Henri Lasserre
Joseph-Henri Lasserre de Monzie (25 February 1828 – 22 July 1900) was a French journalist and writer.
Contents
Biography
Henri Lasserre was born in Carlux, Dordogne, the son of Jean Baptiste Lasserre de Monzie, a surgeon of the navy who took part on October 21, 1805 in the Battle of Trafalgar. After studying law in Paris, Henri Lasserre abandoned the career of lawyer that he had envisaged for journalism. A pamphleteer and resolutely polemicist, he contributed to newspapers such as Le Pays, Le Monde, Le Réveil, L'Ami de la Religion and the Revue du Monde catholique. He evolved in the middle of a circle of friends, where Ernest Hello, Count Dubosc de Pesquidoux, Barbey d'Aurevilly, Alexandre Dumas fils, etc., can be found. A committed Catholic, he clashed with Ernest Renan, then with Émile Zola.
His life was turned upside down after he was suddenly cured of a progressive and irremediable blindness on October 10, 1862, a cure attributed to the miraculous water of Lourdes, which his friend Charles de Freycinet had asked the parish priest of Lourdes to send him. After several pilgrimages to Lourdes and at the request of Father Peyramale, the parish priest of Lourdes, he wrote the history of the Lourdes apparitions — when the Virgin appeared to Bernadette Soubirous in 1858 — based on the testimonies of the various people he met and duly questioned. His work Notre-Dame de Lourdes, published in 1868, was a resounding success: with more than 200 editions, the work was translated into some forty languages, celebrated by the French bishops and Pope Pius IX himself sent the author an apostolic brief on September 4, 1869, to congratulate him. The rest of his work and life is almost exclusively devoted to Lourdes, relating miracles, testimonies, etc.
He published a translation of the Gospels in 1887, which was placed on the Index because it was considered too modernist. Although he had devoted twelve years of his life to it, the writer submitted. To justify himself against his detractors, he wrote Légitime défense, lettre à sa Grandeur Monseigneur Perraud, évêque d'Autun (1890).
He then published The Christian Life in the Middle of the World, based on the writings of Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein and the correspondence he had exchanged with her for several years.
His last struggle was to finish the construction of the new parish church of Lourdes, undertaken by Father Peyramale, the parish priest of the Apparitions, and abandoned for twenty years after his death, by financing part of it. His last works are dedicated to him: L'Église inachevée de Mgr Peyramale (1896), and Le Curé de Lourdes, Mgr Peyramale (1897). He was a benefactor of the sanctuaries and of the city. His name was given to a street in Lourdes.
He died on July 22, 1900 in the family property at Coux-et-Bigaroque in the Dordogne where he had been living for a quarter of a century.
The work of the theologian René Laurentin on the Marian apparitions at Lourdes was based on the works and archives left by Henri Lasserre.
Private life
He married Aurélie-Clémence Vasseur on September 8, 1868, with whom he had a daughter, Marie Marthe Lasserre de Monzie, wife of Abbadie d'Arrast, author of several biographies and short stories under the pseudonym Henriaur.
Works
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- L'Opinion et le Coup d'État (1851)
- L'Esprit et la Chair (1859)
- L'Aveugle et sa Compagne (1860)
- La Prusse et les Traités de Vienne (1860)
- Serpents et Sophistes (1861)
- La Pologne et la Catholicité (1861)
- Les Serpents (1863)
- L'Évangile selon Renan (1863)
- Le Maudit (1864)
- L'Auteur du Maudit (1864)
- Les Épopées françaises (1866)
- Le Treizième Apôtre, suivi du retour de l’île d'Elbe (1866)
- Les deux Hugo: autrefois et aujourd'hui (1867)
- M. Renan, revu et corrigé (1868)
- Notre-Dame de Lourdes (1869)
- Les Guérisons miraculeuses de Notre-Dame de Lourdes (1870)
- Les Apparitions et les Guérisons miraculeuses de Notre-Darne de Lourdes (Petit abrégé de Notre-Dame de Lourdes) (1872)
- Les Étrennes (1872)
- Mois de Marie de Notre-Dame de Lourdes (1872)
- Les Apparitions de la Vierge (1873)
- De la Réforme et de l'Organisation du Suffrage universel (1873)
- Le Miracle du 16 septembre (1877-1878)
- Bernadette, Sœur Marie-Bernard (1879)
- Le Miracle de l'Assomption (1882)
- Les Épisodes miraculeux de Notre-Dame de Lourdes (1883)
- Le Menuisier de Lavaur (1886)
- Les Saints Évangiles (1887; translator)
- Légitime défense, lettre à sa Grandeur Monseigneur Perraud, évêque d'Autun (1890)
- Nouveau Mois de Marie de Notre-Dame de Lourdes (1892)
- La Vie chrétienne au milieu du monde (1895)
- L'Église inachevée de Mgr Peyramale (1896)
- Le Curé de Lourdes, Mgr Peyramale (1897)
- Le Comte Dubosc de Pesquidoux (1900)
External links
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- 1828 births
- 1900 deaths
- 19th-century French historians
- 19th-century French journalists
- 19th-century French male writers
- 19th-century French translators
- French Roman Catholic writers
- Translators of the Bible into French
