Antoine-Frédéric Ozanam (; 23 April 1813 – 8 September 1853) was a French Catholic literary scholar, lawyer, journalist and equal rights advocate. He founded with fellow students the Conference of Charity, later known as the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris in 1997. His feast day is 9 September.

Biography

Frédéric Ozanam was born on Friday, 23 April 1813, to Jean and Marie Ozanam. He was the fifth of 14 children, one of only three to reach adulthood. His family, which had distant Jewish connections, had been settled in the region around Lyon, France, for many centuries. An ancestor of Frédéric, Jacques Ozanam (1640–1717), was a noted mathematician. Jean Ozanam, Frédéric's father, had served in the armies of the First French Republic, but with the rise to power of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the founding of the First French Empire, he turned to trade, to teaching, and finally to medicine.

Ozanam was born in Milan, but brought up in Lyon. In his youth, he experienced a period of doubt regarding the Catholic faith, during which he was strongly influenced by one of his teachers at the Collège de Lyon, the priest (known usually as the Abbé Noirot). which attracted the attention of the French poet and politician Alphonse de Lamartine who was born in the area. Ozanam also found time to help organize and write for the Association for the Propagation of the Faith, a lay Catholic organization founded in the city with the aim of supporting Catholic missionaries, many of whom came from the area. That autumn he went to study law in Paris, where he suffered a great deal from homesickness. Ozanam fell in with the Ampère family (living for a time with the mathematician André-Marie Ampère), and through them with other prominent liberal Catholics of the time, such as Count François-René de Chateaubriand, and Charles Forbes René de Montalembert.

While still a student, Ozanam took up journalism and contributed considerably to the Tribune catholique of Bailly, which later became L'Univers, a French Catholic daily newspaper that adopted a strongly ultramontane position. Ozanam and his friends revived a discussion group called a "Society of Good Studies" and formed it into a "Conference of History" which quickly became a forum for large and lively discussions among students. Their attentions turned frequently to the social teachings of the Gospel. At one meeting during a heated debate in which Ozanam and his friends were trying to prove from historical evidence alone the truth of the Catholic Church as the one founded by Christ, their adversaries declared that, though at one time the Church was a source of good, it no longer was. One voice issued the challenge, "What is your church doing now? What is She doing for the poor of Paris? Show us your works and we will believe you!"

As a consequence, in May 1833 Ozanam and a group of other young men founded the charitable Society of Saint Vincent de Paul,

In 1835, Ozanam persuaded Monseigneur de Quélen, the Archbishop of Paris, to ask Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire to preach a Lenten series at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, as part of the Notre-Dame Lectures specially aimed at the catechesis of Christian youth, which had been inaugurated at the behest of his friend Ozanam. Lacordaire's first lecture took place on 8 March 1835, and was met with wide acclaim. Lacordaire was reputed to be the greatest pulpit orator of the nineteenth century. The social event of its day, it was well-attended and became an annual tradition in Paris. According to Thomas Bokenkotter, Lacordaire's Notre Dame Conferences, "...proved to be one of the most dramatic events of nineteenth century church history."

Still, he also pursued his personal interest, and in 1839 he obtained the degree of Doctor of Letters with a thesis on Dante that then formed the basis of Ozanam's best-known books. A year later he was appointed to a professorship of commercial law at Lyon, and in 1840, at the age of twenty-seven, assistant professor of foreign literature at the Sorbonne.

thumb|Frédéric Ozanam, 1852

In June 1841, he married Amélie Soulacroix, daughter of the rector of the University of Lyon, and the couple travelled to Italy for their honeymoon. They had a daughter, Marie.

Candelas describes Ozanam as " ... a man of great faith. He valued friendships and defended his friends no matter what the cost. He was attentive to details, perhaps to the extreme. ... [H]e showed a great tenderness when dealing with his family. ...He had a great reverence for his parents, and revealed his ability to sacrifice his career and his profession in order to please them. In contemporary movements, he was an earnest and conscientious advocate of Catholic democracy and of the view that the Church should adapt itself to the changed political conditions consequent to the French Revolution. He denounced the old alliance of "Throne and Altar" and pleaded with the Pope to adopt more liberal positions. He advocated the separation of church and state as conducive to liberty, and he was frequently impugned by reactionaries who accused him of deserting the Church.

  • Translated by A. C. Glyn as History of Civilization in the Fifth Century (London, 1868)
  • His letters were partly translated into English by A. Coates (London, 1886).

Legacy

The following were named in his honour:

  • Ozanam House, Ipswich, a heritage-listed house in Ipswich, Queensland, Australia
  • Ozanam House, Sydney, a heritage-listed building in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  • Ozanam House, Agidingbi, a heritage-listed building in Agidingbi, Lagos, Nigeria Ozanam was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1997.

References

Sources

  • Gérard Cholvy, Frédéric Ozanam, l'Engagement d'un Intellectuel Catholique au XIXe Siècle. Paris: Fayard, 2004. Prix Roland de Jouvenel ().
  • There are French biographies of Ozanam by his brother, C. A. Ozanam (Paris, 1882); Mme E. Humbert (Paris, 1880); C. Huit (Paris, 1882); M. de Lambel (Paris, 1887); L. Curnier (Paris, 1888); and B. Faulquier (Paris, 1903)
  • German biographies by F.X. Karker (Paderborn, 1867) and E. Hardy (Mainz, 1878)

Further reading

  • Auge, Thomas E. (1966). Frederic Ozanam and His World. Milwaukee: Bruce.
  • Baunard, Louis (1910). Ozanam in His Correspondence. New York: Benzinger Brothers.
  • Dunn, Archibald Joseph (1877). Frederic Ozanam and the Establishment of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. New York: Benziger Brothers.
  • Honner, John (2007). Love and Politics: The Revolutionary Frederic Ozanam. Melbourne: David Lovell Publishing.
  • Hughes, Henry (1933). Frederick Ozanam. Dublin: Brown & Nolan.
  • Looby, John (1953). "Ozanam and Marx," The Irish Monthly, Vol. 81, No. 964, pp. 475–478.
  • O'Meara, Kathleen (1876). Frédéric Ozanam: His Life and Works. Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas.
  • Schimberg, Albert Paul (1946). The Great Friend: Frederic Ozanam. Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co.
  • Scott, Maxwell (1914). "Frédéric Ozanam," The Dublin Review, Vol. CLIV, pp. 33–50.
  • Sickinger, Raymond L., Antoine-Frédéric Ozanam, Notre Dame Press , 2017
  • https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/blessed-frederic-ozanam/