See jMontalembert, Le Fere Lacordaire (Paris, 1862, 8vo); Lomenie, Le Fere Lacordaire (1844); Lorrain, Biogruphie Jristorique de Lacordaii'e (1847) ; Chocame, Inner Life of P'ere Lacordaire (transl. by Father Ayl- ward; Lond. and New York, 1867, 8 vo); Yillard. ( 'o?Te- spondence inedite et biographie (Par. 1870, 8vo) ; Kirwan, Afodern France (1863) ; and the Jierue des deitx Mondes, May 1,1864; Sainte-Beuve, Cfl!/senes du Lwidi,i,2Q% s({.\ Brit, and For. Ev. Rev. Oct. 1863, art. iii ; Contemjwra- rij Rev. May, 1868, art. i. INI. Edmond Scherer, in the Litteraiure Confemporaine, also treated of pere Lacor- daire, but with special regard to his ability as a writer. His estimate of the noted Dominican is rather mifavor- able, perhaps even unjust. Of the discourses of Lacor- daire, he maintains that they are " unreadable" (p. 166). See also Blackwood''s Magazine, Feb. 1863 ; Lond. Quart. Review, Jidy, 1864. (J. H. W.)
Lacroix, Claudius, a noted Roman Catholic theolo- gian and philosopher, was born at the village of St. An- dre, province of Limburg, in 1652. He became master of philosophy in 1673, and immediately after joined the Order of Jesuits. He taught moral theology first at Cologne, then at ISIiinster; became doctor of theology in 1698, and died June 1, 1714. He wrote a commentary on Busenbaum's Moral Theologie (Cologne, 1719, 2 vols, folio). See Bitskxbaum.
Lacroze, JIathuuin Yeyssiere de, a distinguish- ed French Orientalist, was in turn a mercliant, a medi- cal student, and a Benedictine monk. Finally, having abjured Romanism, he retired to Prussia, where, in 1697, he became librarian to the king. He died at Berlin in 1739. His principal works are Histoire du Christian- isme des Indes (La Haye, 1724, sm. ivd) : — Ilistoire^du Chi-istianisme irEthiopie et d'Armenie (La Haye, 1739, sm. 8vo). See Darling, Cgclop. Bihliog. s. v.
Lactantius, Lucius Ccelius (or dciLius) Fir-
LACTANTIUS
186
LACTANTIUS
inANUS, one of the early Latin fathers, called by Jerome I (Cittal. c. 80) the most learned man of his time, and, on account of the line and rhetorical culture which his ■\vritin2;s evince, not unfrequently named the Christian Cicero (or, as Jerome has it, " Fluvius eloquential Tulli- an;c"),Avas formerly supposed to have been by birth an Ai'rican, but is now generally believed to have been of Italian birth, a native of Firmum (Fermo), on the Adri- atic, Italy. He was born probably near the middle of tlie 3d century; his parents, according to his own ac- count, were heathens, and he onl)' became a Christian at a somewhat mature age (comp. Be Ira I)ti, c. 2 ; In- slitt. Dif. vii, 2), certainly before the Diocletian perse- cution. Lactantius pursued his rhetorical studies in the school of the celebrated rhetorician and apologist Aruo- bius of Sicca, in proconsular Africa, and it is thus, in all probability, that arose the notion that Lactantius was of African birth. While yet a youth Lactantius gained celebrity l)y the publication oi" a poetical work called Si/mposion, a collection of a hundred riddles in hexame- ters for table amusement. But it was his eloquence that secured him really great renown, and he was heard of by Diocletian, and by him called to Nicomedia as professor of Latin eloquence. This city was, however, inhabited and visited mainly by Greeks, and Lactantius found but few pupils to instruct. This afforded him plenty of leisure, and he welcomed it as an opportunity to devote himself largely to authorship. Thus he con- tinued at Nicomedia ten years, while the Christians were not only persecuted by the emperors with fire and sword, but also assailed by the heathen philosophers with the weapons of science, wit, and ridicule. Against so many outrages Lactantius felt impelled to undertake the defence fif the hated and despised religion, and the more as he thought he had observed that they proceed- ed, at least in part, from ignorance and gross misunder- standings. It ^vas during this defence of Christianity, in all probaljility, that he became himself a convert to the true faith, and thus may it be accou.Ued for that Con- stantine called him to his court in (laid as preceptor (after 312 says Dr. Schaff, Ch. Hist, iii, 95G) of his son Crispus, whom Constantine afterwards (32G) caused to be put to death. Eusebius tells us that even in this exalted position he remained so poor as often to want for the necessaries of life. He must have been quite old when he arrived in Gaul, for he is then already spo- ken of as a gray-haired old man, and he is supposed to have died at the imperial residence in Treves shortly after his pupil Crispus, about 330. It has often been a matter of great perplexity to antiquarians to account for the fact that Lactantius escaped personal injurj^ dur- ing the Diocletian persecution. Some think, and this seems to be reasonable, that Lactantius escaped sufFerin for his faith because he was generally regarded as a jihilosopher, and not as a Christian ^\Titer; and, indeed, to judge from his Dc Opificio Dei, he appears to have been more attracted Ijy the moral and philosophical as- pects of Christianity than by the supernatural and the dogmatic. lu fact, in all the theological works of Lactan- tius is manifest the intluence of his early studies of all the masterpieces of ancient rhetoric and jdiilosophy, and he may be delined as a Christian pupil of Cicero and of Seneca. (Comp., on the inclination of the early Chris- tian teachers in the IJoman empire to style themselves "phik)sophers," Jirif. Quart. 7iV?'. July, lf<7l, p. '.>, col. 1.) Jerome even says of him {Epist. 83, ad PutiUuiim [alias 8i ad Maf/iiiim] ), '• Lactantius wrote seven books against the (Jentiles, and two volumes on the work and the an- ger of God. If you wish to read these treatises, j'ou will fnul in them a compendium of Cicero's Dialogues." He liad ontiTcd more (kei)ly into Christian morals than into Christian metaphysics, and his works offer hone of those learned and profound expositions of the dogmas which we fmd in Clement of Alexandria or in Origen. Lactantius, however, has been called, as we alreadj- hinted, the Christian Cicero, on account of his resem- blance to this celebrated classical writer iji the elegance