Charles Martial Allemand Lavigerie M. Afr. | |
|---|---|
| Cardinal Priest ofSant'Agnese fuori le mura | |
 | |
| Installed | 3 July 1882 |
| Term ended | 26 November 1892 |
| Predecessor | Pietro Gianelli |
| Successor | Georg von Kopp |
| Other posts |
|
| Orders | |
| Ordination | 2 June 1849 |
| Consecration | 22 March 1863 by ArchbishopMarie-Dominique-Auguste Sibour |
| Created cardinal | 27 March 1882 byLeo XIII |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1825-10-31)31 October 1825 Bayonne, France |
| Died | 26 November 1892(1892-11-26) (aged 67) Algiers, French Algeria |
| Coat of arms |  |
Charles Martial Allemand Lavigerie,M. Afr. (31 October 1825 – 26 November 1892) was aFrench Catholic prelate and missionary who served asArchbishop of Carthage andPrimate of Africa from 1884 to 1892. He previously served asArchbishop of Algiers andBishop of Nancy. He also founded theMissionaries of Africa (White Fathers). He was created acardinal in 1882.
After becoming a bishop inFrance, Lavigerie established French Catholic missions and missionary orders to work across Africa. Lavigerie promotedCatholicism among the peoples of North Africa, as well as the Black nativesfurther south. He was equally ardent to transform them into French subjects.
He crusaded against the slave trade, and he founded the White Fathers, so named for their white cassocks and redfezzes. He also established similar orders of brothers and nuns. He sent his missionaries to theSahara,Sudan,Tunisia, andTripolitania. His efforts were supported by the pope and the German ChancellorOtto von Bismarck.
Althoughanti-clericalism was a major issue in France, the secular leaderLéon Gambetta proclaimed, "Anti-clericalism is not an article for export", and he supported Lavigerie's work.[1]
Lavigerie died in 1892 at the age of 67.
Born inBayonne, he was educated atSt Sulpice,Paris. Ordained a priest in 1849, he was a professor of ecclesiastical history at theSorbonne from 1854 to 1856.[2]
In 1856, he accepted the direction of the schools of the East and was thus for the first time brought into contact with the Islamic world.C'est là, he wrote,que j'ai connu enfin ma vocation[3] ("It was there that I learned my calling"). In 1860, as Director of oriental schools, he travelled to Lebanon and Syria to administer relief to Christians there, following the massacre by theDruze.[4] He became known for his missionary work, especially in helping victims of theDruzes. He was made a Chevalier of theLegion of Honor and, in October 1861, shortly after his return to Europe, was appointed French auditor at Rome.[3]
Two years later he was raised to thesee of Nancy, where he remained for four years. He declined the appointment of Archbishop of Lyons, requesting instead an appointment to thesee of Algiers, recently raised to an archbishopric.[4] Lavigerie landed in Africa on 11 May 1868, when the great famine was already making itself felt, and he began in November to collect the orphans into villages.[3]
This action, however, did not meet with the approval ofMarshal MacMahon, governor-general of Algeria, who feared that the natives would resent it as an infraction of the religious peace. He thought that the Muslim faith, being a state institution in Algeria, ought to be protected from proselytism. Lavigerie was given to understand that his sole duty was to minister to the colonists,[3] but the missionary made it clear that he had come to serve the whole population of Algeria.
Contact with the natives during the famine caused Lavigerie to entertain hopes for a general conversion among them. His enthusiasm was such that he offered to resign his archbishopric in order to devote himself entirely to the missions.Pope Pius IX refused, but granted him a coadjutor and placed the whole of equatorial Africa under his charge. In 1870 at Vatican I, Lavigerie warmly supported papal infallibility.[3]
In 1868 he founded theSociété des missionnaires d'Afrique, commonly known as thePères Blancs orWhite Fathers, after the white maghrebian dress they wore.[4] Lavigerie himself drew up the rule. In 1871, he was twice a candidate for theNational Assembly of France but was defeated.[5] He founded theNotre Dame d'Afrique in 1872.[6] In 1874, he founded the Sahara and Sudan mission, and sent missionaries to Tunis,Tripoli,East Africa and theCongo.[3][2]
From 1881 to 1884, his activity in Tunisia so raised the prestige of France that it drew fromLéon Gambetta the celebrated declaration,L'Anticléricalisme n'est pas un article d'exportation ("Anticlericalism is not an article for export") and led to the exemption of Algeria from the application of the decrees concerning the religious orders.[3] On 27 March 1882, the dignity of cardinal was conferred upon Lavigerie, given thetitulus ofSant'Agnese fuori le mura,[7] but the great object of his ambition was to restore the see of St Cyprian; and in that also he was successful, for by a bull of 10 November 1884 the metropolitan see of Carthage was re-erected, and Lavigerie received the pallium on 25 January 1885.[3]
The later years of his life were spent in ardent anti-slavery propaganda and his eloquence moved large audiences in London, as well as in Paris, Brussels and other parts of the continent. He sponsored the education ofAdrien Atiman, a medical student who had been ransomed from slavery by the White Fathers, at the University of Malta.[8] He hoped, by organizing a fraternity of armed laymen as pioneers, to restore fertility to theSahara; but this community did not succeed, and was dissolved before his death.
In 1890, Lavigerie appeared in the new character of a politician and arranged withPope Leo XIII to make an attempt to reconcile the church with the republic.[9] He invited the officers of the Mediterranean squadron tolunch at Algiers, and, practically renouncing his monarchical sympathies, to which he clung as long as thecomte de Chambord was alive, expressed his support of the republic, and emphasized it by having theMarseillaise played by a band of his Pères Blancs. Thefurther steps in this evolution emanated from the pope, and Lavigerie, whose health now began to fail, receded comparatively into the background.[10] He died at Algiers on 26 November 1892.[2]
There is an abundance of literature published on the life of Charles Lavigerie, much of which has been written by members of the missionary order he founded, theWhite Fathers, and therefore can be biased. An important work by a French Catholic intellectual and priest isLe cardinal Lavigerie, éd. Ch. Poussielgue, Paris, 1896 byLouis Baunard. The best, and certainly most recent one, containing reference to other literature and source material, is by François Renault,Cardinal Lavigerie. Churchman, Prophet and Missionary (London 1994), translation of:Le cardinal Lavigerie 1852-1892: L’Église, l’Afrique et la France (Paris 1992). Although being a White Father himself, and a former archivist of the missionary order, Renault has been scholarly trained as a historian, having been a professor at the University ofAbidjan.[citation needed]
Attribution:
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Barwick, George Frederick (1911). "Lavigerie, Charles Martial Allemand". InChisholm, Hugh (ed.).Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 293–294.