Auguste Joseph Alphonse Gratry

After a period of mental struggle which he has described in Souvenirs de ma jeunesse, he was ordained a priest in Strasbourg in 1832.

After a stay there as professor of the Petit Séminaire, he was appointed director of the Collège Stanislas in Paris in 1842 and, in 1847, chaplain of the École Normale Supérieure.

[2] He became vicar-general for the bishop of Orleans in 1861, professor of moral theology at the Sorbonne in 1863, and, on the death of Barante, a member of the Académie française in 1867, where he occupied the seat formerly held by Voltaire.

[1] Together with Abbé Philippe Pététot, pastor of Saint Roch, and Hyacinthe de Valroger, Joseph Gratry reconstituted the French Oratory, a society of priests mainly dedicated to education.

Gratry developed throat cancer at the end of his life and went to Montreux, Switzerland, for treatment, where he died.