Denis-Luc Frayssinous

The freedom of his language in 1809, when Napoleon had arrested the pope and declared the annexation of Rome to France, led to a prohibition of his lectures; and the dispersion of the congregation of Saint Sulpice in 1811 was followed by his temporary retirement from the capital.

He returned with the Bourbons, and resumed his lectures in 1814; but the events of the Hundred Days again compelled him to withdraw into private life, from which he did not emerge until February 1816.

[1] As court preacher and almoner to Louis XVIII of France, he now entered upon the period of his greatest public activity and influence.

In connection with the controversy raised by the signing of the reactionary concordat of 1817, he published in 1818 a treatise entitled Les vrais principes de l'Église gallicane sur la puissance ecclésiastique, which though unfavourably criticized by Lamennais, was received with favor by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities.

[1] The consecration of Frayssinous as bishop of Hermopolis in partibus, his election to the Académie française, and his appointment to the grand-mastership of the university, followed in rapid succession.