In order to defend the freedom of education, outside of the control of the universities, conforming to their interpretation of the Charter of 1830, the editors of “ L ’ Avenir ” founded in December 1830 the General Society for the defense of religious freedom, and on the 9 May 1831 Lacordaire and Montalembert opened a free school, rue des Beaux-Arts, which was shut down by the police two days later.

Jean-Baptiste Henri-Dominique Lacordaire ( May 12, 1802 – November 21, 1861 ), often styled Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, was a French ecclesiastic, preacher, journalist and political activist.

The son of a former doctor in the French navy, Henri Lacordaire was born on the 12 May 1802 at Recey-sur-Ource ( Côte-d ' Or ) and raised in Dijon by his mother, Anne Dugied, the daughter of a lawyer at the Parliament of Bourgogne who was widowed at an early age, when her husband died in 1806.

The virulence of “ L ’ Avenir ,” and particularly of Lamennais and Lacordaire, provoked the French Bishops to form a tribunal against the editors of the periodical.

Lacordaire, after a time without administrative duties, was re-elected head of the French province in 1858.

* Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire, French preacher ( 1802 – 1861 )

At that time, Lacordaire was considering missionary work in the United States, but the revolutionary events of 1830 kept him in France.

In 1863 he invited 100 theologians to meet at Mechelen and discuss the question which the liberals Lamennais and Lacordaire had raised in France, namely, the attitude that should be assumed by the Roman Catholic Church towards modern ideas.

Henri-Dominique Lacordaire at the convent of Sainte-Sabine in Rome, by Théodore Chassériau ( 1840 ), Musée du Louvre

Even before this condemnation, Lacordaire distanced himself from his companions, and returned to Paris where he took up again his functions as a Chaplain at the Convent of Visitations.

Lacordaire, for his part, then further distanced himself from Lammenais, expressed his disappointment at the consequences of the Revolution of 1830, and proclaimed his continued faithfulness to the Church of Rome.

In January 1834, at the encouragement of the young Frédéric Ozanam, the founder the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul ( a charitable organization ,) Father Lacordaire started a series of lectures at the Collège Stanislas.

However, Monseigneur de Quélen, the Archbishop of Paris, confirmed his support for Lacordaire, and asked him to preach a Lenten series in 1835 at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, as part of the Notre-Dame Lectures specially aimed at the catechesis of Christian youth, which had also been inaugurated at the behest of his friend Ozanam.

On 9 April 1839, Lacordaire formally joined the Dominicans at the convent of La Minerva in Rome and received the name Dominic.

Lacordaire only sat once at the Académie.

He travelled in Italy, sat under Schelling at Munich and under Ludwig Tieck at Dresden, became in 1835-36 a member of Madame de Circourt's salon, and numbered among his friends Alphonse de Lamartine, Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire, Alfred de Vigny, Adolphe Thiers, François Guizot, Charles Forbes René de Montalembert, and Alexis de Tocqueville, of whose books, Démocratie en Amérique and the Ancien régime, he made standard translations into English.

Saavedra Lamas was a distinguished student at Lacordaire College and at the University of Buenos Aires where he received the Doctor of Laws degree in 1903, summa cum laude.

His education was divided between Escuela General San Martín ( primary school ), Colegio Lacordaire ( secondary school ), and for a few months at Beaumont College in England.

He became, according to Lacordaire, " a humble priest with all the authority once enjoyed by Bossuet ".

The power of Lacordaire as an orator was beyond question ; but the conférences, as they have come down to us, while possessing much merit, are an additional proof that oratory is too elusive to be committed to the pages of a book.

The conferences of Notre-Dame-de-Paris were inaugurated by Père Lacordaire.

The cathedral is renowned for its Lent sermons founded by the famous Dominican Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire in the 1860s.

Lacordaire particularly distinguished himself by writing articles asking for freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and freedom of education.

After a trial taking place in front of the Chambre des Pairs ( Chamber of Peers ,) where Lacordaire defended himself, but failed to prevent the permanent closure of the school, “ L ’ Avenir ” was suspended by its founders on the 15 November 1831.

On the 30 December Lacordaire, Lamennais and Montalembert, the “ Pilgrims of Freedom ,” went to Rome so as to seek the recourse of Pope Gregory XVI, to whom they presented a dissertation composed by Lacordaire.

The movement of Liberal Catholicism was initiated in France by Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais with the support of Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire, Charles Forbes René de Montalembert and Olympe-Philippe Gerbet, Bishop of Perpignan, while a parallel movement arose in Belgium, led by François Antoine Marie Constantin de Méan et de Beaurieux, Archbishop of Mechelen, and his vicar general Engelbert Sterckx.

Theophile Gautier was impressed by his Portrait of Lacordaire ( 1846 ).

In 1850, the Dominican Province of France was officially re-established under his direction and he was elected provincial superior, but Pope Pius IX named Alexendre Jandel, a philosophical opponent of Lacordaire, general master of the order.

Through Ampère, Ozanam had contact with leaders of the neo-Catholic movement, such as François-René de Chateaubriand, Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire, and Charles Forbes René de Montalembert.

In 1832 Lammenais and his friends Lacordaire and Montalembert, visited Germany, obtaining considerable sympathy in their attempts to bring about a modification of the Roman Catholic attitude to modern problems and politico-liberal principles.

He retired to La Chênaie and gathered a group of disciples, including Montalembert, Lacordaire and Maurice de Guérin.

In response, Lamennais, Montalembert and Lacordaire suspended their work and in November 1831 set out to Rome to obtain the approval of Pope Gregory XVI.

Lacordaire and Montalembert departed immediately, but Lamennais stayed on until Gregory's letter to the Polish bishops, which denounced the Polish revolution against the Tsar, dashed his last hopes.

The most prominent name identified with this new style of preaching was that of the Dominican Lacordaire, who, for a time, with Montalembert, was associate editor with de Lamennais of " L ' Avenir ".

In the following year Ozanam was sent to study law in Paris, where he fell in with the Ampère family ( living for a time with the mathematician André-Marie Ampère ), and through them with other leaders of the neo-Catholic movement, such as François-René de Chateaubriand, Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire, and Charles Forbes René de Montalembert.

In response, Lamennais, Montalembert and Lacordaire suspended their work and in November 1831 set out to Rome to obtain the approval of Pope Gregory XVI.

He had eagerly entered into the plans of his friends, Lamennais and Lacordaire, and he collaborated with them in the newspaper, L ' Avenir.

Henri had three brothers, one of whom was the entomologist Jean Théodore Lacordaire.

Lamennais and Lacordaire spent January 1831 before the court, and obtained a triumphal acquittal.

Lacordaire ’ s first lecture took place on the 8 March 1835, and was met with wide acclaim.

Lacordaire, aware of the need to continue his theological studies and reinforce his hierarchical alliances, retreated to Rome to study with the Jesuits.

In 1837, seeing the example of Guéranger's restoration of the Benedictines, Lacordaire decided to enter the Dominican Order despite the loss of certain personal freedoms that would entail, and to re-establish the Dominicans in France.