Louis Jacques Maurice de Bonald

Louis Jacques Maurice de Bonald
Cardinal Archbishop of Lyon
File:Louis-Jacques-Maurice de Bonald.jpg Photograph of Cardinal Bonald
Church	Roman Catholic Church
Archdiocese	Lyon
Appointed	4 December 1839
In office	1839-1870
Predecessor	Joachim-Jean-Xavier d'Isoard
Successor	Jacques-Marie-Achille Ginoulhiac
Other posts	Cardinal-Priest of Santissima Trinità al Monte Pincio
Orders
Ordination	22 February 1812
Consecration	27 April 1823 by Jean-Baptiste de Latil
Created Cardinal	1 March 1841 by Gregory XVI
Rank	Cardinal-Priest
Personal details
Born	(1787-10-30)October 30, 1787 Millau, Kingdom of France
Died	Lyon, France
Nationality	French
Previous post	Bishop of Le Puy-en-Velay (1823-1939)
Coat of arms	Louis Jacques Maurice de Bonald's coat of arms

Styles of Louis de Bonald
60px
Reference style	His Eminence
Spoken style	Your Eminence
Informal style	Cardinal
See	Lyon

Louis Jacques Maurice de Bonald (30 October 1787 – 23 February 1870) was a French cardinal and Archbishop of Lyon.

Biography

Louis Jacques Maurice was born at Millau, the son of the philosopher Louis de Bonald and his wife Élisabeth-Marguerite de Guibal de Combescure (1754–1826). Returning from emigration after the 18th Fructidor, he was placed in a boarding school in Lyon. After completing his studies, he entered the Saint-Sulpice seminary where he was noted for his ardent piety. Once ordained a priest in 1811, he was noticed by the Archbishop of Besançon Gabriel Cortois de Pressigny, who took him on as secretary in a difficult and delicate mission, the object of which was the conclusion of the concordat, and took him to Rome with him.

File:Ingres - Portrait de l'abbé de Bonald.png

Portrait of a younger Louis Jacques Maurice de Bonald by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1816)

In 1817, under the Restoration, he became grand vicar and archdeacon of Jean-Baptiste de Latil, bishop of Chartres. In 1823, he was named bishop of Le Puy (a bishopric newly restored by royal decree). He henceforth showed himself to be a zealous defender of the rights of the Church. On December 4, 1839, he was promoted to Archbishop of Lyon, primate of the Gauls.

Bonald's choice for this important post was the work of Louis-Philippe, who did not appreciate the legitimist opinions of the apostolic administrator of the diocese, Jean-Gaston de Pins. In his place, he suggested Bonald. The latter had the approval of Rome, because, in addition to his political opinions, he was an ultramontane, favorable to Roman ecclesiology, and moreover a fine diplomat, a necessary quality to influence the chapter of canons.

One of the first reforms that the new bishop carried out was the installation of an organ in the primatial church. In fact, upon his arrival, it was the only cathedral in France that did not have one. Beyond possible questions of prestige or the beauty of the liturgy, it was a very political gesture. In fact, the churches of the diocese of Lyon follow the Rite of Lyon (one of the rites of the Catholic Church, differing somewhat from the Roman Rite, and which prohibited, among other things, the use of the organ: "Ecclesia lugdunensis non utitur organis". The canons, stripped of their important political powers by the Revolution, kept control over the choral liturgy of the cathedral, and the tension of their position on this aspect gave an identity character to the conflict. This is one of the reasons for Bonald's appointment to this post, because Rome wanted to limit Gallican tendencies in the Church of France, of which the bishop of Lyon is the primate. The capitular act of 30 August 1840 shows the prudence and diplomacy exercised by the prelate, who first proposed to take an organ on trial for a provisional period; the resistance no longer concerned the liturgy itself but the tradition which was being undermined. In parallel with this rental, the archbishop insisted with the chapter that a real purchase be made. The ordination of Louis Rossat, the new bishop of Gap, in 1841, provided the opportunity for the inauguration of the organ. Furthermore, it was a modest organ, with only fifteen stops; and above all, it did not weigh on the finances of the diocese because the prelate ordered it with his own money. Overall, this installation was a success with the assembly, and the construction of several organs in the churches of the diocese was decided in the years that followed.

The new Archbishop of Lyon was created cardinal in the consistory of March 1, 1841, and he received the hat from the hands of the Pope on May 22, 1843, in the title of the Most Holy Trinity on the Mounts. In 1844, he condemned the Manual of Ecclesiastical Law, a work by Dupin the Elder, attorney general at the Court of Cassation, considering that the book contained "doctrines likely to ruin the true freedoms of the Church and put shameful servitudes in their place...".

The same year the Rive-de-Gier miners organized a strike in response to a coalition of employers seeking to reduce wages and extend working hours. On April 5, three or four hundred strikers set an ambush for the troops supervising the transfer of seventeen detained miners to Saint-Étienne. They tried to free them by throwing stones at the soldiers, who opened fire. Five men were hit, including an 18-year-old worker who was killed. Cardinal de Bonald refused to condemn the miners.

In 1848, he was one of the first to welcome the revolution of 1848, whose motto Liberty, Equality, Fraternity seemed to him to be favorable to the interests of the Church. Before 1848, he had already denounced the working class misery of a new kind caused by the economic structures of large-scale industry.

In 1850, he refused to authorize the exorcism of Antoine Gay, a Trappist novice possessed by a demon from 1837 to 1871, despite the requests of many priests. In 1852, he warned his diocese against superstition and condemned devotion to Our Lady of La Salette, while the bishop of Grenoble Bruillard had just publicly recognized the apparition of 1846.

He was elected senator of the Second Empire (he held the seat from January 26, 1852 to February 26, 1870).

In 1866, Cardinal de Bonald promulgated a new missal of the Rite of Lyon, the title of which specifies the conformity of the content with papal directives and which will remain in force until the Second Vatican Council: Missale Romano-Lugdunense, sive missale Romanum in quo ritus Lugdunenses ultimi tridui ante Pascha, ordinis missae et vigiliae Pentecostes auctoritate Sanctae Sedis Apostolicae iisdem ritibus romanis proprio loco substituuntur.

Louis Jacques Maurice de Bonald died at the 5th arrondissement of Lyon aged 82.

See also

• Catholic Church in France
• Our Lady of La Salette

References

• Droulers, Paul (1957). "Le cardinal de Bonald et la question ouvrière à Lyon avant 1848," Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, Vol. IV, No. 4, pp. 281–301.
• Droulers, Paul; Philippe Bonnet-Laborderie (1966). "Catholicisme et Mouvement ouvrier en France au XIXe siècle. L'attitude de l'Episcopat," Le Mouvement social, No. 57, pp. 15–46.
• Reveyron, Nicolas; Jean-Dominique Durand, Didier Repellin & Michel Cacaud (2011). Lyon, la grâce d'une cathédrale. Strasbourg: La Nuée bleue.
• Strumingher, Laura S. (1978). "‘A Bas Les Prêtres! A Bas Les Couvents!’: The Church and the Workers in 19th Century Lyon," Journal of Social History, Vol. XI, No. 4, 1978, pp. 546–53.

External links

• Louis-Jacques-Maurice Cardinal de Bonald
• Works by Louis Jacques Maurice de Bonald at Gallica