The Life of an Uncompromising Philosopher and Theologian:
Father Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange (1877-1964)
It’s a little-known fact that the famous Dominican philosopher and theologian Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange (1877-1964) was of Gascon origin, even though no street in his hometown of Auch bears his name. We present here the broad outlines of his life, entirely devoted to study, which began on the banks of the Gers and ended on the banks of the Tiber in Rome. We didn’t dare entitle this biographical sketch: “The Gers flows into the Tiber”.
A Gascon
Marie-Aubin-Gontran Garrigou-Lagrange was born in Auch on 21 February 1877. The civil register shows that his parents lived on rue de l’Oratoire (now rue Victor-Hugo)[1]. His father, François-Léonard-Junien Garrigou-Lagrange, was a tax inspector at the time. He was born in Marval, Limousin, in 1844. His paternal uncle, Abbé Maurice Garrigou (1766-1852), had been a canon in Toulouse. During the French Revolution, he distinguished himself by his bravery during the persecutions, from which he narrowly escaped. He went on to found a congregation of nuns, and died in the odor of sanctity. His beatification process is underway in Rome, and Pope Francis proclaimed him Venerable in 2013[2].
Our theologian’s mother, Jeanne-Marie-Clémence Lasserre, was a native of Auch, where she was born on 8 September 1854 to Thomas-Auguste Lasserre, also a tax inspector, and Thérèse Fauqué. She married François Garrigou, ten years her senior, in Auch in 1874[3]. According to some sources[4], she was related (but how closely?) to Henri Lasserre (1828-1900), a man of letters and virulent Catholic polemicist of the second half of the 19th century, famous for being the first historian of the Lourdes apparitions[5]. On 27 February, little Gontran was baptized at Sainte-Marie Cathedral by Abbé Saint-André, vicar[6].
The family remained in Auch for a few years. In 1878, the couple had another child, this time a daughter named Alice (who died at the age of fifty after her brother had given her the last rites)[7]. François Garrigou-Lagrange was soon transferred to La Roche-sur-Yon, then to Nantes and finally to Tarbes. It was there that Gontran attended secondary school and passed his baccalaureate. He was quite a brilliant student, but also rather arrogant. An anecdote recounted by several witnesses reveals that he failed his French oral exam due to his insolence, which displeased the examiner:
“The latter asked him for an analysis of Cinna. The young man replied: ‘I haven’t reread Cinna since the sixth grade, but if you ask me for general considerations on Corneille, I’ll be able to answer you.’ This incident has symbolic value: Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange would always prefer great syntheses to erudite details.”[8]
Conversion and entry into the Dominicans
Having passed his baccalaureate, Gontran Garrigou-Lagrange moved to Bordeaux to begin studying medicine. At the time, he was at best indifferent to the religion in which he had been raised. In 1897, he was deeply moved by a book he had read. It was Ernest Hello’s (1828-1885) L’Homme. This collection of essays contrasts the Christian conception of man, who is sure of his convictions, with that of the modern man, who doubts everything. It had a spectacular effect on the young man, who went from being an agnostic or skeptic to being a devout Catholic:
“In an instant,” he later confessed, “I perceived that the doctrine of the Catholic Church was the absolute Truth about God, his intimate life, and about man, his origin and his supernatural destiny. I saw, as if in the twinkling of an eye, that this was not a truth relative to the present state of our knowledge, but an absolute truth which will not pass away, but will appear more and more in its radiance until we see God facie ad faciem.”[9]
This sudden conversion can be compared to other similar experiences of intellectuals and writers at the turn of the 20th century: Paul Claudel, Charles Péguy, Jacques Maritain and many others[10].
Our medical student then decided to leave everything behind to become a religious. After some hesitation between the Trappists and the Carthusians, he finally opted for the Dominicans. This venerable order, restored to France by Father Lacordaire in 1838, was enjoying a fresh impetus. The context of the time was indeed favorable: in 1879, Leo XIII had just published the encyclical Æterni Patris, which reaffirmed the value of philosophical studies and, in particular, advocated a serious and in-depth return to the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas.
In 1898, he presented himself at the novitiate in Amiens. He took the white habit and black cape of the order, and was given the first name Réginald in homage to Blessed Réginald d’Orléans, one of the first French Dominicans and a companion of Saint Dominic. He then moved to the small Burgundian village of Flavigny-sur-Ozerain, where the Dominicans had their Studium, from which he was turned out in 1902, due to the laws against religious congregations. He had to leave for Belgium, where he completed his studies and was ordained a priest.
