Lamennais, Félicité Robert de

(1782–1854)

   Theologian, Philosopher and Politician.

   Lamennais was born in St Malo, France. Despite his early loss of faith, he returned to the Church and was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1816. He became the centre of a religious circle and in 1818 produced the first volume of his Essai sur l’Indifférence en Matière de Religion. In this and in subsequent volumes, he argued that the Church should be free from the State and that the Pope should be regarded as the supreme leader of all kings. In order to promote his ideas, he founded a religious congregation in 1828, an agency for the defence of religious liberty and in 1830 a newspaper, L’Avenir. In 1832 he went to Rome to try to persuade Pope Gregory XVI to lead a crusade on behalf of religious and political freedom. The Pope rejected the suggestion and, in response, Lamennais produced his Paroles d’un Croyant in 1834 in which he outlined his vision of the ideal society. The book generated huge enthusiasm, but was unequivocally condemned by the Pope, whereupon Lamennais left the Church. Subsequently he dedicated himself to the promotion of political liberty and his religious philosophy became increasingly Pantheistic. He became a member of the French Parliament in the Revolutionary government of 1848 and he died unreconciled to the Church. Lamennais is regarded as an important forerunner of the French Catholic Modernist movement.

   J.J. Oldfield, The Problem of Tolerance and Social Existence in the Writings of Félicité Lamennais, 1809–1831 (1973);

   W.G. Roe, Lamennais and England: The Reception of Lamennais’s Religious Ideas in England (1966);

   A.R. Vidler, Prophecy and Papacy: A Study of Lamennais, the Church and the Revolution (1954).