Ozanam, (Antoine) Frédéric

(1813–53)

   Historian and Order Founder.

   Ozanam is remembered as the founder of the Society of St vincent de paul. This is a society for laymen who volunteer for work among the poor. It started as a student organisation at the Sorbonne, Paris, France. Two years earlier Ozanam had written a pamphlet criticising the socialism of saint-simon and he later was to give a series of lectures expounding a new Catholic social theory. In 1848, with the well-known orator Lacordaire, he founded the periodical Ere Nouvelle as an organ of Catholic socialism. Then in 1849 he published his Civilisation Chrétienne chez les Francs, a study of the influence of the Church on the education of the early Frankish tribes. He also wrote important books on dante and on early Franciscan poetry. Although subject to much criticism, the Society was hugely successful and, at the time of Ozanam’s death, had nearly three thousand chapters in Europe, the Near East, North America and Africa.

   G. Goyau et al., Frédéric Ozanam (1925) [no English translation available];

   E. Rermer, The Historical Thought of Frédéric Ozanam (1959).