Abstract
The name Labadie, or l’Abadie, originated in Gascony in South-West France, and it was from this region that Jean de Labadie’s forbears hailed.1) His father, a soldier of fortune, Jean-Charles Labadie, was a Calvinist and had distinguished himself at the battle of Coutras, on 20 October 1587, where Henri de Navarre crushed the army of the Ligue under Duke Joyeuse; fighting in Turenne’s squadron of Gascon cavalry, Labadie’s arm was broken by musket-shot and his face cut by a rapier. His courage had been noted, however, and shortly after Henri’s accession to the throne as Henri IV, Labadie was made gentilhomme ordinaire de la chambre du Roi, an order of petty nobility reinstated by the monarch, carrying messenger duties.2) With the office came the title sieur de Lasserre en Chalosse, the only clue we have as to Jean-Charles’ origins, for this was in all likelihood the place of his birth or residence, and there is a Lasserre in the commune of Monget (canton Hagetmau), on the borders of Chalosse and Béarn.
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Notes to Chapter 1
Other details on Jean-Charles in Archives hist. du dépt. de la Gironde, 34 (1899):84–87.
Wilhelm Goeters: Die Vorbereitung des Pietismus... bis zur Labadistischen Krisis 1670 (Leipzig, 1911) mistakenly speaks of a planned legal career.
Michel de Certeau, ‘Crise sociale et réformisme spirituel au début du XVIIe siècle: une ‘Nouvelle Spiritualité’ chez les Jésuites français’, Revue d’ascétique et de mystique, 41 (1965):346.
Details in Louis Cognet: La spiritualité moderne. L’essor, 1500–1650, (Paris, 1966), chap.6.
Henri Bremond: Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France, vol.xi, chap.2 Paris, 1933.
Ignatius Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, ed. W.H. Longridge, Annotation 4. (London, 1930). The Exercises (Week 1, iii; Week 2, i) also speak of a state of spiritual bliss where the soul is quiet before God, devoid of human care; also of mental prayer.
Loyola did, however, stress that, in the last resort, obedience ranked higher than any vision, and that all spiritual movements had to be submitted to one’s confessor. A fine example of this is to be found in A. Kleiser, ‘Das Selbstzeugnis P. du Tertres über seine inneren mystischen Erfahrungen’, Zeitschrift für Askese und Mystik, 1 (1926): 187–191).
He had written several devotional works (C. Sommervogel et al., eds.: Bibliothéque de la Compagnie de Jésus, 2nd edn., Paris/Brussels, 1890–1960, s.v. Jacquinot).
Another eminent Jesuit, Léonard de Champeils, lamented that the provincial was ‘too inclined to give his approval to trends hitherto unheard of, as long as they bore a veil of piety’ (M. de Certeau: Correspondance de Jean-Joseph Surin, p. 444, Paris, 1965).
Pierre Pourrat; La spiritualité chrétienne, vol.4, Paris, 1928, p. 64f. It is important to note the comment by Lallemant’s editor (in 1694, when mystical spirituality was more acceptable): ‘Le Saint-Esprit fut son maître dans la théologie mystique. II ne l’apprit point des hommes.’ (Pourrat, 4:63) The same could have been said of Labadie.
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© 1987 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht
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Saxby, T.J. (1987). Early Years and Jesuit Training, 1610–1639. In: The Quest for the New Jerusalem, Jean de Labadie and the Labadists, 1610–1744. Archives internationales d’histoire des idees/International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 115. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3567-9_1
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