VALROGER, HYACINTHE de. - Oratorian, b. 6 Jan. 1814 at Caen, d. at Bayeux 10 Oct. 1876.
After studying medicine, he was ordained priest in 1837. Director of the minor Seminary of Bayeux, then professor of philosophy at the Seminary of Sommervieu, he collaborated with Fr. Oratry in 1852 in the restoration of the Congregation of the Oratory and became professor of theology, master of novices, and general assistant. Endowed with incisive dialectical skill, he fought with his pen against scholars who sought to deny or in any case diminish the value of Sacred Scripture. Against those who maintained that Christian doctrine derived from the religious beliefs of India, he published, from 1839 to 1840, in the Annales de philosophie chrétienne, six articles on Les doctrines hindoues examinées, discutées et mises en rapport avec les traditions bibliques. He likewise opposed that philosophical eclecticism which sought to undermine, with the aid of rationalist logic, the authority of the Church’s magisterium. In several writings, later collected in a volume (Etudes critiques sur le rationalisme contemporain, Paris 1845), he criticized the philosophy of Cousin, Schelling, and Hegel. In 1847, in reply to Strauss, he translated and annotated the Essai sur la crédibilité de l'histoire évangélique by A. Thouluch, and dealt with the same subject also in several articles in the Correspondant and the Revue des questions historiques; finally, he wrote the work La genèse des espèces. Etudes philosophiques et religieuses sur l'histoire naturelle et les naturalistes contemporains (Paris 1873).