CHARLES

See also:

• MARTIAL (MARCUS VALERIUS MARTIALIS)

MARTIAL ALLEMAND

See also:

• CHARLES MARTIAL ALLEMAND LAVIGERIE (1825-1892)

LAVIGERIE (1825-1892)  , French divine, cardinal archbishop of Carthage and Algiers and primate of Africa, was born at Bayonne on the 31st of October 1825, and was educated at St Sulpice, Paris . He was ordained priest in 1849, and was professor of ecclesiastical history at the Sorbonne from 1854 to 1856 . In 1856 he accepted the direction of the schools of the East, and was thus for the first time brought into contact with the Mahommedan world . " C'est la," he wrote, " que j'ai connu enfin ma vocation." Activity in missionary work, especially in alleviating the distresses of the victims of the Druses, soon brought him prominently into notice; he was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour, and in October 1861, shortly after his return to Europe, was appointed French auditor at Rome . Two years later he was raised to the see of Nancy, where he remained for four years, during which the diocese became one of the best administered in France . While bishop of Nancy he met Marshal MacMahon, then governor-general of Algeria, who in 1866 offered him the see of Algiers, just raised to an archbishopric . Lavigerie landed in Africa on the 11th of May 1868, when the great famine was already making itself felt, and he began in November to collect the orphans into villages . This action, however, did not meet with the approval of MacMahon, who feared that the Arabs would resent it as an infraction of the religious peace, and thought that the Mahommedan church, being a state institution in Algeria, ought to be protected from proselytism; so it was intimated to the prelate that his sole duty was to minister to the colonists . Lavigerie, however, continued his self-imposed task, refused the archbishopric of Lyons, which was offered to him by the emperor, and won his point . Contact with the natives during the famine caused Lavigerie to entertain exaggerated hopes for their general conversion, and his enthusiasm was such that he offered to resign his archbishopric in order to devote himself entirely to the missions . Pius IX. refused this, but granted him a coadjutor, and placed the whole of equatorial Africa under his charge . In 1870 Lavigerie warmly supported papal infallibility .

In 1871 he was twice a

candidate for the National Assembly, but was defeated . In 1874 he founded the Sahara and Sudan mission, and sent missionaries to Tunis, Tripoli, East Africa and the Congo . The order of African missionaries thus founded, for which Lavigerie himself drew up the rule, has since become famous as the Peres Blanes . From 1881 to 1884 his activity in Tunisia so raised the prestige of France that it drew from Gambetta the celebrated declaration, L'Anticlericalisme n'est pas un article d'exportation, and led to the exemption of Algeria from the application of the decrees concerning the religious orders . On the 27th of March 1882 the dignity of cardinal was conferred upon Lavigerie, but the great object of his ambition was to restore the see of St Cyprian; and in that also he was successful, for by a bull of loth November 1884 the metropolitan see of Carthage was re-erected, and Lavigerie received the pallium on the 25th of January 1885 . The later years of his life were spent in ardent anti-slavery propaganda, and his eloquence moved large audiences in London, as well as in Paris, Brussels and other parts of the continent . He hoped, by organizing a fraternity of armed laymen as pioneers, to restore fertility to the Sahara; but this community did not succeed, and was dissolved before his death . In 1890 Lavigerie appeared in the new character of a politician, and arranged with Pope Leo XIII. to make an attempt to reconcile the church with the republic . He invited the officers of the Mediterranean squadron to lunch at Algiers, and, practically renouncing his monarchical sympathies, to which he clung as long as the comte de Chambord was alive, expressed his support of the republic, and emphasized it by having the Marseillaise played by a band of his Peres Blancs . The further steps in this evolution emanated from the pope, and Lavigerie, whose health now began to fail, receded comparatively into the background . He died at Algiers on the 26th of November 1892 . (G .

F . B.) LA VILLEMARQUE,

THEODORE CLAUDE HENRI, VICOMTE HERSART DE (1815-1895), French philologist and man of letters, was born at Keransker, near Quimperle, on the 6th of July 1815 . He was descended from an old Breton family, which counted among its members a Hersart who had followed Saint Louis to the Crusade, and another who was a companion in arms of Du Guesclin . La Villemarque devoted himself to the elucidation of the monuments of Breton literature . Introduced in 1851 by Jacob Grimm as correspondent to the Academy of Berlin, he became in 1858 a member of the Academy of Inscriptions . His works include: Conies populaires des anciens Bretons (1842), to which was prefixed an essay on the origin of the romances of the Round Table; Essai sur l'histoire de la langue bretonne (1837); Poemes des bardes bretons du sixieme siecle (1850); La Legende celtique en Irelande, en Cambrie et en Bretagne (18J9) . The popular Breton songs published by him in 1839 as Barzaz Breiz were considerably retouched . La Villemarque's work has been superseded by the work of later scholars, but he has the merit of having done much to arouse popular interest in his subject . He died at Keransker on the 8th of December 1895 . On the subject of the doubtful authenticity of Barzaz Breiz, see Luzel's Preface to his Chansons populaires de la Basse-Bretagne, and, for a list of works on the subject, the Revue Celtique (vol. v.) .