rtune, who rose to be governor of Guienne. His parents entered him
at the Jesuit College, where he completed his novitiate and took the
first vows, and in 1635 he was ordained as a priest. Early
manifestations of an erratic temperament, a mystical habit of mind,
and physical frailty, led to his severance from the Society of Jesus.
He entered upon a preaching mission, and, coming under the attention
of Pere Gondran, second general of the Congregation of the Oratory at
Paris, he received a call to that city, and, according to his own
statement, the entire body of the Sorbonne united in the call.

Labadie soon acquired a fame that went beyond the borders of France,
for oratorical ability and theological precision. His former
associates, the Jesuits, originated stories against his morality and
sought to bring him into trouble with the authorities. The attacks to
which he was subjected led him to adopt a broad though wholly
fanatical scheme of reforms for the Church.[10] During the lifetime of
Cardinal Richelieu, who befriended him, he was safe from attack, but
upon the succession of Cardinal Mazarin the Jesuits obtained an order
of the court for his arrest, the execution of which was prevented by
the death of the king. In the year 1645 he was cited to appear at
court along with his friend, the Bishop of Amiens, and was sentenced
to perpetual imprisonment, which sentence was modified on an appeal
made by the assembly of the clergy of France then in session. He was,
however, ordered to renounce his opinions and to refrain from
preaching for a period of years. In one of his treatises he states
that during a second forced retirement he obtained and read a copy of
Calvin's _Institutes_. This had a determining influence upon his after
career.[11] He summed up the result of his solitary reflections in the
words, "This is the last time that Rome shall persecute me in her
communion. Up to the present I have endeavored to help and to heal
her, remaining within her jurisdiction; but now it is full time for me
to denounce her and to testify against her."

[Footnote 10: _Declaration de la Foi_, pp. 84, 122, 123.]

[Footnote 11: _Traite de la Solitude Chretienne._]

At Montauban in 1650 Labadie abjured his former faith and was later
ordained a Protestant minister. According to Mollerus[12] the
acquisition of the widely famous preacher was heralded as the greatest
Protestant triumph since the days of Calvin. Banished from France in
16