Hyacinthe, Father

(whose full name is Charles Jean Marie August in Hyacinthe Loyson); b. at Orleans, France, March 10, 1827, and educated privately under care of his father, who was rector of the University of France, attached to the Academy of Pau. After taking his degree of B.A. he entered (1845) the Seminary of St. Sulpice, Paris, and there studied philosophy and theology under the first masters of religious science. He was ordained a priest at Notre Dame de Paris, June 14, 1851, and for the next five years was a profe or, first of philosophy at the Grand Seminary of Avignon (1851-54), then of dogmatic theology at the Seminary of Nantes (1854-56). In 1856-57 he was curate of St. Sulpice, Paris, being member of the company of the priests of St. Sulpice, and was made honorary canon of Troy. In 1858 he decided upon a monastic life, and made a six-months' novitiate in the Dominican Order (as reformed by Lacordaire); but preferring a more austere order, on April 22, 1862, he entered that of the Barefooted Carmelites (as reformed by St. The res a and St. John of the Cro in the sixteenth century); rose to be superior of his order in Paris and second def in at or of the province of Avignon, and remained in it until September, 1869. From 1864 to 1869 he was metropolitan preacher of Notre Dame de Paris; but refused to be court preacher under Napoleon III., and also to be archbishop of Lyons, always maintaining that his vocation of preacher was preferable to all social or ecclesiastical "preferment." He has preached in the large cities of France (sometimes under great difficulties), England, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and the United States. On Sept. 20, 1869, he published a manifesto against the usurpations of Rome, protesting against the lack of cecumenity in the convocation of the Vatican Council. At the same time he quitted his convent; and then, to avoid importunity, he went to America for a few months, awaiting the deliberations of the council. When the decree of infallibility was pronounced (July 18, 1870), he found it was impo ible for him longer to submit to Rome; and since then he has devoted himself to preaching Catholic reform (the Bible to be read by all, vernacular worship, the cup to be given to the laity, liberty of marriage for priests, freedom of confe ion), and as far as po ible carrying it out in practice. On Sept. 3, 1872, he married in London, Mrs. Emilie Jane (Butter field) Meriman of New York, N.Y., U.S.A., who had been previously engaged in Catholic reform in Rome. In 1873 he began reformed public worship in Geneva, Switzerland, whither he was called by the disaffected Roman Catholics, who elected him their vicar. There he remained five years, but separated himself from the Old Catholics there, because of their too radical tendencies in politics and religion. In 1877 and 1878 lie gave a series of conferences in the Cirque d'Hiver in Paris, on the nece ity of religious reform in Catholic countries, which was a political event feared by the French Republic. In 1879 he returned to live in Paris, and opened a free church, known as the Catholic Gallican Church, with the episcopal aid of Bishop Herzog of Bern o 119 f the Old Catholic Church, and the bishops of the Anglican Church, with which churches his own is in communion. His church was legalized in December, 1883, by a decree of the French Government, signed by President Grevy. It has therefore the right to exist; but it is free, and unsubsidized by the government. In July, 1885, it numbered over a you sand members and six clergy. In philosophy M. Loyson is a disciple of Plato, Des cartes, Male bran che, and Leibnitz. An a iduous investigator of the Holy Scriptures from earliest childhood, his theology is that of the Bible and of the Fathers. Always a devoted, liberal, and evangelical Catholic, he accepts the Primacy of the early Church, but rejects the Papacy. He holds to the faith of the undivided church, i.e., the Episcopate, as expre ed in the Nicene Creed, which he believes to be the broad yet firm basis of all social and scientific progre , as well as the adaptation of all spiritual truth and his aim is the unity (not uniformity) of all Christians. Among his numerous publications are the following: Poemes, Pau, 1841-45; La socie'te civile dans ses rapports avec le Christian is me (Conferences de Notre Dame), Paris, 1867, 5th ed.; La famille (Conferences de Notre Dame), 1867, 2d ed.; Education des cla es ouvrieres, 1867; Profe ion de la foi Catholique d'une protest ante convertie, 1868; De la Reforme Catholique: letlres, fragments, discours, 1869-72, 2d ed (English trans., Catholic reform: Letters, Fragments, etc., by Madame Loyson, introd. by Dean Stanley, London, 1874); L'Eglise Catholique en Sui e, Geneva, 1875; Reforme Catholique, II. Catholic is me et Protestant is me, Paris, 1873; L'Ultra montan is me et la Revolution, 1873; Trots conferences au Cirque d'Hiver (April 15, 22, and 29, 1877), 1877; Les principes de la Reforme Catholique (Conferences au Cirque d'Hiver, 1878), 1878 (English trans., London, 1879); Programme de la Reforme Catholique, 1879; Liturgie Gallicane, 1879, 5th ed. 1883; L'Inquisition, 1882. In 1880 Madame Hyacinthe Loyson translated into French, and he published, Dollinger's Reunion des Eglises. His son, Paul Emmanuel Hyacinthe Loyson, was born at Geneva, Oct. 19, 1873.