Jacques-Marie-Louis Monsabré

Jacques-Marie-Louis Monsabré (born at Blois, France, 10 December 1827; died at Le Havre, 21 February 1907) was a French Dominican, a celebrated pulpit orator.

He was ordained as a secular priest 15 June 1851, but soon felt he had a religious vocation. On the thirty-first of July, 1851, the feast of St. Ignatius, he celebrated his first Mass and thought seriously of entering the Society of Jesus. Four days later, however, the feast of St. Dominic, he decided to become a Dominican and immediately wrote a letter of application to Père Lacordaire.

He had to wait four years for release from the diocese, as the bishop had received authorization from the Holy See to withhold that long his permission for newly ordained priests to enter a religious order. In May, 1855, he received his dimissorials, entered the novitiate at Flavigny, received the habit on the thirty-first of the same month and one year later made his simple profession. A few days later he was sent to the house of studies at Chalais, where he spent a year in solitude and prayer.

In the winter he was appointed to preach the Lenten sermons in the church of St. Nizier, at Lyon, where he gave the first indication of his eloquence. After preaching the Lenten sermons in Lyon, Monsabré was assigned to the convent of St. Thomas, in Paris, where he began to give conferences.

After interrupting this ministry for several years he took it up again. In the Advent of 1867 he gave conferences in the convent church. He preached then for a number of years in the principal cities of France, Belgium, and in London, conducting retreats, novenas, and triduums. His reputation, however, was really first made by the course of Advent sermons which he preached in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, in 1869, as successor of Hyacinthe Loyson. The success of these conferences brought the invitation to preach the Lenten sermons in Notre Dame in 1870, succeeding Célestin Joseph Félix of the Society of Jesus.

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