Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/848

 LAMENTATIONS

766

LAMONT

was due chiefly to the skilful and energetic administra- tion of Jean de Lamennais. For forty years he was the one who attracted and trained the recruits, guided the young teachers, opened and visited the schools. He also won for them tlie gratitude of the public au- thorities, and the approbation and praise of Pius IX testified in a Brief of 1 February, 1851 ; and he built for them a fine mother-house at Ploermel. He himself was an example of all the Christian virtues to such a degree tliat forty years after his death, which occurred on 26 Dec, ISUO, the process defama sanditath with a view of his lieatification was initiated under the pat- ronage of the Bishop of Vannes. His native land has not forgotten him. At Ploermel a statue has been raised to the memory of this man, who perhaps has done more than any other in the nineteenth century for the Christian education of the people. In the be- ginning of the twentieth century, before the persecu- tion in France scattered the teaching congregations, his institute was more pro.sperous than ever and counted among its members about 2700 religious, giv- ing instruction to 75,000 scholars, and distributed among 460 institutions, of which one was in Canada.

Several of the works cited in the preceding bibliography con- tain information also concerning Jean-Marie. Cf. also Ropartz, La vie et les tEUvres de Jean-Marie de Lamennais (Paris, s. d.); Laveille, Jean-Marie de Lamennais (2 vols., Paris, 190.3). Antoine Degert.

Lamentations. See Jeremias.

Lami, Bern.^rd. See Lamy.

Lammas Day. See Peter's Chains, Feast of.

Lamoignon, Family of, illustrious in the history of the old magistracy, originally from Nivernais. Owing to the nearness of the University of Bourges, the La- moignons, in the sixteenth century, had the benefit of the excellent juridical instruction given there.

Charles de Lamoignon (1514-73) was the pupil of the renov^^led jurisconsult Alciat.

Chretien de Lamoignon (1567-1636), son of the preceding, was a pupil of C'ujas. Both this and the foregoing were members of the Parlement of Paris.

Marie des L.andes (1576-1651), wife of Chretien de Lamoignon, was associated in work with St. A'incent de Paul, who called her the mother of the poor; and she founded an association for the deliverance of those imprisoned for debt.

Madeleine de L.^moignon (1609-87), daughter of Chretien, whom St. Francis de Sales prepared for her first communion, also assisted St. Vincent de Paul. Owing to her co-operation the saint was able to found the Hotel-Dieu and establish the institution for found- lings. When she died, a contemporary said, "The poor have lost one hundred thousand crowns."

GuiLLAUME DE Lamoignon (1617-77), having be- come in 1644 master of requests in the Parlement, took an active part in the Fronde of the Parlement against Mazarin. He became first president of the Parlement in 1658. The great work which he did towards pre- paring the codilication of French laws has made him famous. A distinguished member of the Society of the Holy Sacrament, he was greatly devoted to the Catholic cause. He induced Colbert to give up his cherished idea of pvitting I lack to twenty-seven the age for ordination to priesthood, and the years required for monastic vows to twenty for the women and twenty-seven for the men. He had certain Galilean tendencies, and in 1663 he spoke before the Parlement in favour of the "liberties of the Gallican church" against a thesis sus[)ected of ultramontanism. A nephew of Bishop Potier of Beauvais, a close friend of the .Jansenist Mermant, Lamoignon was supposed to sympathize with Port Royal, but he chose Rapin, a Jesuit, as tutor for his sons, whom he also brought into close acquaint an<r with liiiurdaloue. Wlien in 1664 the Jansenists (Iciirrcd to the Parlement a confutation of Pascal's " Provinciales" written by the Jesuits, the

decree which condemned this book nevertheless spared the Jesuits. On this occasion Lamoignon said to the king that he had been "a witness of the unfair out- bursts of the Jansenists in all the differences they had with the Society of Jesus; and this Jansenist party, which was being formed in the kingdom on the dissemi- nation of the new teaching, was but a cabal which would become pernicious to the State". It was La- moignon who, having as first president to settle the dispute that had arisen at the Sainte-Chapelle between the precentor and the treasurer regarding a desk, fur- nished lioileau with the account of this incident from which the latter evolved the celebrated poem of the "Lutrin".

Chretien-Francois de Lamoignon (1644-1709), son of the foregoing, was a member of the French Academy.

Nicolas Lamoignon - Baville (1648-1724), brother of the preceding, intendant of Poitou (1682- 85), and of Languedoc (1685-1718), made himself famous by the measures he adopted against the Prot- estants of these provinces, and by the manner in which he associated himself with the religious policy of Lou- vois, of which the revocation of the Edict of Nantes was the culminating point. But it is without proofs that Voltaire accused him of having instigated this revocation. "I never counselled the revocation of the Edict of Nantes", he v^Tote to his brother in 1708. On the contrary he considered that "in religion hearts must be attacked, for it is there that it resides", and immediately after the revocation he sent for Bourda- loue to come and evangelize the Protestants of Mont- pellier. From 1702 to 1704 he helped in the repres- sion of the uprising of the Camisards, occasioned in the Cevennes by English and Calvinistic influences.

Malesherbes (1721-94), who defended Louis XVI and died on the scaffold, was the grandson of Chrdtien- Frangois de Lamoignon.

Flechier. Oraison funebre du president de Lamoignon (Paris, 1677): Lamoignon-Baville, Memoires pour servir ii Vhistoire du Languedoc (Amsterdam, 17.34); Saint-Simon, Mnnoircs, ed. BoisusLE, 21 vols. (Paris, 1880-1909); Vian, Les Lamoignon: une vielle famille de robe (Paris, 1896).

Georges Goyau.

Lament, Johann von, astronomer and physicist, b. 13 Dec, 1805, at Braemar in Scotland, near Bal- moral Castle; d. 6 Aug., 1879, at Bogenhausen near Munich, Bavaria. He was educated in a private school in Scotland. Father Gallus Robertson, a repre- sentative of the Scotch monastery of St. Jacob at Rat- isbon, accidentally met the boy after the death of his father in 1816 and took him to Germany as a novice. At Ratisbon he became especially interested in mathe- matical and scientific studies under the prior Bene- dict Deasson. He did not take Holy orders but, in 1827, was recommended for appointment as assistant to Soldner, the director of the new observatory at Bogenhausen near Munich. His work there was so excellent that, after Soldner's death in 1835, he was chosen director. He was honoured by membership in the Royal Bavarian Academj', the Academies of Brus- sels, Upsala, and Prague, the Royal Society of Edin- burgh, etc In 1852 he also liecanie professor of astronomy at the University of Munich.

His scientific achievements are classified under three heads: astronomical, geodetic, and physical. His technical dexterity was such as to make the employ- ment of a mechanician unnecessary. A room in his home was fitted up as a workshop. With the excellent one and one-half inch refractor furnished him in 1836 he studied especially nebuliE and star-clusters, laying the foundation for such investigations. From observa^ tions of the moons of Uranus he calculated its mass (Memoirs of the Royal Astr. Soc, XI, 1838). The ten volumes of the publications of the oliservatory, "Ob- servationes Astronomicae in Specula Regia Monacensi", and the thirty-four volumes of the "Annalcn dcrko-