Hyacinthe Loyson

Charles Jean Marie Loyson (10 March 1827 – 9 February 1912), better known by his religious name Père Hyacinthe, was a famous French preacher and theologian. He was a Roman Catholic priest who had been a Sulpician and a Dominican novice before becoming a Discalced Carmelite and provincial of his order, but left the Roman Catholic Church, in 1869, after major excommunication was pronounced against him. He was known especially for his eloquent sermons at Notre Dame de Paris and sought to reconcile Catholicism with modern ideas.

Biography Loyson was born in Orléans, France, on 10 March 1827. He was baptised Charles Jean Marie; named after the poet Charles Loyson, his uncle. He was educated in Pau, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, by private professors where his father was rector of the university. His mother was of the noble Burnier-Fontonel family of the Chateau de Reiquier, Savoy. One brother, Jules Theodore Loyson, became a priest and professor at the Collège de Sorbonne in Paris,

As a preacher in Lyon and Bordeaux, Loyson acquired his reputation as the most effective pulpit orator of his day; and his success soon afterwards induced him to seek the more critical audiences of Paris, where Loyson further established his fame at the Église de la Madeleine and Notre Dame de Paris. In 1868, he was summoned to Rome and was ordered to stop preaching on any controversial subject, and to confine himself exclusively to those subjects upon which all Roman Catholics were united in belief.

A law was enacted that restricted episcopal and parochial jurisdiction in the canton unless sanctioned by the government; and that, for the future, all parish priests should be elected by the Catholic inhabitants, and be removed, if shown sufficient cause, by the State. The canton was divided into twenty-three parishes, three of which were in Geneva; and in the following March, Loyson was invited by the Old Catholics to lecture in Geneva. In a series of discourses he boldly advocated a complete system of Church reform, to be carried out in conjunction with the Old Catholic party.

He urged that every nation establish a national Christian Church and the different established Churches become an international confederation. His views and talents were regarded favorably. Loyson was elected, by liberal Catholics, in the following October, in 1873, along with Hurtault and Chavard, to the three vacant parishes in Geneva. It was impossible for the bishop to retaliate under Swiss law. In 1874, he introduced reforms in worship and soon had to resign. Identified as one of the Old Catholics, Loyson continued to write and preach and ultimately settled in Paris in 1877 and established as a separate church the Église gallicane, which drew upon the long French tradition of Gallicanism.

He died in February 1912, in Paris, in the apartment of his playwright son, Paul Hyacinthe Loyson, and was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery.