Célestin Joseph Félix

Called to Amiens in 1850, he introduced the teaching of rhetoric at the College de la Providence and preaching during Advent and Lent at the cathedral.

It was then that Marie-Dominique-Auguste Sibour named him to succeed the Dominican, Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire, and the Jesuit, Gustave Xavier Lacroix de Ravignan, in the pulpit of Notre-Dame (1853 to 1870).

Progress in all its forms, whether of the individual or of the family, in science, art, morals, or government, is herein treated with doctrinal exactness and breadth of view.

The practical conclusions of these conferences Félix summed up every year in his preaching of the Easter retreat, which had been inaugurated by de Ravignan.

Félix founded the Society of St. Michael for the distribution of Catholic books and employed the leisure of his last years in the composition of several works and in the revision of his Retraites a Notre-Dame, which he published in six volumes.