Frédéric Ozanam

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Antoine Frédéric Ozanam (April 23, 1813 - September 8, 1853) was a French scholar. He founded with fellow students the Conference of Charity, later known as the Saint Vincent de Paul Society. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1997, hence he may be properly called Blessed Frédéric by Catholics.

[edit] Life

He was born in Milan. His family, which was of Jewish extraction, had been settled in the Lyonnais for many centuries, and had reached distinction in the third generation before Frédéric through Jacques Ozanam (1640-1717), an eminent mathematician. Ozanam's father, Antoine, served in the armies of the Republic, but betook himself, on the advent of the Empire, to trade, teaching, and finally medicine.

The boy was brought up in Lyon and was strongly influenced by one of his masters, the Abbé Noirot. His conservative and religious aistincts showed themselves early, and he published a pamphlet against Saint-Simonianism in 1831, which attracted the attention of Lamartine. In the following year he was sent to study law in Paris, where be fell in with the Ampere family, and through them with Chateaubriand, Lacordaire, Montalembert; and other leaders of the neo-Catholic movement.

Whilst still a student he took up journalism and contributed considerably to Bailly's Tribune catholique, which became (November 1, 1833) L'univers. In conjunction with other young men he founded in May 1833 the celebrated charitable Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, which numbered before his death upwards of two thousand members. He received the degree of doctor of law in 1836, and in 1838 that of doctor of letters with a thesis on Dante, which was the beginning of one of his best-known books. A year later he was appointed to a professorship of commercial law at Lyon, and in 1840 assistant professor of foreign literature at the Sorbonne. He married Emelie Saulacroix in June 1841, and visited Italy on his wedding tour.

At Fauriel's death in 1844 he succeeded to the full professorship of foreign literature. The short remainder of his life was extremely busy with his professorial duties, his extensive literary occupations, and the work, which he still continued, of district-visiting as a member of the society of St Vincent de Paul.

During the Revolution of 1848, of which he took a sanguine view, he once more turned journalist for a short time in the Ere nouvelle and other papers. He travelled extensively, and was in England at the time of the Exhibition of 1851. His naturally weak constitution fell a prey to consumption, which he hoped to cure by visiting Italy, but he died on his return at Marseilles on September 8, 1853.

[edit] Works

Ozanam was the leading historical and literary critic in the neo-Catholic movement in France during the first half of the 19th century. He was more learned, more sincere, and more logical than Chateaubriand; less of a political partisan and less of a literary sentimentalist than Montalembert. In contemporary movements he was an earnest and conscientious advocate of Catholic democracy and of the view that the church should adapt itself to the changed political conditions consequent to the French Revolution.

In his writings he dwelt upon important contributions of historical Christianity, and maintained especially that, in continuing the work of the Caesars, the Catholic church had been the most potent factor in civilizing the invading barbarians and in organizing the life of the Middle Ages. He confessed that his object was to prove the contrary thesis to Gibbons, and, although any historian who begins with the desire to prove a thesis is quite sure to go more or less wrong, Ozanam no doubt administered a healthful antidote to the prevalent notion, particularly amongst English-speaking peoples, that the Catholic church had done far more to enslave than to elevate the human mind. His knowledge of medieval literature and his appreciative sympathy with medieval life admirably qualified him for his work, and his scholarly attainments are still highly esteemed.

His works were published in eleven volumes (Paris, 1862-1865). They include:

• Deux chanceliers d'Angleterre, Bacon de Verulam et Saint Thomas de Cantorbry (Paris, 1836)
• Dante et la philosophie catholique au XIIIeme siècle (Paris, 1839; 2nd ed., enlarged 1845)
• Études germaniques (2 vols., Paris, 1847-1849), translated by A. C. Glyn as History of Civilization in the Fifth Century (London, 1868)
• Documents inédits pour servir a l'histoire de l'Italie depuis le VIIIeme siècle jusqu'au XIIeme (Paris, 1850)
• Les poi~tes franciscains en Italie au XIIIme sicle (Paris, 1852)
• His letters have been partially translated into English by A. Coates (London, 1886).

[edit] References

• There are French lives of Ozanam by his brother, C.A. Ozanam (Paris, 1882); Mme E. Humbert (Paris, 1880); C. Huit (Paris, 1882); M. de Lambel (Paris, 1887); L. Curnier (Paris, 1888); and B. Faulquier (Paris, 1903)
• German lives by F.X. Karker (Paderborn, 1867) and E. Hardy (Mainz, 1878)
• an interesting English biography by Miss K. O'Meara (Edinburgh, 1867; 2nd ed., London, 1878)
• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

He was beatified on the 22nd august 1997