Authorities.—Ammianus Marcellinus xxvii.-xxxi.; Aurelius Victor, Epit. 47; Zosimus iv. vi.; Ausonius (Gratian’s tutor), especially the Gratiarum actio pro consulatu; Symmachus x. epp. 2 and 61; Ambrose, De fide, prolegomena to Epistolae 11, 17, 21, Consolatio de obitu Valentiniani; H. Richter, Das weströmische Reich, besonders unter den Kaisern Gratian, Valentinian II. und Maximus (1865); A. de Broglie, L’Église et l’empire romain au IVe siècle (4th ed., 1882); H. Schiller, Geschichte der römischen Kaiserzeit, iii., iv. 31-33; Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. 27; R. Gumpoltsberger, Kaiser Gratian (Vienna, 1879); T. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders (Oxford, 1892), vol. i.; Tillemont, Hist. des empereurs, v.; J. Wordsworth in Smith’s Dictionary of Christian Biography.
(J. H. F.)
GRATIANUS, FRANCISCUS, compiler of the Concordia discordantium canonum or Decretum Gratiani, and founder of the science of canon law, was born about the end of the 11th century at Chiusi in Tuscany or, according to another account, at Carraria near Orvieto. In early life he appears to have been received into the Camaldulian monastery of Classe near Ravenna, whence he afterwards removed to that of San Felice in Bologna, where he spent many years in the preparation of the Concordia. The precise date of this work cannot be ascertained, but it contains references to the decisions of the Lateran council of 1139, and there is fair authority for believing that it was completed while Pope Alexander III. was still simply professor of theology at Bologna,—in other words, prior to 1150. The labours of Gratian are said to have been rewarded with the bishopric of Chiusi, but if so he appears never to have been consecrated; at least his name is not in any authentic list of those who have occupied that see. The year of his death is unknown.
For some account of the Decretum Gratiani and its history see [Canon Law]. The best edition is that of Friedberg (Corpus juris canonici, Leipzig, 1879). Compare Schultze, Zur Geschichte der Litteratur über das Decret Gratians (1870), Die Glosse zum Decret Gratians (1872), and Geschichte der Quellen und Litteratur des kanonischen Rechts (3 vols., Stuttgart, 1875).
GRATRY, AUGUSTE JOSEPH ALPHONSE (1805-1872), French author and theologian, was born at Lille on the 10th of March 1805. He was educated at the École Polytechnique, Paris, and, after a period of mental struggle which he has described in Souvenirs de ma jeunesse, he was ordained priest in 1832. After a stay at Strassburg as professor of the Petit Séminaire, he was appointed director of the Collège Stanislas in Paris in 1842 and, in 1847, chaplain of the École Normale Supérieure. He became vicar-general of Orleans in 1861, professor of ethics at the Sorbonne in 1862, and, on the death of Barante, a member of the French Academy in 1867, where he occupied the seat formerly held by Voltaire. Together with M. Pététot, curé of Saint Roch, he reconstituted the Oratory of the Immaculate Conception, a society of priests mainly devoted to education. Gratry was one of the principal opponents of the definition of the dogma of papal infallibility, but in this respect he submitted to the authority of the Vatican Council. He died at Montreux in Switzerland on the 6th of February 1872.
His chief works are: De la connaissance de Dieu, opposing Positivism (1855); La Logique (1856); Les Sources, conseils pour la conduite de l’esprit (1861-1862); La Philosophie du credo (1861); Commentaire sur l’évangile de Saint Matthieu (1863); Jésus-Christ, lettres à M. Renan (1864); Les Sophistes et la critique (in controversy with E. Vacherot) (1864); La Morale et la loi de l’histoire, setting forth his social views (1868); Mgr. l’évêque d’Orléans et Mgr. l’archevêque de Malines (1869), containing a clear exposition of the historical arguments against the doctrine of papal infallibility. There is a selection of Gratry’s writings and appreciation of his style by the Abbé Pichot, in Pages choisies des Grands Écrivains series, published by Armand-Colin (1897). See also the critical study by the oratorian A. Chauvin, L’Abbé Gratry (1901); Le Père Gratry (1900), and Les Derniers Jours du Père Gratry et son testament spirituel, (1872), by Cardinal Adolphe Perraud, Gratry’s friend and disciple.
GRATTAN, HENRY (1746-1820), Irish statesman, son of James Grattan, for many years recorder of Dublin, was born in Dublin on the 3rd of July 1746. He early gave evidence of exceptional gifts both of intellect and character. At Trinity College, Dublin, where he had a distinguished career, he began a lifelong devotion to classical literature and especially to the great orators of antiquity. He was called to the Irish bar in 1772, but never seriously practised the law. Like Flood, with whom he was on terms of friendship, he cultivated his natural genius for eloquence by study of good models, including Bolingbroke and Junius. A visit to the English House of Lords excited boundless admiration for Lord Chatham, of whose style of oratory Grattan contributed an interesting description to Baratariana (see [Flood, Henry]). The influence of Flood did much to give direction to Grattan’s political aims; and it was through no design on Grattan’s part that when Lord Charlemont brought him into the Irish parliament in 1775, in the very session in which Flood damaged his popularity by accepting office, Grattan quickly superseded his friend in the leadership of the national party. Grattan was well qualified for it. His oratorical powers were unsurpassed among his contemporaries. He conspicuously lacked, indeed, the grace of gesture which he so much admired in Chatham; he had not the sustained dignity of Pitt; his powers of close reasoning were inferior to those of Fox and Flood. But his speeches were packed with epigram, and expressed with rare felicity of phrase; his terse and telling sentences were richer in profound aphorisms and maxims of political philosophy than those of any other statesman save Burke; he possessed the orator’s incomparable gift of conveying his own enthusiasm to his audience and convincing them of the loftiness of his aims.