Jean Daniélou

Jean Daniélou
Cardinal-Deacon of San Saba
Church	Catholic Church
See	Titular see of Taormina
Orders
Ordination	20 August 1938
Consecration	19 April 1969
Created Cardinal	28 April 1969
Personal details
Born	14 May 1905 Neuilly-sur-Seine
Died	20 May 1974 Paris

Jean Daniélou S.J. (14 May 1905–20 May 1974) was a theologian, historian, cardinal and a member of the Académie Française.

Life

Jean-Guenolé-Marie Daniélou was born at Neuilly-sur-Seine, son of Charles and Madeleine (née Clamorgan). His father was an anticlerical politician, several times minister, and his mother an educator and founder of institutions for women's education. His brother Alain (1907–1994) was a noted Indologist.

Daniélou studied at the Sorbonne, and passed his agrégation in Grammar in 1927. He joined the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1929, becoming an educator, initially at a boys' school in Poitiers. He subsequently studied theology at Fourvière in Lyon under Henri de Lubac, who introduced him to patristics, the study of the Fathers of the Church. He was ordained priest 20 August 1938.

During World War II, he served with the Armée de l'Air (Air Force) in 1939–1940. He was demobilised and returned to civilian life. He received his doctorate in theology in 1942 and was appointed chaplain to the ENSJF, the female section of the École Normale Supérieure, at Sèvres. It was at this time that he began his own writings on patristics. He was one of the founders of the Sources Chrétiennes collection. In 1944 he was made Professor of Early Christian History at the Institut Catholique de Paris, and later became dean. Beginning in the 1950s, he produced several historical studies, including The Bible and the Liturgy, The Lord of History, and From Shadows to Reality, that provided a major impetus to the development of Covenantal Theology.

At the request of Pope John XXIII, he served as an expert to the Second Vatican Council, and on 19 April 1969 he was consecrated as a bishop and on 28 April 1969 he was made a cardinal by Pope Paul VI. He was elected to the Académie Française on 9 November 1972, to succeed Cardinal Eugène-Gabriel-Gervais-Laurent Tisserant.

His unexpected death in 1974, in the home of a dancer, was very diversely interpreted. It was claimed by the Catholic Church that he was bringing money to pay for the bail of the dancer's lover. The French Press and the general public however, remain cynical of the Cardinal's altruism.

Select bibliography

A number of his works on the early Church, abridged for a popular audience, remain in print.

• L'être et le temps chez Grégoire de Nysse, Brill, Leyde, 1970 ;
• La Trinité et le mystère de l'existence, Desclée de Brouwer, Paris, 1968 ;
• Les Évangiles de l'enfance, Seuil, Paris, 1967 ;
• Philon d'Alexandrie, Fayard, Paris, 1958 ;
• Les manuscrits de la Mer Morte et les origines du Christianisme, L'Orante, Paris, 1957 ;
• Les anges et leur mission, d'après les Pères de l'Église, Desclée, Paris, 1952 ;
• Bible et liturgie, la théologie biblique des sacrements et des fêtes d'après les Pères de l'Église, Cerf, Paris, 1951 ;
• Origène, Table ronde, Paris, 1948 ;
• Platonisme et théologie mystique: doctrine spirituelle de saint Grégoire de Nysse, Aubier, Paris, 1944;
• Dieu et nous (God and the Ways of Knowing), Bernard Grasset, Paris, 1956.

Other works

• Libretto for Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex: a Latin translation of Jean Cocteau's arrangement of Sophocles' original Oedipus the King.

External links

• Jean Daniélou bio on IgnatiusInsight.com
• Jean Daniélou profile and books on Goodreads
• File on Cardinal Daniélou on the Académie Française website

Cultural offices
Preceded by Eugène Tisserant	Seat 37 Académie française 1972-1974	Succeeded by Robert-Ambroise-Marie Carré