COMTE AE

See also:

• DENIS (DIoNysms), SAINT
• DENIS, JOHANN NEPOMUK COSMAS MICHAEL (1729-1800)

DENIS

See also:

• ANTOINE, ANDRE (1858- )

ANTOINE LUC

See also:

• COMTE AE DENIS ANTOINE LUC FRAYSSINOUS (1765-1841)

FRAYSSINOUS (1765-1841)  , French prelate and statesman, distinguished as an orator and as a controversial writer, was born of humble parentage at Curieres, in the department of Aveyron, on the 9th of May 1765 . He owes his reputation mainly to the lectures on dogmatic theology, known as the " conferences " of Saint Sulpice, delivered in the church of Saint Sulpice, Paris, from 1803 to 1809, to which admiring crowds were attracted by his lucid exposition and by his graceful oratory . The freedom of his language in 1809, when Napoleon had arrested the pope and declared the annexation of Rome to France, led to a prohibition of his lectures; and the dispersion of the congregation of Saint Sulpice in 1811 was followed by his temporary retirement from the capital . He returned with the Bourbons, and resumed his lectures in 1814; but the events of the Hundred Days again compelled him to withdraw into private life, from which he did not emerge until February 1816 . As court preacher and almoner to Louis XVIII., he now entered upon the period of his greatest public activity and influence . In connexion with the controversy raised by the signing of the reactionary concordat of 1817, he published in 1818 a treatise entitled Vrais Principes de l'eglise Gallicane sur la puissance ecclesiastique, which though unfavourably criticized by Lamennais, was received with favour by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities . The consecration of Frayssinous as bishop of Hermopolis " in partibus," his election to the French Academy, and his appointment to the grand-mastership of the university, followed in rapid succession . In 1824, on the accession of Charles X., he became minister of public instruction and of ecclesiastical affairs under the administration of Villele; and about the same time he was created a peer of France with the title of count . His term of office was chiefly marked by the recall of the Jesuits . In 1825 he published his lectures under the title Defense ;du christianisme . The work passed through 15 editions within 18 years, and was translated into several European languages . In 1828 he, along with his colleagues in the Villele ministry, was compelled to resign office, and the subsequent revolution of July 183o led to his retirement to Rome .

Shortly afterwards he became

tutor to the duke of Bordeaux (Comte de Chambord) at Prague, where he continued to live until 1838 . He died at St Geniez on the 12th of December 1841 . See Bertrand, Bib1 . Sulpicienne (t. ii . 135 sq.; iii . 253) for bibliography, and G . A . Henrion (Paris, 2 vols., 1844) for biography . FR$CHETTE, LOUIS HONOR$ (1839-1908), French-Canadian poet, was born at Levis, Quebec, on the 16th of November 1839, the son of a contractor . He was educated in his native province, and called to the Canadian bar in 1864 . He started the Journal de Levis, and his revolutionary doctrines compelled him to leave Canada for the United States . After some years spent in journalism at Chicago, he was in 1874 elected as the Liberal candidate to represent Levis in the Canadian parliament .

At the elections of 1878 and 1882 he was defeated, and there-after confined himself to literature . He edited La-Patric and other French papers in the Dominion; and in 1889 was appointed clerk of the Quebec legislative

council . He was long a warm advocate of the political union of Canada and the United States, but in later life became less ardent, and in 1897 accepted the honour of C.M.G. from Queen Victoria . He was president of the Royal Society of Canada, and of the Canadian Society of Arts, and received numerous honorary degrees . His works include: Mes Loisirs (1863); La Voix d'un exile (1867), a satire against the Canadian government; Pole-mete (1877); Les Fleurs boreales, and Les Oiseaux de neige (188o), crowned by the French academy; La Legende d'un peuple (1887); two historical dramas, Papineau (188o) and Felix Poutre (188o); La Noel au Canada (1900), and several prose works and translations . An exponent of local French sentiment, he won the title of the " Canadian Laureate." He died on the 1st of June 1908 .