Stanislas du Lac

Stanislas du Lac (b. at Paris, 21 November1835; d. there, 30 August1909) was a French Jesuit, an educationist and social worker, also an enigmatic figure in the background to the Dreyfus Affair.

Life

His father, Louis Paul Albert du Lac de Fugères, was descended from a noble family, and his mother was Camille de Rouvroy de Lamairie. Entering into the novitiate of the Society of Jesus at Issenheim in Alsace, October 28, 1853, he studied theology at Laval until 1869, when he was ordained priest by Mgr. Wicart, 19 September.

The following summer (1870), he was made rector of the new College of Sainte-Croix at Le Mans, where, during the Franco-Prussian war, he organized an efficient hospital service. During the ten months of his rectorship at Le Mans, twenty-two thousand soldiers sojourned successively in his college.

In October 1871, he succeeded Léon Ducoudray as Rector of the Ecole Sainte-Geneviève, generally called "La Rue des Postes", an institution which prepared candidates for the great military and scientific schools of France. During his rectorship, from 1872 to 1881, 213 of his pupils were admitted to the Ecole Centrale, 328 to the Ecole Polytechnique, and 830 to Saint-Cyr.

In 1880, he founded a new French college, St. Mary's, at Canterbury, England, where he remained as rector nine years. The last twenty years of his life were spent in Paris and Versailles, as preacher, director of souls, and founder of the "Syndicat de l'Aiguille", a collection of loan and benefit societies for needlewomen, dressmakers, seamstresses, especially those young sewing girls who are called midinettes.

Dreyfus Affair

Father du Lac was in the public eye for many years the personification of the scheming Jesuit. His reputation among the military was high, and he was confessor to Boisdeffre, prominent in the Dreyfus Affair [ Maurice Larkin, "Religion, Politics, and Preferment in France Since 1890" (1995), pp. 15-6.] . Joseph Reinach, pioneer historian of the Affair, believed in a Jesuit conspiracy against the Republic in which du Lac was implicated [Albert S. Lindemann, "The Jew Accused: Three Anti-Semitic Affairs (Dreyfus, Beilis, Frank), 1894-1915" (1991), p. 121.] . The involvement of the Jesuits in general, and du Lac in particular, is now described as a myth, set off by Frederick Conybeare, and given substance by Reinach [Michael Sutton, "Nationalism, Positivism and Catholicism: The Politics of Charles Maurras and French Catholics" (1983), p. 106.] ; the thought that there was a Jesuit conspiracy to prevent the rehabilitation of Alfred Dreyfus is called "demonstrably a total delusion" [Ralph Gibson, "A Social History of French Catholicism, 1789-1914" (1989), p. 110.] .

Works

He wrote two books: "France" (Paris, 1888), which vividly portrays the affectionate relations between the Rector of St. Mary's, Canterbury, and his French boys; and "Jésuites" (Paris, 1901), a defence of the Society of Jesus, containing many autobiographical reminiscences.

Notes

External links

* [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08729a.htm "Catholic Encyclopedia" article]