Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire was a French ecclesiastic and orator.
Background
Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire was born on the 12th of March 1802. He was the second of a family of four, the eldest of whom, Jean Theodore (1801 - 1870), travelled a great deal in his youth, and was afterwards professor of comparative anatomy at Liege.
Education
For several years Lacordaire studied at Dijon, showing a marked talent for rhetoric; this led him to the pursuit of law, and in the local debates of the advocates he attained a high celebrity.
In 1823 he became a theological student at the seminary of Saint Sulpice; four years later he was ordained and became almoner of the college Henri IV.
Career
Meanwhile Lamennais had published his Essai sur Г Indifference, -a passionate plea for Christianity and in particular for Roman Catholicism as necessary for the social progress of mankind.
Lacordaire read, and his ardent and believing nature, weary of the theological negations of the Encyclopaedists, was convinced.
Lacordaire strove to show that Catholicism was not bound up with the idea of dynasty, and definitely allied it with a well-defined liberty, equality and fraternity.
But the new propagandism was denounced from Rome in an encyclical.
It was closed in two days, and the teachers fined before the court of peers.
These reverses Lacordaire accepted with quiet dignity; but they brought his relationship with Lamennais to a close.
His presence was dignified, his voice capable of indefinite modulation, and his gestures animated and attractive.
His Mimoire pour le retablissement en France de I'ordre des frbres pricheurs was then prepared and dedicated to his country; at the same time he collected the materials for the life of St Dominic.
His funeral orations are the most notable in their kind of any delivered during his time, those devoted to Marshal Drouet and DanielO'Connell being especially marked by point and clearness.
He next thought that his presence in the National Assembly would be of use to his cause; but being rebuked by his ecclesiastical superiors for declaring himself a republican, he resigned his seat ten days after his election.
He had been elected to the Academy in the preceding year. The best edition of Lacordaire's works is the (Euvres completes (6 vols. , Paris, 1872 - 1873), published by C. Poussielgue, which contains, besides the Conferences, the exquisitely written, but uncritical, Vie de Saint Dominique and the beautiful Lettres a unjeune homme sur la vie chritienne.