Schouvaloff, Agostino Maria

SCHOUVALOFF, AGOSTINO MARIA - Barnabite, born in the world as Gregorio Petrovich, b. in St. Petersburg on 25 Oct. 1804 to Count Pietro and Princess Sofia Cherbatoff, d. in Paris on 2 Apr. 1859.

From the Orthodoxy in which he was born, and from the indifferentism and nihilism to which he had been led by the examples he encountered at the Protestant College of Hafwil in Switzerland, and from the vanity of the imperial court of Alexander I, where he had been a captain of the Hussars, his natural uprightness and the bitter grief over the loss of his sister, who had converted to Catholicism, then of his second-born child, and finally of his own wife, Sofia Solfkoff, led him to conversion and to abjuration in the hands of Fr. de Ravignan (Paris, 6 Jan. 1843); he was assisted affectionately and actively along the long journey by Mme Swetcine and by Princes Galitzin and Gagarin (v.). His autobiography, Ma conversion et ma vocation (Paris 1859), which many have compared to the Confessions of St. Augustine, has gone through several editions and has also been translated into German, English and Italian (4th Italian ed., in the collection Scrittori barnabiti, Florence 1936). Received among the Barnabites at 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 of good works among the poor, the sick and prisoners, and of lectures and preaching in various cities of France, aided by his perfect command of the principal European languages. The "Association of Prayers for the Conversion of Russia" was inspired by him and later widely spread by his confrere Fr. Cesario Tondini.

Virginio M. Colciago