HENRI

See also:

• HENRI DIDON (1840-1900)

DIDON (1840-1900)  , French Dominican, was born at Trouvet, Isere, on the 17th of March 184o . He joined the Dominicans, under the influence of Lacordaire, in 1858, and completed his theological studies at the Minerva convent at Rome . The influence of Lacordaire was shown in the zeal displayed by Didon in favour of a reconciliation between philosophy and science . In 1871 his fame had so much grown that he was chosen to deliver the funeral oration over the murdered arch-bishop of Paris, Monseigneur G . Darboy . He also delivered some discourses at the church of St Jean de Beauvais in Paris on the relations between science and religion; but his utterances, especially on the question of divorce, were deemed suspicious by his superiors, and his intimacy with Claude Bernard the physiologist was disapproved . He was interdicted from preaching and sent into retirement at the convent of Corbara in Corsica . After eighteen months he emerged, and travelled in Germany, publishing an interesting work upon that country, entitled Les Allemands (English translation by R . Ledos de Beaufort, London, 1884) . On his return to France in 1890 he produced his best known work, Jesus-Christ (2 vols., Paris), for which he had qualified himself by travel in the Holy Land . In the same year he became director of the College Albert-le-Grand at Arcueil, and founded three auxiliary institutions, Ecole Lacordaire, Ecole Laplace and Ecole St Dominique . He wrote, in addition, several works on educational questions, and augmented his fame as an eloquent preacher by discourses preached during Lent and Advent .

He died at

Toulouse on the 13th of March 1900 . See the biographies by J. de Romano (1891), and A. de Coulanges (Paris, 1900) ; and especially the work of Stanislas Reynaud, entitled Le Pere Didon, sa vie et son teuvre (Paris, 1904) .