and teaching, which he regarded as his mission. He began his publicistic activity as early as 1831 with the Réflexions sur la doctrine de Saint-Simon, to counter the propaganda of the Saint-Simonians; he subsequently wrote occasionally on the property of the Church, Buddhism, and the origins of socialism, and left notes on commercial law. But the specific field in which O.’s scholarly activity was chiefly exercised was the Middle Ages. Tempering the Romantic spirit characteristic of his time with constant and meticulous work on the sources, he opposed the facile Voltairianism that infested the scholarly milieu with a rigorous inquiry in which the apologetic ardour accompanying it illuminated and warmed the truth without betraying II. In a first group of writings, O. illustrated the transition from the Roman to the barbarian age with 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 of writings is devoted to thirteenth-century Italy: Les poètes franciscains en Italie au XIIe siècle; Des sources poétiques de la Divine Comédie; Dante et la philosophie catholique au XIIIe siècle. Of lesser extent: Un pèlerinage au pays du Cid; Les deux chanceliers d’Angleterre (a parallel between St ThomasBecket and Bacon of Verulam).
O. travelled extensively and visited Italy with particular enthusiasm; in 1853 he was admitted to the Accademia della Crusca together with Cesare Balbo, especially on account of his studies of Dante and of Franciscanism, in which he was a pioneer.
III. THE CONFERENCES
In 1833 O. enrolled in those conferences of history and philosophy which Bailly had founded the previous year as a gathering for study and discussion. From those conferences, in May 1833, the Conferences of S. Vincenzo de' Paoli originated through the work of O. and seven other companions, as an effective instrument of Christian propaganda, on the occasion of a heated discussion with young unbelievers. The latter admitted that in the past the Christian faith had acquired broad merits through charitable activity, but at present everything was different, because those who professed themselves Christians did nothing to demonstrate an active faith. The eight companions, with their Conference of Charity, set themselves the task of visiting the poor in their homes; at their meetings, after prayer and spiritual reading, they reported on their visits, allocated the vouchers to be distributed, and concluded with a modest collection. This was the best way to establish contact with the most destitute classes and provide for their immediate needs. Indeed, each member had his own poor family to visit and assist. By the end of 1834 there were about a hundred members, and this first and only Conference had to be divided; others were formed throughout France, and there were 415 in 1851. Meanwhile, others had been founded in Europe and even in America, always through lay initiative, with the motto consistently observed by the members: « not to make oneself seen, but to let oneself be seen ». O. was an indefatigable propagator of the movement wherever he happened to be during his travels, until the eve of his death, and as vice-president he served on the central council established to coordinate its activity and preserve its spirit. The Conferences are still highly active at the head of charitable works and alongside social initiatives, such as O. would have wished.O.'s works were collected in eight volumes in Paris in 1856, preceded by a biography by Lacordaire; another volume appeared in 1862 and contains the translation of Purgatorio with the Commentaire général des huit derniers chants; two volumes of letters followed in 1869 and were repeatedly reprinted. They were translated into Italian: Dante e la filosofia cattolica, by P. Ushinelli (Napoli 1842), and an earlier translation of 1841; I poeti francescani, by P. Fanfani (Prato 1854); La civiltà nel V sec., by A. Fabre (Torino 1891) and by A. Coiazzi (there 1933); almost all the works were translated by A. Carraresi (Firenze between 1857 and 1874); Lettere scelte (Treviglio 1920).