Pierre Olivaint

Pierre Olivaint (1816–1871) was a French Jesuit, born in Paris, 22 February 1816.

Pierre Olivaint was born in 1816. His parents were not religious.

At twenty, he left home, and the College of Charlemagne, where he had studied, imbued him with the doctrines of Voltaire. He wrote at this time: "I desire, if by any possibility I should become a priest, to be a missionary, and if I am a missionary to be a martyr." In 1836, he entered the École Normale. Led at first by Buchez's neo-Catholicism, then won by the sermons of Lacordaire, he made his profession of faith to Father Ravignan (1837). At the École Normale he formed a Catholic group. The Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul attracted the élite of the schools, and Olivaint with twelve of his companions established them in the parish of Saint Ménard. In 1836, Olivaint heard that Lacordaire was going to restore the Dominican Order in France. Several of his friends had already decided to follow Lacordaire; he had the duty of supporting his mother.

After a year of professorship at Grenoble, he returned to Paris, and occupied the chair of history at Bourbon College; in 1841 he accepted a position as tutor to the young George de la Rochefoucaud.

In 1842 Olivaint won the junior fellowship in a history competition. His lecture was on Pope Gregory VII, and M. Saint-Marc Girardin closed the assembly with these words: "We have just heard virtue, pleading the cause of virtue". At this time war was declared against the Jesuits. Quinet and Michelet changed their lectures into impassioned attacks against the society. On 2 May 1845, Thiers was to conduct before the assembly an interpellation against these religious. Olivaint saw that it was his duty to be present. "I hesitated" he said to Louis Veuillot, "I hesitate no longer. M. Thiers shows me my duty. I must follow it. I enter to-day." And the day of the proposed interpellation he entered the novitiate of Laval.

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