To complete his training, his superiors sent him to Paris to study philosophy and literature at the Sorbonne. Many of the letters he wrote during this period to his teacher, Père Ambroise Gardeil, have been preserved and even published[11]. It is clear that the young priest attended classes with some of the greatest minds of the Belle Époque, in particular Henri Bergson[12], but a certain weariness burdened him:
“For the past two days I haven’t exactly been very cheerful. It’s the lectures on the explanation of Latin and Greek authors, and especially the translations into Latin, that have the effect of making me sad for the whole day. I have the feeling that I’m back in the class of rhetoric, including the uninteresting study of the latest tedious anecdotes, and all of this smacks of an exam. At 27, it’s terribly austere to be starting out in this profession again.”[13]
Shortly afterwards, aged just under thirty, he was appointed professor of philosophy for his Dominican confreres. He taught first in Belgium, where his community was still in exile, then in Switzerland, and finally in Rome.
Professor in Rome
At the time Father Garrigou began his career as a teacher, the Catholic world was going through a period of serious turmoil known as the “modernist crisis”. These events had a decisive influence on his entire life and thought, so much so that it has been written that “his entire work is nothing but their explanation [that of pontifical teachings] and their defense against modernist theology.”[14]
Saint Pius X counted on the Dominicans to refute what he called “the synthesis of all heresies”. This is why, in 1909, the Master General of the Order, Father Hyacinthe-Marie Cormier, founded a University in Rome. This university, commonly known as the Angelicum, was placed under the patronage of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Originally located on via San-Vitale, it moved in 1932 to the slopes of the Quirinal above the Forum of Trajan, where it still stands today. Father Garrigou-Lagrange taught there for over fifty years: first theology, starting with apologetics until 1918, then, from 1918 to 1959, all the other treatises of the monumental Summa Theologica[15]. In 1915, he was also given a chair in philosophy, where he was able to comment on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. In 1917, he was awarded a third newly-founded professorship in spiritual theology.
The two world wars marked brief interruptions in his academic life. During the First World War, he went to Nice to join the French army, but the draft board deemed him unfit for service and sent him back to his beloved books[16]. During the Second World War, shortly before Mussolini entered into war against France alongside Germany, he had to leave Italy and settle in Coublevie, near Grenoble, where there was a Studium of his order. He was only able to return to Rome in October 1941[17].
Throughout his years in the Eternal City, he was an excellent teacher. His lectures were much appreciated, not only by his Dominican brothers, but also by many priests, prelates and superiors of religious orders (especially the spiritual theology course he taught on Saturdays)[18]. He shone as much for his exceptional knowledge as for his admirable teaching skills. It has been said that “his lectures are not spoken monologues, they are dramas acted out”[19]. He even had a sense of humor, which is appreciable when teaching such serious subjects:
“I mean no disrespect to his memory,” says one of his former students, “but he had a great sense of humor. In one hour of class, it was rare for him not to have a few moments of hilarity. This was helped by certain facial features: his small, mischievous, laughing eyes, which were extremely mobile; an almost completely bald head; a face that could mimic horror, anger, irony, indignation and wonder. The lecture was interspersed with invariably repeated sentences, eagerly awaited. I saw abbots laughing themselves to tears and enjoying themselves. Then, once again, all became calm or restrained ardor.”[20]
He taught in Latin, as was customary in Roman universities. But his Latin was “modeled on French”[21] and he would happily mix in words from his native tongue or from Italian, “without ever altering the accent of his native Gascony.”[22]
When he wasn’t teaching, he spent his vacations crisscrossing Italy and France, and sometimes even other countries in Europe or the Americas, preaching retreats in convents and monasteries. At the end of August, he was often in Meudon, at the Maritain family home, to give spiritual conferences to the capital’s intellectual elite. The latter included the Maritains, Henri Ghéon, Charles du Bos, Prince Vladimir Ghika, Jean Daujat and many others, including Protestants and non-believers[23].
An immense and committed body of work
In addition to his teaching activities, Father Garrigou-Lagrange wrote numerous books in both Latin and French. In all, some thirty titles were published between 1909 and 1951. Some were reprinted several times, and translated into English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and even Polish. He also published numerous articles in magazines, notably La Revue thomiste and La Vie spirituelle of the province of Toulouse, and in dictionaries, in particular the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique[24].
