GAGARIN, IVAN SERGEEVICH

Writer; b. Moscow, Aug. 1, 1814; d. Paris, July 19, 1882. He belonged to a noble Russian family. In 1832 he joined the diplomatic corps and served as secretary to the embassy in Munich, Vienna, and Paris (from 1838). Mme. Swetchine, his aunt, brought him into contact with Chateaubriand, Falloux, Montalembert, Lacordaire, Donoso Cortes, and other leading Catholics who frequented her Parisian salon. Under the influence of Gustave de ravignan, SJ, he was converted from Orthodoxy to Catholicism and joined the jesuits) (1843. From this time he used also the name John Xavier. After ordination he taught philosophy and ecclesiastical history in Brugelette (1849–51) and Laval (1854–55). From 1855 he lived mostly in Paris, where he engaged in writing and pastoral work, and sought chiefly to reunite the Russian Orthodox Church with Rome. Besides numerous periodical articles, he published in Paris La Russie sera-t-elle Catholique (1856), Les starovères, L'Église russe et le Pape (1857), and L' Église russe et l'Immaculée Conception (1868). With Charles Daniel he founded in 1856 the periodical Études, which still continues publication. Stories linking his name with the duel in which Aleksandr Pushkin, the Russian poet, was mortally wounded, lack foundation.

Bibliography: c. sommervogel et al., Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus (Brussels-Paris 1890–1932) 3:1089–95. j. g.a. m. remmers, De Herenigingsgedachte van Ivan S. Gagarin (Tilburg 1951). l. koch, Jesuiten-Lexikon: Die Gesellschaft Jesu einst und jetzt (Paderborn 1934) 629.

[j. papin]