Henri Leclercq

Henri Leclercq (born December 4, 1869 in Tournai , Belgium , † March 23, 1945 in London ) was a Catholic theologian and church historian.

Life

In Tournai he attended the elementary school of the Frères des écoles chrétiennes and the Collège Notre Dame, which he left at the age of 17 when his mother (his father had died in 1874) moved with him and his older sister to Paris, where the Family took French citizenship. In France he did voluntary military service from October 31, 1889 to October 31, 1892, which he completed as a sergeant fourrier (in later reserve exercises he rose to be a sous-lieutenant).

In the autumn of 1893 Leclercq entered the Benedictine Abbey of Solesmes , where he took the simple religious vows on January 15, 1895. In 1896 he was sent to Farnborough (southern England) together with the prior Fernand Cabrol and a few other monks , where ex-empress Eugénie of France was used as a burial place for Napoléon III. and their son Eugène Louis Napoléon had donated the monastery of Saint Michael's Abbey . Here he was ordained a priest on August 24, 1898 . In Farnborough, at Cabrol's suggestion, Leclercq began to produce extensive scientific compilations, and it was here that the Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, published by Leclercq after Cabrol's death, took shape (which had probably already been planned in Solesmes) . To work on these works, Leclercq spent more and more time in nearby London, in the reading room of the British Museum , which led him to move as a chaplain to the Italian hospital in Queen's Square, later to the monastery of Our Lady of Sion in Bayswater and finally In 1924 he was dismissed from the order (to which he remained an Oblate) and entered the secular clergy of the Diocese of Westminster .

There are divergent judgments about the value of his scientific achievements, but they are useful as rich collections of material for critical use. His last manuscripts could e.g. Some of them were only printed after the end of World War II .

Fonts (selection)

Only the most extensive of his works are mentioned here (cf. the list of writings in Klauser pp. 137–144):

• (together with Fernand Cabrol ) Relliquiae liturgicae vetustissimae , 2 vols., Paris 1902. 1913.
• Les martyrs. Recueil des pièces authentiques sur les martyrs depuis les origines du christianisme jusqu'au XXe siècle , 15 vols., Paris and Tours 1902–1924.
• (together with Fernand Cabrol and with the assistance of other contributors) Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie , 15 double vols., Paris 1903–1953.
• L'Afrique chrétienne , 2 vols., Paris 1904.
• L'Espagne chrétienne , Paris 1906.
• Carl Joseph Hefele , Histoire des conciles d'après les documents originaux. Nouvelle traduction française corrigée et augmentée par un religieux bénédictin (from vol. 2.2 to par Henri Leclercq ), 9 double vols., Paris 1907–1931.
• Manuel d'archéologie chrétienne depuis les origines jusqu'au VIIIe siècle , 2 vols., Paris 1907.
• "Histoire du déclin et de la chute de la monarchie française" ("working title", which does not appear bibliographically; the individual volumes or volume groups have their own titles), 11 volumes, Paris 1921–1940.
• Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire. Les reliques, le monastère, l'église , Paris 1925.
• La vie de Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ , Paris 1928.
• La vie chrétienne primitive , Paris 1928.
• L'ordre bénédictin , Paris 1930.
• A Chronicle of Social and Political Events from 1640 to 1914 . In: Edward Eyre (Ed.), European Civilization. Its Origin and Development , Vol. 6, London 1937, pp. 1-717.
• Mabillon , 2 vols., Paris 1953. 1957.

literature

• Theodor Klauser : Henri Leclercq, 1869-1945. From autodidact to compiler on a grand scale. Münster 1977. ISBN 3-402-07079-0 .
• Bernard Jossart: Henri Leclercq et les Bollandistes. Querelle autour des "Martyrs" . In: Analecta Bollandiana 121 (2003) pp. 108-136.

Web links

• Literature by and about Henri Leclercq in the catalog of the German National Library