Félicité La Mennais [Lamennais], Paroles d'un croyant. Fourth Edition, 1834. Renduel: Paris. 239 pp. Paperback Octavo. w/illegible stamps and pencil marginalia by previous owner/s.
In Paroles, Lamennais unleashed a new radicalism, condemned the Catholic Church on the basis of its complicity with monarchism, renounced his priesthood, and began to assemble a theory of Christian Socialism. The book was banned by the Vatican, and he would later spend several spells in prison. Saint-Beuve and many other moderate Liberals broke with the ex-priest, as a part of their campaign by Liberal Romantics to suppress the more radical elements of the movement by shutting them out of journals, publishing houses, and salons while ignoring or lambasting their work in critical reviews, and publishing anonymous satires against avant-garde communities and lifestyles.
The latter, in return, welcomed Lamennais' work and thought; Bouzingo co-founder Philothée O'Neddy, for instance, even owned a catalog of Lamennais' personal library. Lamennais exercised a great influence until he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in the wake of the 1848 revolution, only to be made persona non grata three years later by the dictatorship of Napoleon III after the coup d'etat. He died in poverty, and was buried in an unmarked grave.
Lamennais was not only the most influential Romanticist theologian, but one of the most influential Leftist thinkers and activists of his generation. He built his career as an Ultramontane arch-conservative, but joined the exodus of monarchist intellectuals, including the Romanticists of the Muse group with whom he was in touch, toward the Left in the late 1820s. By 1830, he was the leader of a progressive Christian democratic movement advocating freedom of speech, press, and education, and faced increasing opposition from Papal authorities; sources disagree as to whether he was ever officially excommunicated.
Lamennais was closely associated with Romanticist salons, publishers and journals, and exercised a major influence on the community. In fact, Saint-Beuve of the Cénacle group was one of his disciples during his gentler Liberal period, and served as Lamennais' agent for the publication of this book (apparently without thoroughly reading it) by Renduel, the most prominent Romanticist publisher, and one of the most extreme. (Gautier, in his roman-à--clef on The Jeunes-France, has an avant-gardist call a Romanticist Orgy, "as necessary to the manly life as a book published by Eugène Renduel.") This was during the time when the rift between the radical republicans of the Left and the Liberal Monarchists was ripping apart the Romanticist community.
In Paroles, Lamennais unleashed a new radicalism, condemned the Catholic Church on the basis of its complicity with monarchism, renounced his priesthood, and began to assemble a theory of Christian Socialism. The book was banned by the Vatican, and he would later spend several spells in prison. Saint-Beuve and many other moderate Liberals broke with the ex-priest, as a part of their campaign by Liberal Romantics to suppress the more radical elements of the movement by shutting them out of journals, publishing houses, and salons while ignoring or lambasting their work in critical reviews, and publishing anonymous satires against avant-garde communities and lifestyles.
The latter, in return, welcomed Lamennais' work and thought; Bouzingo co-founder Philothée O'Neddy, for instance, even owned a catalog of Lamennais' personal library. Lamennais exercised a great influence until he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in the wake of the 1848 revolution, only to be made persona non grata three years later by the dictatorship of Napoleon III after the coup d'etat. He died in poverty, and was buried in an unmarked grave.
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