Charles Daniel

Born 31 December, 1818, at Beauvais, France; died 1 January, 1893, at Paris. He joined the Society of Jesus in 1841, was professor of rhetoric in the novitiate at Saint Acheul, and in 1857, with the assistance of Father Gagarin, founded the “Etudes de théologie et d’ histoire”, a magazine that soon became a monthly publication. Father Daniel edited it with ability until 1870. He was a man of extensive and accurate learning, of unquestionable taste, and he had an unusually receptive and assimilative mind. He contributed to the “Etudes” many articles on philosophical subjects: “Optimism” (1859), “Positivism” (1860), “Leibniz and Saisset” (1861), “The Vatican Council” (1869-1870); “Protestantism: the Crisis of Protestantism in France” (1862), “The Organization of Protestants in France” (1863); biographies of Père Beauregard (1858), Mme. Swetchine (1864), Ch. Lenormand (1860), and P. Léon Ducoudray, martyr of the Paris Commune (1892).

Other more important works are: “Des Etudes classiques dans la société Chrétienne” (1853); “Histoire de la bienheureuse Marguerite Marie et des origines de la dévotion au Sacré Coeur” (1865), translated into Italian, Polish, and Chinese; “La vie du P. Alexis Clerc, marin et Jésuite” (1876, English tr., New York, 1880), and “Les Jésuites instituteurs de la jeunesse au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècle” (1880). His “Questions actuelles: religion, philosophie, histoire, art et littérature” is preceded by a sketch of the author by Fathers Mercier and Fontaine, S. J. (Poitiers, 1895).