TABARAUD, MATHIEU-MATHURIN. – Oratorian, born at Limoges on 17 April 1744, died there on 9 January 1832. He studied under 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 at Limoges. Initially favorable to ecclesiastical reforms, which in 1788 he set forth, at the specific request of Minister Necker, in a pamphlet (Motifs de justes plaintes du clergé du second ordre), he subsequently began a vigorous publishing campaign against the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the priests who had taken the oath. Forced to flee Limoges, he passed through Lyons, Paris, and Rouen, until in 1792 he emigrated to London, where he supported himself by contributing to periodicals and making translations. Returning to France after the Concordat of 1801, he refused an 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 maintained that civil marriage was valid without religious marriage. State censor from 1811 to 1814, he took advantage of this position to prevent the printing of works unfavorable to his Jansenist and Gallican ideas. Several writings bear witness to this forma mentis: 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 Pope’s direct intervention 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, a critique of the bills favoring the celebration of religious marriage before civil marriage). Because of the quantity of information it contains, his Histoire de Pierre de Bérulle (2 vols., Paris 1817) remains valuable to this day.