Henri Daniel-Rops

Henri Daniel-Rops
Henri Daniel-Rops
	Photograph of Daniel-Rops by Studio Harcourt (1950)
Born	Henri Jules Charles Petiot; 19 January 1901; Épinal, France
Died	27 July 1965 (aged 64); Tresserve, France
Pen name	Daniel-Rops, Henri Daniel-Rops
Notable works	Nôtre Inquiétude (Our Anxiety, an essay from 1926); L'âme obscure (The Dark Soul, 1929); Jesus and His Times (1945); Daily Life in Palestine at the Time of Christ (1961)
Spouse	Madeleine Bouvier
Children	Francis Petiot

Henri Jules Charles Petiot (19 January 1901 – 27 July 1965), known by the pen name Henri Daniel-Rops, was a French Catholic writer and historian.

Biography

Daniel-Rops was the son of a military officer. He was a student at the Faculties of Law and Literature in Grenoble, receiving his Agrégation in History in 1922 at the age of 21, the youngest in France. He was a professor of history in Chambéry, then in Amiens and finally in Paris. In the late 1920s he began his literary career with an essay, Notre inquiétude (Our Anxiety, 1926), a novel, L'âme obscure (The Dark Soul, 1929), and several articles in journals such as Correspondent, Notre Temps and La Revue des vivants.

Daniel-Rops, who had been brought up a Roman Catholic, had by the 1920s become an agnostic. In Notre inquiétude his theme was humanity's loss of meaning and direction in an increasingly industrialized and mechanized world. When he considered the misery and social injustice around him, and the apparent indifference of Christians to those they called their brothers, he questioned whether Christianity was any longer a living force in the world.^[1]

The alternatives, however, did not seem any better. Marxism, for instance, claimed to concern itself with people's material well-being, but quite ignored their non-material needs, which for Daniel-Rops was unacceptable. In the 1930s he returned to the Catholic Church, having come to feel that, in spite of the shortcomings of Christians, it was only through Christianity that the technological age could be reconciled with humanity's inner needs.^[1]

Literary career

Starting in 1931 he wrote mostly about Catholicism, advised by Gabriel Marcel with whom he shared membership of the Ordre Nouveau. He helped disseminate its ideas in books in which it is often difficult to distinguish his personal reflections from the doctrines of the movement he had attached himself to, and which make him a leading representative of the intellectual ferment among non-conformists in the 1930s: Le Monde sans âme (The World without a Soul), Les annés tournantes, Eléments de notre destin.

After 1935, his ties with Ordre Nouveau loosened somewhat. He collaborated with the Catholic weeklies Sept and Temps présent. By 1940 he had published several novels, biographies and essays. For Plon he directed the collection Présences, in which he published the book La France et son armée (France and Its Army) by General de Gaulle, who became his friend.

From 1941 to 1944, he wrote Le peuple de la Bible (The People of the Bible) and Jésus et son temps (Jesus and His Times), the first of a series of works of religious history that would culminate in the monumental Histoire de l'Eglise du Christ (History of the Church of Christ) (1948–1965).

After the liberation of France in 1944, he abandoned teaching to devote himself to his work as a Christian historian and writer, directing the magazine Ecclésia and editing Je sais, je crois (I know, I believe), published in English as The Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism. He was undoubtedly the French writer most widely read by post-war Catholics.

At the same time, with some former colleagues from Ordre Nouveau, he worked with various European federalist movements. He joined The Federation, and the French Federalist Movement.

From 1957 to 1963 he was one of the fifty governors of the European Foundation of Culture founded by Denis de Rougemont. In 1955, he was elected to the Académie française.

Bibliography

Daniel Rops has written novels and works of religious history:

