Louis Duchesne

Portrait

Portrait of Louis Duchesne

Youth

Louis Duchesne was born in a modest Breton house from this small crunched place of Roulais a few years later by the painter Jean-Baptiste Corot. Resulting from a family from sailors and corsairs originating in Binic (current department of the Coast-with Armor), of which one, No5el Duchesne, is companion of Surcouf, the small Louis is the last of a phratry of five children, born from Anne-Marie Gourlay and Jacques Duchesne, a captain terreneuva missing with broad from Newfoundland in 1849 at the time of the shipwreck of Euphémie. This same year, his/her older brother Jean-Baptiste Duchesne, missionary with the Company of Oceania of Auguste Marceau, makes also shipwreck in territory chinook (Oregon).

Priest

After hesitatehaving hesitated a long time between science and the religious vocation, it is ordered priest in 1867. Its religious vocation comes to him from the many shipwrecks to broad of the Tour Solidor and the piety of the sailors from then. More particularly of the one of these episodes: it was one day at sea with his father Jacques and an old sailor, skirting the point of the City of Aleth. The old man thinking of passing from life to demise, Jacques was in the obligation to give the last sacraments to the old companion… who seizes again himself at once arrived at the hold of the Holy Father port, it Malayan last. In addition, the Louis young person remains a bold comrade for his four nephews Miniac (Louis, Edmond, Alfred and Paul), who have as a leisure to go together to the island of Cézembre to the oar. One day, it and its nephews venture at sea, sailing until trimmings of Minquiers, with the despair of their respective mothers who do not see them returning.

He teaches some time with the college Saint-Charles of Saint-Brieuc, before coming to Paris to follow courses to the École of the Carmelite friars and the Practical École of the High Studies. Amateur of Archeology, it organizes several missions physically testing, as well with the Mont Athos as in Syria or minor Asia.

Academic

Become arts doctor, after having refused a pulpit in faculty, it obtains the new pulpit of ecclesiastical history of the catholic Institute. However, its very critical teaching obliges it to leave this faculty of theology as of 1883. He teaches then with the practical École of the high studies in Paris, before being named, in 1895, director of the French École of Rome, school of which he had been member of 1873 with 1876.

Founder and regular collaborator of the Bulletin criticize literature, of history and of theology , Louis Duchesne produces an abundant work érudite on the history of the Church: The Pontificalis Liber in Gaulle at the 6th century , Origins of the Christian worship , episcopal Records of old Gaulle , the first times of the pontifical State . Although its books were worth prestigious rewards to him (honorary canon of Paris, commander of the Légion of honor), they worry the catholic hierarchy so much so that the pope Pie X, not very inclined at the democracy and main adversary of the modernism which he condemns in 1907 in the encyclical Pascendi , judge precisely his Old story of the too modernistic Church and puts it at the Index in 1912. Finally, Mgr Duchesne is inclined. “ Fidélis ” was its personal currency.

Remainder Mgr Duchesne hardly hid its opinion on the policy, which it considered a little naive, of Magpie X. When the encyclical Gravissimo officii munere appeared, following the separation of the Church and the State, it declared malicieusement: “Have-considering read the last encyclical of the Holy Father, Digitus in oculo ? ”… And always in connection with Pie X, which had been patriarch of Venice before his election with the Sovereign Pontificate: “It is a Venetian gondolier in the boat of Pierre saint: it is natural that it leads it to the blunder…”

Its rigorous work of historian, contradicting certain local popular beliefs, is worth anonymous letters full with particularly vehement threats to him, inter alia those to be hung… Threats fortunately not put at execution, giving to Mgr Duchesne the opportunity to conclude that “in midday, it hung only languages well there. ”

Academician

Member of several foreign academies (Berlin, Göttingen, Rome and Turin), Louis Duchesne is elected with the French Academy on May 26th 1910, during the handing-over of the armchair of the Mathieu cardinal. Supported in particular by Pierre Parcelled out and being opposed to the droitières candidatures, Mgr Duchesne triumphs by seventeen votes out of thirty-two voters. It is received on January 26th, 1911 by Etienne Lamy, becoming the neighbor under the cupola of Raymond Poincaré and Anatole France. In its turn, in July 1920, it receives the marshal Lyautey. Its speech of reception is published in 1921 by the academic Bookstore Perrin.

Died to Rome on April 21st 1922, its body is brought back in Brittany, forwarding in its house of the City of Aleth, as Saint-Servan. Today, it rests with the small cemetery of Rosais, vis-a-vis this Rancid where, sexagenerian, it still bathed as a vigorous sportsman among the rocks of the Holy Father Port. It could even see “the coastal ones”, this small body of guard of the City where each summer, giving up golds of the Roman palates, it came to find its native Close-Chicken, its old mother, her sister Anne-Marie Miniac (1825-1911) and her Miniac nephews.

With its death, the large international press, the such Times , greets the vastness of its work, translated into many languages (English, Spanish…). Having taken care to name its nephew, the trader out of fabric servannais Paul Miniac (1851-1936), as sole legatee, its family takes care scrupulously on the memory and the moral rights of the scholar whose still today work is studied in the universities and the seminars, after being rehabilitated by the papal hierarchy. As of the following year its death, appears with the modern Bookstore (Rennes) “Monseigneur Duchesne at his place in Brittany” of Etienne Dupont.

Then the academician and archeologist Jerome Carcopino report lengthily Louis Duchesne in his “Roman Memories”, at Hachette in 1968. The fruit of a conference devoted to Duchesne in 1973 with the Farnèse Palate is published in Rome in 1975. During this conference, the pope Paul VI rehabilitates the memory of Duchesne. In the same way, a thesis of doctorate of history was devoted to him in 1992 by Brigitte Waché, today professor of modern history at the university of the Mans.

Today, the Museum of History of Saint-Malo, at the Large Keep, preserves a signed fabric of 1903 Jean Coraboeuf Duchesne representative. In Saint-Malo, with Low-Fine sands in July 1995, the deputy and mayor Rene Couanau inaugurates a bust of Louis Duchesne (gift with the town hall of Doctor Paul Miniac, 1928-1995), in this Saint-Servan that Servannais illustrates it cherished so much and vis-a-vis this city inhabitant of Saint Malo from which he said: “Inhabitants of Saint Malo, your ancestors were lions, are not calves! ”

Today, the editions of Boccard diffuse its work in France.

Others

Like many other literary celebrities, such Emile Zola, Louis Duchesne, as a Parisian personality, will make publicity for famous the Vin Mariani of the chemist Angelo Mariani, a tonic wine containing Cocaïne precursory of the Coca-Cola.

External bond

Photography and genealogy of Louis Duchesne

Sources

Duchesne Louis, Speech of reception of Mr. the General Lyautey , Paris, academic Bookstore Perrin, 1921.
Jean Hake, Mgr Louis Duchesne, universal the , Rome, 1922.
Dupont Etienne, Monseigneur Duchesne at his place, in Brittany , Rennes, modern Bookstore, 1923.
Carcopino Jerome, Roman Memories , Paris, Hatchet, 1968.
Collective, Monseigneur Duchesne and his time (Acts of the conference of 1973) , Rome, French School of Rome, 1975.
Ruaux Jean-Yves, Saint-Malo and country ofemerald , Dinan, Editions of the templiers, 1990.
Waché Brigitte, Monseigneur Louis Duchesne , Rome, French School of Rome, 1992.

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