THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXIV., No. 143.—FEBRUARY, 1877.
Copyright: Rev. I. T. Hecker. 1877.
FREDERIC OZANAM.[148]
Ozanam’s name and writings were made known to the portion of the English-reading world interested in the Oxford movement by the brilliant pages of the British Critic more than thirty years ago, while he was still in the bloom of his youthful fame and success as a professor of the Sorbonne. The preface to his biography says that he is not widely known in England, and the same is probably true of America, speaking in reference to non-Catholics. Among Catholic scholars here, and we fancy in England also, his name and works are well known and in high repute. They deserve, nevertheless, to be better known and more highly honored. There is scarcely a purer or more brilliant career to be found recorded in the annals of Catholic literature in this century than his. He was the founder of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul—a sufficient title to honor and gratitude. He was a model of moral loveliness and Christian virtue, a type of the true Catholic gentleman, adorning a high sphere in society, and at the same time heartily devoted to the welfare of the humblest, the poorest, and even the most degraded and vicious classes. He was a thoroughly learned man in his own department, a captivating writer, a master of the minds and hearts of the studious youth of France, a knightly champion of the faith without fear and without reproach, an author of classical works of peculiar and enduring value. The charm of his private, personal character, as a child, a friend, a husband and father, a member of the social circle, equals the lustre of his public career. Spotless and fascinating from the beginning to the end of his life, the bright and winning grace of the figure which he presents in the history of his life receives dignity and pathos from the suffering which overshadowed and eclipsed his light before its meridian was attained. He was born in 1813; his professorship at the Sorbonne filled the space between his twenty-seventh and thirty-ninth years of life—that is, from 1839 to 1852—and he died the next year at the age of forty, after seven years of repeated attacks of illness and a continued decline. We will
pass in rapid review the incidents of this brief but fruitful career, and endeavor to place before our readers a reduced sketch of the character and work of Frederic Ozanam, as faithfully and artistically portrayed by his accomplished biographer.
The family records of the Ozanams trace their origin to Jeremiah Hozannam, a Jew, who was prætor in Julius Cæsar’s thirty-eighth legion, and received the township of Boulignieux, near Lyons, as his share in the military partition of the conquered Gallic territory. His lineal descendant, Samuel Hozannam, was converted by St. Didier in the seventh century. The name was altered to Ozanam by the grandfather of the subject of the present notice. Dr. Ozanam, Frederic’s father, was a distinguished man, and both of Frederic’s parents were persons of remarkable virtue and piety. He was born in Milan, but educated at Lyons, every possible care being taken of his intellectual, moral, and religious culture. In childhood and youth he was delicate, precocious, exemplary in morals and religion, extremely diligent and successful in his studies, and every way admirable and lovable in character. At one time during his boyhood he was tormented by temptations against faith, which were so rife, and to a multitude of the studious youth of France so dangerous, at that epoch. To him they were not dangerous, but salutary; for they had no other effect except to stimulate him to a study of the rational evidences of the Catholic religion, and to leave in his heart a vivid and tender sympathy for the victims of doubt and error. After a very thorough course of classical study under an eminent teacher—the Abbé Noirot—which he completed at seventeen years of age,