Lamennais, F�licit� Robert de 1782-1854
French priest and writer

Born in St-Malo, he was ordained as a priest in 1816. With his brother, Jean Marie Robert (1780-1860), also a priest, he retired to their estate at La Chesnaie, near Dinan, where he wrote R�flexions sur l'�tat de l'�glise (1808, 'Reflections on the State of the Church') which was suppressed by Napoleon I. He wrote his famous Essai sur l'indiff�rence en mati�re de religion (1818-24, 'Essay on Indifference Toward Religion'), a denunciation of private judgement and toleration, which was favourably received in Rome. However, notions of popular liberty began to change his outlook, and L'Avenir ('The Future'), a journal founded by him in 1830 with Charles de Montalembert and others, was condemned by the pope in 1832. The Paroles d'un croyant (1834, 'The Words of a Believer') brought about complete severance with the Church, and he was imprisoned for the revolutionary doctrines in his later work. Active in the 1848 February Revolution, he sat in the Assembly until the coup d'�tat. At his death he refused to make peace with the Church. He also wrote Esquisse d'une philosophie (1840-46).