Jean de Labadie (13 February 1610 – 13 February 1674) was a 17th-century French Pietist. Originally a Jesuit priest, he became a member of the Reformed Church in 1650, before founding the community which became known as the Labadists in 1669. At its height the movement numbered around 600 with thousands of adherents further afield. It attracted some notable female converts such as the famed poet and scholar Anna Maria van Schurman and the entomological artist
Maria Merian.
Labadie combined the influences of Jansenism, Precicianism, and Reformed Pietism, developing a form of radical Christianity with an emphasis upon holiness and Christian communal living. Labadie's teachings gained hold in the Netherlands.
Life
The son of an officer, he entered the Jesuit Order in 1625, was ordained in 1635, but left in 1639 due to poor health and tensions with the other brothers. He then worked as a diocesan priest in Bordeaux, Paris and Amiens. He turned to Jansenism and intensive study of the Bible, and began to be drawn to Calvinism. He regarded himself as divinely inspired.
Here, too, he was pressed and harassed, and in 1672 he left and walked to Altona, Duchy of Holstein. Labadie died in 1674 in that German city which belonged then to the Danish crown. The movement continued both in Europe and America, but had dissipated by 1732.