Ozanam, Antoine Frederic

Antoine Frederic Ozanam was born into a family of Jewish origin and living in France for many centuries. His ancestor was the mathematician Jacques Ozanam (1640-1717). His father, Antoine Ozanam, served in the French army, and after some time after leaving the army service, he became engaged in trade and subsequently graduated from medical training, began working as a doctor.

In 1831, when Antoine Frederick Ozanam was 18 years old, he wrote a pamphlet book, Réflexions sur la doctrine de Saint-Simon, criticizing the philosophical and political doctrine of utopian socialism by Henri Saint-Simon . This essay attracted the attention of the French writer, poet and public figure Alfons de Lamartine , who later helped Antoine Frederic Ozanam to get acquainted with well-known public figures of France. In 1832, Antoine Frederic Ozanam arrived in Paris , where he began to study jurisprudence and journalism . In Paris, he met with the figures of the Catholic public movement writer Francois René de Chateaubriand , preacher Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordér , physicist and mathematician Andre Marie Ampère . While studying at the University of Paris, Antoine Frederic Ozanam published articles in the Catholic daily newspaper L'Univers, which spoke out against ultramontany .

04/23/1833 Antoine Frederic Ozanam founded the society "Partnership of Love", which later transformed into the charitable organization "Society of Saint Vincent de Paul". In 1836 he received the degree of Doctor of Law. In 1839, he received a place as a professor of trade law at the University of Lyon and in 1840 became a professor of foreign literature at the Sorbonne . As a professor, he was engaged in extensive literary research and charitable work in the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, visiting the sick and needy.

During the French Revolution of 1848, he returned to journalism, publishing articles in the journal Ere Nouvelle he founded. In 1851 he made numerous trips around England , Italy . On his return to Marseilles from Italy, he died on September 8, 1853.

Antoine Frederic Ozanam was a leading historical and literary critic in France in the first half of the nineteenth century. In his journalistic and public life, he was a defender of the Catholic social doctrine, urging the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church to find an answer to the social challenges of the French Revolution. In his articles, he relied on the doctrine he had formed, in which he asserted that historical Christianity made a significant contribution to the social life of the early Middle Ages . With his excellent knowledge of medieval literature and the doctrine of the significant contribution of the Catholic Church in the development of Europe , he opposed the teachings of Edward Gibbon , spread in England and asserted that the Catholic Church did much more to enslave the human mind than to free it.

On August 22, 1997, Antoine Frederick Ozanam was canonized by Pope John Paul II .

• Réflexions sur la doctrine de Saint-Simon (1831)

• Deux chanceliers d'Angleterre, (Paris, 1836)

• Dante et la philosophie catholique au XIIIeme siècle (Paris, 1839)

• Études germaniques (2 v. 1847–1849)

• La civilization chrétienne chez les Francs (1849)

• Documents inédits pour servir a l'histoire de l'Italie depuis le VIIIeme siècle jusqu'au XIIeme (1850)

• Un pèlerinage au pays du Cid (1852)

• Les poites franciscains en Italie au XIIIme sicle (Paris, 1852)

• Gérard Cholvy, Frédéric Ozanam, l'engagement d'un intellectuel catholique au XIXe siècle. Paris: Fayard, 2003, 783 p. Cet ouvrage a obtenu le prix Roland de Jouvenelen 2004 (ISBN: 2-213-61482-2).

• Henri-Dominique Lacordaire " Frédéric Ozanam ", Jacques Lecoffre, 1856

• The sermon of Pope John Paul II during the beatification of Antoine Frederick Ozanama (Fr.)