The great polemic in which he distinguished himself was that of the “New Theology”. From the inter-war years onwards, a number of Catholic thinkers, primarily Jesuits, had sought to free themselves from medieval scholasticism and reformulate Church doctrine in a language that was both closer to modern concepts and inspired by the authors of the early centuries of the Church, who seemed to them more interesting than Saint Thomas. This trend had a major influence on the clergy after the Second World War, as its main proponents, such as Henri de Lubac and Gaston Fessard, had gained considerable prestige through their involvement in the French Resistance. Father Garrigou reacted sharply to these theories in an article entitled “La nouvelle théologie, où va-t-elle?” (The Nouvelle Théologie, where is it heading?), published in his university’s magazine[25]. For him, it was nothing less than the destruction of the Catholic faith. These theologians were ruining the authority of councils and popes, and resurrecting the dreaded modernism. In particular, he criticized them for not using Aristotelian concepts in theology. He also held fast to a traditional vision of original sin, committed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, against any attempt to reinterpret dogma in the light of Darwinian evolutionism.
His stance against these innovations earned him a reputation in the post-war period as a severe conservative theologian, the embodiment of a rigid and censorious theology. Even today, he suffers from this reputation. His biographer, the American Richard Peddicord, even wrote that his name was now associated with “theological rigidity and ecclesiastical repression”[26].
In 1950, he was credited with inspiring the encyclical Humani generis, which condemned the nouvelle théologie. In 1955, he was appointed consultor to the Holy Office, and in this capacity gave his opinion on which books should be authorized or banned. However, his doctrinal intransigence did not prevent him from seeking to be understood by the broadest public possible. In some of his works, we find the pedagogical sense that his pupils appreciated in him. Alongside difficult works, he composed accessible books which Father Loew, a priest-worker in Marseille, confessed to having used with the most modest of people:
“… when, without any preconceived ideas, simply to help my little neighbors or a friend at work discover the mystery of God and that of their own lives, I went back to the source of theology, I saw both the most substantial and the most immediate problems taking shape. So, at the risk of making some people smile, the theology that proved to be the best adapted and to possess the greatest newness was that of Saint Thomas and his disciplines right up to the present day, a P. Garrigou-Lagrange, a Mgr Journet, a Gilson or Maritain.” [27]
This should come as no surprise, for Father Garrigou was a man who was profoundly kind to the poor:
“He was deeply sympathetic to the misery of the needy. You could see him overwhelmed by the distressing situations which were confided to him in the parlor. He wasn’t afraid of being exploited (and he often was), but he was even more afraid of neglecting the truly poor. And there are many such people in Rome.”[28]
It has to be said that he himself lived in the most edifying poverty, occupying a very simple cell with no superfluous furniture or running water. He was also very humble, a quality that is unfortunately not very common among great intellectuals, even those who are Catholic, and he submitted himself in everything to the rule of his order: “An exemplary religious,” wrote one of his fellow students, “he edified his superiors and brothers all his life by his childlike obedience, his regularity, his assiduity in choir, in prayer and in all the common exercises”[29]. Peddicord wrote that he was “the epitome of fidelity to the Dominican ideal”[30].
The last few years
Father Garrigou-Lagrange celebrated his eightieth birthday in 1957. He was surrounded by his entire community, and Pope Pius XII himself wrote him a letter in Latin to congratulate him. He wished him renewed strength to “accomplish new and remarkable works”[31]. Yet the theologian’s final years were one long Way of the Cross, a terrible and inexorable physical and mental decline.
He was gradually relieved of his lectures in 1959 and 1960, and was finally able to enjoy a little rest. But he was soon struck down by what we now call Alzheimer’s disease, which is all the more terrible when it strikes an intelligence such as his. In July 1960, he left his convent for the clinic. He spent time in various nursing homes, ending up in a convent of nuns specialized in caring for priests at the end of their lives: the Fraternité Sacerdotale Canadienne, on via della Camilluccia, just outside Rome. He died there on 15 February 1964.
On his death, Pope Paul VI paid tribute to him by writing a brief which was published in L’Osservatore romano, the official Vatican newspaper[32].
Abbé Christophe Vigneaux
The Éditions du Cerf have announced the forthcoming publication of Dieu dans l’âme. Présence et transcendance de Dieu dans la théologie de Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, by Abbé Arnaud Renard.
[1] Archives départementales du Gers (A. D. 32), 5 E 17842, naissances, 9e feuillet r., n° 39.
