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 214 LAVAL UNIVERSITY LAVATER accept the office, and became archdeacon of Evreux in 1653. He was chiefly known as the abb6 de Montigny, one of his family titles. In 1658 he was appointed vicar apostolic of New France, and bishop of Petrsea in partibus, in opposition to the archbishop of Rouen, who claimed exclusive jurisdiction in Canada. He was consecrated privately, arrived in Quebec June 16, 1659, displayed equal firmness and moderation in overcoming the pretensions of the vicar general of the archbishop of Rouen, and returned to France in 1662 in order to ob- tain missionaries, nuns, and pecuniary aid for his flock. He founded while there the semina- ry of Quebec, March 26, 1663, connecting it by name with the seminary of foreign missions in Paris ; the deed of foundation was confirmed by letters patent of Louis XIV. in April, 1664. In the following September he arrived in Que- bec, and on July 11, 1666, consecrated the church of Notre Dame. Besides his efficient measures for the organization of a parochial clergy, he enacted the most stringent regula- tions against the sale of intoxicating liquors to the Indians. This brought him into conflict with the colonial authorities, but he triumphed over all opposition. During a second stay in France, in October, 1674, he obtained his ap- pointment as titular bishop of Quebec. This office enabled him to protect the Indians from the injurious intercourse with the whites, and to define the mutual relations of the regular and secular clergy. Having secured sufficient revenues for the support of the seminary and his episcopal establishment, he made a third voyage to France, obtained the nomination of a coadjutor bishop, into whose hands he re- signed the administration of his see in January, 1688, and came back to Quebec to reside in the seminary, without taking further part in public affairs. To the seminary he made over his entire estate, and saw it twice burned to the ground. He was distinguished by unblem- ished purity of life, ardent zeal for religion, and a firmness which bore down all opposition. The Laval university in Quebec is named after him. His life was written by Louis Bertrand de la Tour (Cologne, 1751), and by an anony- mous author (Quebec, 1845). LAVAL UNIVERSITY. See QUEBEC. LAVATER, Jolmim Kaspar, a Swiss mystic and physiognomist, born in Zurich, Nov. 15, 1741, died there, Jan. 2, 1801. He was the son of a physician, a timid, sensitive, imaginative boy, with an aversion to school, but fond of poetry, solitude, and religious re very. Intended for holy orders, he pursued his studies at Zurich, but was more interested in Klopstock and Rousseau than in controversialists, and sought the revival of piety rather by humble labors as member of an ascetic society than by weighing theological formulas. " Limit yourself at every moment, if you can, to what is nearest to you," was one of his early ethical precepts. Not- withstanding his shrinking nature, his first public act was a vehement pamphlet (1762) as- sailing an oppressive but influential officer of Zurich, which made it advisable for him to leave his native town for a time. He went to Berlin, then, under Frederick the Great, the centre of intellectual culture in Germany, and continued his studies there, enjoying the friend- ship of Sulzer and Mendelssohn, and in Barth, Pomerania, under the theologian Spalding. Returning to Zurich in 1764, he entered on the duties of pastor, and the peculiar charm of his mystical discourses, his benevolent charac- ter, and blameless life made him warmly and universally beloved. His published sermons and his correspondence soon extended over Europe. In 1767 appeared his Schweitzerlieder, containing his finest poems, which was fol- lowed by his AussicJiten in die Ewiglceit (3 vols., 1768-'73), the first of a series of works in which he maintained the perpetuity of mir acles, the irresistibility of prayer, and the ne- cessity for every person to conceive of God as manifested in Christ crucified in order to be really alive himself. The last doctrine was called his Christomania. He determined to oppose his illuminism to the philosophy that was reigning at Paris and Berlin ; and having found in the Palingenesie pJiilosopJiique of Bonnet what he deemed a triumphant exposi- tion of Christian faith, he sent a translation of it with remarks of his own to his friend Men- delssohn, the mildest and ablest living advocate of deism, and summoned him either to refute it or to become a Christian. The controversy which ensued excited the greatest interest. Mendelssohn maintained that according to the system of Bonnet it would be as easy to de- monstrate the divine origin of Islamism or Buddhism as of Christianity; and Lavater, fearing that his imperious challenge had been intolerant and unkind, withdrew it in a lonj letter. From that time he was the chief am almost the idol of the mystics. He explaim the performances of Gessner and Mesmer the theory of the Rosicrucians, visited and dis puted with Cagliostro under a conviction he was an envoy of Satan, and was suspect by his contemporaries of almost all heresies, being an atheist, and of being secretly a high officer in the order of Jesuits. His celebrit was extended into foreign countries chiefly b} his Physiognomische Fragmente zur Be/or- der ung der Menschenkenntniss und Mensc) Hebe (Leipsic, 1775-'8), the first elaborate at- tempt to reduce physiognomy to a science, illustrated with numerous engravings and vi- gnettes, and superior in respect of paper typography to any book previously issut from the German press. It was the fruit ol singularly acute observations from an earl period of life, confirmed by the study of large collection of likenesses of distinguish* personages which are introduced into the worl Though he was sometimes deceived, the markable skill of Lavater in detecting chan by some slight feature was often proved. Th< new science was widely studied, occasioi