Emmanuel d'Alzon

Early years

Emmanuel Joseph Marie Maurice d'Alzon was born the oldest of four children, in Le Vigan, Gard, in southern France, to an aristocratic and intensely Catholic family from the Cévennes Mountains. He was baptized on September 2, 1810, in the church of Saint Pierre in Le Vigan by his uncle, Canon Liron d'Airolles.

In 1816 the family moved to the family château of Lavagnac (Hérault) where d'Alzon received his early education at home from tutors. From 1823 to 1828 d'Alzon studied at the renowned Parisian colleges of Lycée Louis-le-Grand and Collège Stanislas de Paris. It was at the end of his secondary studies that he came into contact with the influential thinker, Félicité de Lamennais, much of whose early teachings on the political order and Christian society would mark the young d'Alzon. For a time he considered a military career and applying to the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr, but was dissuaded by his parents.

In 1828 d'Alzon enrolled in law school in Paris but never finished because of the political upheavals which struck France in 1830. During these years in the French capital he had come to know a host of distinguished young men, some of whom remained friends throughout his life: Henri Lacordaire, who would re-establish the Dominican order in France, Olympe Philippe Gerbet, founder of La Revue catholique, noted preacher Théodore Combalot, and Count Charles de Montalembert, journalist, historian, and politician. According to Georges Tavard, "It was the influence of Bonald, Joseph de Maistre and Lamennais that made the later d'Alzon a determined opponent of the Gallican party at the First Vatican Council."