[2] MEYER (Jean-Claude), La Vie de Maurice Garrigou, Baziège, Pélé-Jeunes, 2002.
[3] A. D. 32 , 5 E 17839, marriages, 23e sheet v., n° 43.
[4] Cf. GAGNEBET (M.-R.), « L’œuvre du P. Garrigou-Lagrange : itinéraire intellectuel et spirituel vers Dieu (Conférence prononcée Rome le 27 mai 1964) », article published in Angelicum, vol. 42, Rome, 1965, p. 8.
[5] On the life of this astonishing figure, see GARREAU (Albert), Henri Lasserre, l’historien de Lourdes, Paris, Lethielleux, 1948.
[6] The baptismal certificate can be found in the diocesan archives (Actes de catholicité, 1877, n° 41), and we thank Canon Jacques Fauré for kindly showing it to us.
[7] LAVAUD (Marie-Benoît), « Le Père Garrigou-Lagrange. In Memoriam”, article published in La Revue thomiste, n° 64/2, Toulouse, 1964, p. 195, n° 1.
[8] Anecdote reported by LAVAUD (Marie-Benoît), ibid. p. 182-183.
[9] Comments reported by GAGNEBET (M.-R.), op. cit. p. 9-10.
[10] Cf. GUGELOT (Frédéric), La Conversion des intellectuels au catholicisme (1885-1935), Paris, Éditions du CNRS, 2010.
[11] « Lettres de jeunesse au P. Ambroise Gardeil (1903-1909) » published in Angelicum, vol. 42, Rome, 1965, pp. 137-194.
[12] With whom he kept in touch for a long time. He sent him his books, notably La Providence et la confiance en Dieu (1932) and Le Sauveur et son amour pour Dieu (1934), which played a major role in Bergson’s eventual conversion to Catholicism.
[13] Letter of 28 November 1903, ibid. p. 142-143.
[14] GAGNEBET (M.-R.), op. cit. p. 17.
[15] CONGAR (Yves), Journal d’un théologien, 1946-1956, Paris, Le Cerf, 2000, pp. 35-36: “He was considered to be, alone among French Dominicans, totally and virginally faithful to Saint Thomas, and as having an integral Thomistic grace”.
[16] LAVAUD (Marie-Benoît), op. cit., p. 186.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid. p. 185.
[19] GAGNEBET (M.-R.), op. cit. p 13.
[20] EMONET (P.-M.), “Un Maître prestigieux”, testimony published in Angelicum, vol. 42, Rome, 1965, p. 197. Father Garrigou was about sixty at the time.
[21] LAVAUD (Benoît-Marie), op. cit. p. 187.
[22] GAGNEBET (M.-R.), op. cit. p 14.
[23] Raïssa Maritain wrote about these retreats in her Journal, published by Jacques Maritain, Paris, 1964.
[24] For a full biography, cf. Zorcolo (B.): “Bibliografia del P. Garrigou-Lagrange”, in Angelicum, pp. 200-272 (in chronological and thematic order). For a more succinct biography, with a summary of each book, see MADIRAN (Jean) and LOUIS (Eugène), in Itinéraires, n° 86, Paris, September-October 1964, pp. 88-94.
[25] GARRIGOU-LAGRANGE (Réginald), « La nouvelle théologie, où va-t-elle? », in Angelicum, vol. 23, Rome, 1946, pp. 126-145. Reprinted as an appendix in La Synthèse thomiste, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1947, pp. 699-725.
[26] PEDDICORD (Richard), The sacred Monster of Thomism, an introduction of the life and legacy of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, South Bend, Saint Augustine’s Press, 2005, p. 2: “For many, Garrigou-Lagrange symbolizes a theological ethos that was utterly discredited by the Second Vatican Council. (…) Garrigou-Lagrange has been effectively identified with theological rigidity and ecclesiastical repression.”
[27] LOEW (Jacques), Journal d’une mission ouvrière, Paris, Le Cerf, 1959, p. 370.
[28] LAVAUD (Benoît-Marie), op. cit. p. 196.
[29] Ibid. p. 195.
[30] PEDDICORD (Richard), op. cit. p. xii: “Garrigou was the epitome of fidelity to the Dominican ideal.”
[31] This letter was translated into French and published in Itinéraires, n° 86, op. cit., pp. 1-2.
[32] Osservatore romano, 17-18 February 1964, quoted in Itinéraires, n° 82, April 1964, p. 127.