1926: Notre inquiétude
1926: Sur le théâtre de H. R. Lenormand
1927: Le Vent dans la nuit
1928: Le Prince menteur
1928: Carte d’Europe
1929: L'Âme obscure
1930: Deux hommes en moi. Paris, Plon, 254 p. Completed in August 1928, according to the first edition.
1931: Fauteuil 24: Édouard Estaunié
1932: Les Années tournantes
1932: Le Monde sans âme
1933: Péguy
1933: Severa
1934: Mort, où est ta victoire ?
1934: Éléments de notre destin
1935: Le Cœur complice
1935: La Misère et nous
1936: La Pureté trahie
1936: Rimbaud, le drame spirituel
1937: Le Communisme et les Chrétiens (in collaboration)
1937: Ce qui meurt et ce qui naît
1937: Tournant de la France
1938: Présence et poésie
1938: Le Courtinaire
1938: La Maladie des sentiments
1938: La Main d’un juste
1938: La France veut la liberté (in collaboration)
1939: L’Épée de feu
1939: Le Mystère animal : l’animal cet inconnu (in collaboration)
1939: Une campagne de “Temps présent” : la paix par le Christ (in collaboration)
1941: L’Avenir de la science (in collaboration)
1941: La Femme et sa mission (in collaboration)
1941: Mystiques de France
1941: L’Ombre de la douleur
1941: La signification héroïque de Péguy et de Psichari
1941: Vouloir
1942: Où passent les anges
1942: Psichari
1943: L’Œuvre grandissante de Patrice de La Tour du Pin
1943: Par-delà notre nuit
1943: Histoire sainte. I : Le Peuple de la Bible
1943: Comment connaissons-nous Jésus ?
1944: Trois images de la grandeur
1944: Péguy et la vraie France (in collaboration)
1945: Histoire sainte. II : Jésus en son temps
1946: Quêtes de Dieu. Trois tombes, trois visages
1946: Notre histoire. I : Des origines à 1610
1946: Histoire sainte de mes filleuls
1946: Un héraut de l’Esprit : saint Paul
1946: Boquen, témoignage d’espérance
1946: Deux études sur William Blake
1947: Notre histoire. II : De 1610 à nos jours
1947: Aux silences du cœur
1947: Ce visage qui nous regarde
1947: L’Évangile de mes filleuls. Lourdes
1947: Marges de la prière
1947: La Nuit du cœur flambant
1947: Sept portraits de femmes
1947: Terre fidèle
1948: Diane blessée
1948: Histoire de l’Église du Christ. I : L’Église des apôtres et des martyrs
1948: Pascal et notre cœur
1948: Le Sang des martyrs
1948: Les Évangiles de la Vierge
1949: De l’amour humain dans la Bible
1949: La Vie du Christ dans la culture française
1949: Rencontre avec Charles Du Bos
1949: Histoire sainte illustrée
1949: Chants pour les abîmes
1949: Orphiques
1950: Histoire de l’Église du Christ. II : L’Église des temps barbares
1950: Le Christ, thème éternel
1950: L’Histoire sainte des petits enfants
1950: Légende dorée de mes filleuls^[2]
1950: Toi aussi, Nathanaël
1950: Préface du Journal d'Anne FRANK
1951: Le Roi ivre de Dieu
1951: Noé et son grand bateau
1951: ABC du petit chrétien
1951: Les Aventuriers de Dieu. Bartolomé de Las Casas
1951: Histoire de Jonas. Missa est
1952: Le Drame des Templiers
1952: Le Pèlerin à la coquille
1952: Rome
1952: La Thérapeutique dans l’Ancien Testament
1952: Saint Paul, conquérant du Christ
1952: Histoire de l’Église du Christ. III : L’Église de la cathédrale et de la croisade
1953: Chemin de Croix. Claire dans la clarté
1953: Diptyque pour le temps de Pâques
1953: Jésus disait à ses amis
1953: Les Miracles du Fils de Dieu
1953: Le Porche de Dieu fait homme
1953: Quand un saint arbitrait l’Europe : saint Bernard
1954: Être des saint
1954: La Vie du Christ dans les chefs-d’œuvre de la peinture
1954: Histoire sainte
1954: L’Évangile de la pierre
1954: La Passion
1955: Saint Paul, aventurier de Dieu
1955: Qu’est-ce que la Bible ?
1955: Histoire de l’Église du Christ. IV : L’Église de la Renaissance et de la Réforme
1955: Aux lions, les chrétiens !
1955: Comment on bâtissait les cathédrales
1956: Apôtres et martyrs
1957: Claudel tel que je l’ai connu
1958: Histoire de l’Église du Christ. V : L’Église des temps classiques
1959: Monsieur Vincent
1960: Histoire de l’Église du Christ. VI : L’Église des révolutions. 1 : En face de nouveaux destins (1789-1870)
1961: La Vie quotidienne en Palestine au temps de Jésus
1962: Saint Bernard et ses fils
1962: Vatican II, le concile de S. S. Jean XXIII
1963: Histoire de l’Église du Christ. VII : L’Église des révolutions. 2 : Un combat pour Dieu (1870-1939)
1964: Chant pour un roi lépreux
1965: Histoire de l’Église du Christ. VIII : L’Église des révolutions. 3 : Ces chrétiens nos frères