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 LAMENNAIS 125 in lamellae on the sides, protected by a right and left shell. Excluding the molluscoids (bra- chiopods, tunicates, and bryozoans), now be- lieved by many to be articulates, coming near the worms, the term would be synonymous with the bivalve mollusks. LAMEMAIS, Hngnes Felicite Robert de, a French author, born in St. Malo, June 19, 1782, died in Paris, Feb. 27, 1854. His father, a wealthy ship owner engaged in commerce, had been ennobled by Louis XVI. He was early aban- doned to himself in consequence of the death of his mother and the pecuniary difficulties of his father. He lived almost in solitude, some- times obtaining assistance in his studies from his elder brother Jean, till about his 12th year, when he was intrusted to the care of his uncle, who confined him day after day in his library. He read Plutarch and Livy, admired Rous- seau, and disputed with the parish priest about religion. In his 16th year he retired with his brother to La Chnaie, a residence two leagues from Dinan, where he reduced his studies and various reading to order, mastered Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and several modern languages, and acquainted himself with the church fathers, doctors, historians, and con- troversialists. He was 22 years old before he made his first communion, and he adopted the ecclesiastical profession only after long hesita- tion. He made a translation of an ascetic work by Louis de Blois (published in 1809), and pub- lished in 1808 Reflexions sur Vetat de V Eglise, his first protest against the reigning philosophi- cal materialism, which was immediately seized and destroyed by the imperial police. He engaged with his brother on the Tradition de I Eglise sur I 1 institution des eveques (3 vols., Paris, 1814), in which he confuted the Gallican tenet that the election of bishops is valid with- out the sanction of the holy see. After being teacher of mathematics in the seminary of St. Malo, founded by his brother, he went in 1814 to Paris, where he lived modestly and unknown. On the return of the Bourbons he published a violent attack upon Napoleon. Judging it prudent to leave France during the hundred days, he took refuge in the island of Guernsey, where he passed several months under the name of Patrick Robertson. He engaged in teaching in London, and for several years after 1815 in Paris. In 1816, at the age of 34, he received sacerdotal ordination, having received the tonsure in 1811 ; and in 1817 he published the first volume of his Essai sur V indifference en matiere de religion. This was the fruit of con- stant labor during many years of trial and ob- scurity, and had an immediate effect through- put Europe. It aimed to oppose to Protestant- ism and philosophy the principle of ecclesi- astical authority and the absolutism of faith. It was received by Catholics with admiration and enthusiasm, and the author became a prin- cipal collaborator in the Conservateur, a jour- nal founded by Chateaubriand, Villele, De Bo- nald, Frayssinous, and others, which was chief- ly directed against the ministry of Decazes. Though thus ranged among the defenders of the monarchy, he was more earnestly a Catho- lic than a royalist, and sought in the mainte- nance of the throne to secure guarantees for the stability of the church. The political hopes cherished concerning him were thus dis- appointed, and in 1820 he separated from his party with a portion of his colleagues called the " incorruptibles," and vehemently assailed the ministry of Villele in the Drapeau Blanc, and afterward in the monthly Memorial Catlio- lique. The first volume of his Essai was sus- pected of innovating tendencies before the ap- pearance of the second (1820), in which he re- jected the Cartesian system, which gives au- thority to the individual reason, and developed a new theory of intellectual authority founded on the universal agreement of mankind. He maintained that there is a preestablished har- mony between the doctrines of the church and the ideas of the race, that truth is attainable not only from revelation but from universal tradition, and thus sought to make the general consent of men the basis of an alliance between reason and faith. In the last two volumes (1824) he traced the transmission of truth through the ages, collected the scattered tradi- tions of various peoples, and sought to demon- strate that Christianity alone possesses the double character of universality and perpetu- ity. This work was unanimously and strongly opposed by the Sorbonne and the prelates, and was applauded only by a small body of dis- ciples. He wrote a short defence, and in 1824 went to Rome to present it to the pope. He was coldly received by the cardinals, and Leo XII., who had at one time thought of creating him a ca'rdinal, after conversing with him, de- clared to his assistants that Lamennais would cause much trouble in the church. On his re- turn, after publishing a translation of the " Imi- tation of Christ," he produced De la religion consideree dans ses rapports avec Vordre civil et catJiolique (2 vols., Paris, 1825-'6), in which he strove to establish the absolute spiritual supremacy of the holy see as the solution of the social problem. For this publication he was arraigned before the civil tribunal, and condemned. From this time war was waged between Lamennais and the bishops of France. In his treatise Des progres de la revolution et de la guerre centre V Eglise (1829) he first in- dicated his tendency toward political liberty while laying stress on theocratic absolutism. To combine democracy with the papal su- premacy, liberal with Catholic ideas, became his avowed aim immediately after the revolu- tion of 1830. He founded the journal ISAve- nir, having the motto Dieu et liberte le pape et le peuple, and was assisted by a corps of young and ardent disciples, among whom were Gerbet, De Salinis, Lacordaire, Rohrbacher, De Coux, and Montalembert. It demanded administrative decentralization, extension of the electoral right, freedom of worship, uni-