Tabaraud, Mathieu-Mathurin

TABARAUD, MATHIEU-MATHURIN. - Oratorian, b. at Limoges on 17 April 1744, d. there on 9 January 1832. He studied with the Jesuits and the Sulpicians. He entered the Congregation of the Oratory in 1766 and taught theology, Greek and Hebrew there at Nantes, Arles and Lyons.

At the outbreak of the Revolution he was head of the house of Limoges. Initially favorable to ecclesiastical reforms, which in 1788 he set out, at the request precisely of the minister Necker, in a pamphlet (Motifs de justes plaintes du clergé du second ordre), he then began a diligent journalistic activity against the civil constitution of the clergy and the priests who had taken the oath. Forced to flee from Limoges, he passed through Lyons, Paris and Rouen, until in 1792 he emigrated to London, where he earned a living by contributing to periodicals and by translations. Having returned to France after the Concordat of 1801, he refused the offer of a bishopric made to him by Bernier. In 1803 he published De l'importance d'une religion de l'Etat and the Principes sur la distinction du contrat et du sacrement de Mariage, in which he maintains that civil marriage without the religious one is valid. A State censor from 1811 to 1814, he took advantage of this to prevent the printing of works not favorable to his Jansenist and Gallican ideas. Several writings bear witness to that forma mentis of his: Essai historique et critique sur l'institution des évêques (Paris 1811, against the pontifical institution of bishops); Examen de l'opinion de M. le cardinal de la Luzerne sur la publication du Concordat (ibid. 1821, against the direct intervention of the Pope in the government of the French Church); Examen de deux propositions de lois qui doivent être faites aux Chambres sur la célébration du mariage et sur la tenue des registres de l'état civil (Limoges-Paris 1824, which is a critique of the bills in favor of the celebration of religious marriage before the civil one). For the quantity of information, his Histoire de Pierre de Bérulle (2 vols., Paris 1817) is still valuable today.

Silvio Furlani