SCHOUVALOFF, AGOSTINO MARIA

From the Orthodoxy in which he was born and from the indifference and nihilism to which the examples he encountered at the Protestant College of Hafwil in Switzerland and the vanity of the imperial court of Alexander I, where he had been a captain of the Uhlans, had led him, his natural uprightness and the bitter grief of losing his sister, who had converted to Catholicism, then his second son, and finally his own wife, Sofia Solfkoff, led him to conversion and abjuration at the hands of Fr. de Ravignan (Paris, 6 Jan. 1843). Assisting him affectionately and actively along the long journey were Mme Swetchine and the princes Galitzin and Gagarin (v. NAME). His autobiography, *Ma conversion et ma vocation* (Paris 1859), often compared to the *Confessions* of Augustine, has had several editions and has been translated into German, English, and Italian (4th Italian ed., in the *Scrittori Barnabiti* series, Florence 1936). Received among the Barnabites in Monza, he professed his vows there on 2 March 1857, and then on 18 Sept. in Milan he was ordained a priest. Called to Paris at the invitation of Msgr. Dupanloup, he died there after a brief but intense apostolate among the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned, and through conferences and preaching in various cities of France, aided by his perfect knowledge of the principal European languages. The "Association of Prayer for the Conversion of Russia," later widely spread by his confrere Fr. Cesario Tondini, was inspired by him.