Education
In 1815, Bonnetty entered Digne seminary and studied for the priesthood.
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Augustin Bonnetty
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Career
After completing his philosophical and theological studies, as he was too young to be ordained, he went to Marseilles as a private tutor. He soon felt that his mission was to use science and philosophy in the defense of the Church and to remain a layman. In 1825, he went to Paris, and five years later founded the Annales de philosophie chrétienne (first number 31 July 1830) which he edited until his death.
In 1838, he also took up the direction of the Université catholique founded two years earlier by Gerbet, Salinis, Scorbiac, and Montalembert.
Having become the sole owner of this review in 1846, he suspended its publication, in 1855, in order to devote himself exclusively to the Annales. Among the main features of the Annales was the attempt to show the universality of a primitive revelation which is recognizable even in the myths and fables of all nations.
Bonnetty"s presiding concern was with the philosophy of history. “One begins to understand how all religion as a whole rests on tradition: on history, that is to say, not upon reasoning.
Bonnetty consistently stressed the necessity of giving an “honourable place” to the humane sciences in the curriculum of ecclesiastical studies.
Foreign apologetic purposes, he also advised the study of modern anti-Christian or anti-Catholic writers such as Benjamin Constant or Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon.
