Charles Martial Allemand Lavigerie

Charles Martial Allemand Lavigerie (31 October 1825–26 November 1892) was a French cardinal archbishop of Carthage and Algiers and primate of Africa. He was born at Bayonne, and was educated at St Sulpice, Paris. He was ordained priest in 1849, and was professor of ecclesiastical history at the Sorbonne from 1854 to 1856. In 1856 he accepted the direction of the schools of the East, and was thus for the first time brought into contact with the Islamic world. Cest lit, he wrote, que J'ai connu enfin ma vocation. Activity in missionary work, especially in alleviating the distresses of the victims of the Druzes, soon brought him prominently into notice; he was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honor, and in October 1861, shortly after his return to Europe, was appointed French auditor at Rome. Two years later he was raised to the see of Nancy, where he remained for four years, during which the diocese became one of the best administered in France. While bishop of Nancy he met Marshal MacMahon, then governor-general of Algeria, who in 1866 offered him the see of Algiers, just raised to an archbishopric. Lavigerie landed in Africa on the 11th of May 1868, when the great famine was already making itself felt, and he began in November to collect the orphans into villages. The later years of his life were spent in ardent anti-slavery efforts, and his eloquence moved large audiences in London, as well as in Paris, Brussels and other parts of the continent. He hoped, by organizing a fraternity of armed laymen as pioneers, to restore fertility to the Sahara; but this community did not succeed, and was dissolved before his death.