THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
Apr. 9, and after a novitiate at Santa Maria sopra Minerva, returned to France, where he continued to command the greatest popularity as a preacher. After the revolution of 1848, he was elected to the National Assembly, but resigned his seat on being censured by his superiors for a profession of republican principles, abandoning also the publication of his newspaper L'Ere nouvelle. In 1850 he went to Rome to defend the cause of the archbishop of Paris, who had condemned the reactionary newspaper L'Univers. At the same time France was constituted a separate province of the Dominican order, with Lacordaire for provincial. After the coup d'etat of 1851 he left Paris, and preached there but once more, in 1853, after which the government insisted on his absenting himself from the capital. He delivered a course of conferences at Toulouse in 1854, and then devoted himself to education, first at Oullin and then at Soreze, where he remained until his death, with the exception of a visit to Paris for his reception into the Academy. His complete works were published in Paris, 9 vols., 1872-73; his sermons and addresses in 4 vols., 1886-88; and three different collections of letters in 1863, 1864, and 1886. [The following have appeared in English translation : four volumes of Conferences delivered in Notre Dame in Paris (London, 1851-72); Life: Conferences Delivered at Toulouse (1873); St. Mary Magdalen (1880); Life of St. Dominic (1883); Thoughts and Teachings of Lacordaire, selections (Dublin, 1892).]
(C. Pfender.)
Bibliography: Lists of Lacordaire's works and a long list of notices of his life are given in the British Museum Catalogue. Among the many accounts of his life the best are by J. T. Foisset, Paris, 1874; F. Beslay, Paris, 1862; A. Guillemin, Tours, 1862; C. F. R. de Montalembert, Paris, 1862, Eng. transl., London, 1878; Dora Greenwell, Edinburgh, 1867; B. Chocarne, Paris, 1873, Eng. transl., London, 1878; H. L. Farrer (H. L. Lear), ib., 1887; A. de Broglie, Paris, 1895; Abbe du Hamel, Abbeville, 1896.
LACTANTIUS, lac-tan'shius.
I. Life. II. Works.
The De Divinis Institutionibus (§1). Lost Works (§ 2). Doubtful Works (§ 3).
I. Life: The most frequently reprinted of the Latin Fathers, Lucius Csecilius Firmianus Lactantius, was probably of African birth, though he was long thought to have been an Italian. Very little is known of his life. Jerome asserts (De vir. ill., lxxx.) that he was a pupil of Arnobius, called by Diocletian to Nicomedia as a teacher of rhetoric, and forced to become a writer by lack of scholars; and he is said to have been in his old age the teacher in Gaul of Crispus, the son of Constantine. His having studied under Arnobius is, however, doubtful; and it is impossible to determine the date of his birth or whether he was of Christian or pagan parentage. Since Diocletian took up his permanent residence at Nicomedia in 285, the call of Lactantius thither was probably not much later than that date; and it is evident from the De divinis institutionibus (I., i. 8) that he was still holding his office there at the beginning of the persecution of Diocletian (Feb. 23, 303). If he was a
Christian at that time, he must have lost the opportunity to teach in that year, and then presumably he took up his literary activity. But there is no certain evidence as to the date of his conversion to Christianity or as to his fortunes in the persecution, assuming that he was then a Christian. The facts which he describes as an eye-witness lead to the conclusion that he was still in Bithynia in 305, and probably longer. His sojourn in Gaul as the teacher of Crispus (b. 307) was probably before 317 If the De mortibus persecutorum was written by him, and in Bithynia (see below, § 3), he was there as late as 313.
II. Works: In the above-cited passage Jerome names twelve works of Lactantius, of which seven are wholly or almost wholly lost. Of those still extant, the De opificio Dei is a small treatise addressed to a former pupil named Demetrianus, a wealthy man in danger of deserting his philosophical principles for a life of pleasure. The main purpose of the treatise is to determine the relation between soul and body. Lactantius shows that God has given reason to man as a protection, and justifies the arrangements of providence by a detailed description of the structure of the human body, concluding with an exposition of the nature of the soul, and referring to a treatise still to be written against the pagan philosophers, obviously the Institutiones. As to the date of the work, it has been customary to draw conclusions from I., i. 7 and xx. 1, which would place it after the beginning of the persecution; but the passages quoted do not justify even such an approximate decision as this.
The principal work of Lactantius is the De divinis institutionibus, in seven books. The first, De falsa religione, combats polytheism as the basis of all errors, the unity of God being proved philosophically from the concept of a Sui. The De preme Being and historically from the Divinis testimony of poets and philosophers.
Institu- In the second book, De origine erroris,
tionibus. Lactantius endeavors to show that the demons are the source of error. The third, De falsa sapientia, shows the weakness of philosophy, pretending to unattainable knowledge and divided into numerous conflicting sects; while the fourth, De vera sapientia et religione, draws a contrasting picture of Christianity. The three remaining books discuss fundamental ethical conceptions (v.), the proper form of rendering worship to God (vi.), and immortality (vii.). The same difficulty exists as in the case of the De opificio about the determination of the date; but it is a tenable hypothesis that the outbreak of the persecution, covering a period of at least two years, lies between the composition of the first four books and that of the fifth, according to which theory the author found leisure to continue his work only when he had left the headquarters of the anti- Christian movement. From such passages as V., xi. 15 and VI., xvii. 6 it follows that these books were written not earlier than 305 or later than the toleration edict of Galerius in 311. The Epitome. or abbreviated form of the Institutiones, was known to Jerome, and generally, until 1712, only in a mutilated form from which about one-third was miss-