SÉGUR, LOUIS GASTON DE

Priest, spiritual writer; b. Paris, April 15, 1820; d. Paris, June 9, 1881. He was the son of Countess Sophie de Ségur, writer of well-known works for children, and the grandson of Count Rostopchine, governor of Moscow in 1813. After studying law, he became attached to the French embassy in Rome (1842–43) but soon renounced a diplomatic career for the seminary of St. Sulpice in Paris and was ordained (1847). Thence he devoted himself to a popular apostolate and founded a short-lived priestly community animated with the same spirit. He worked in Rome as auditor in the Roman Rota (1852–56) and was named prothonotary apostolic (1856), but blindness caused him to relinquish his post and return to Paris. Named canon of Saint-Denis, he also acted as chaplain at the College of Stanislas, where until his death he devoted himself to the direction of souls as a preacher and as confessor of various religious communities.

Ségur was a widely read spiritual and apologetic writer of some 60 works, mostly brief devotional tracts. Some were translated into English and other languages. His theological outlook was that of bÉrulle and others of the 17th-century French school of spirituality, combined with that of St. francis de sales. His writings promoted the imitation of Christ, frequentation of the Sacraments, the practice of charitable works, devotion to the Blessed Virgin, ardent love of the Church and the pope, and Eucharistic pilgrimages (forerunners of eucharistic congresses). As a militant ultramontane, he wrote several books on the pope and papal infallibility. To counteract Protestant polemics, especially when the writings of Marnix de Sainte-Aldegonde were reedited, he published Les Causeries sur le protestantisme (1869). La Piété enseignée aux enfants remains charming and useful. He wrote an eight-volume work, La Piété et la Vie intérieure (1864), one volume of which, subtitled Jesus vivant en nous, was placed on the Index (1869) because of possible pantheistic and quietistic interpretations. Later the author revised the text, submitted it to Pius IX, and published it under a new title, La Grâce et l'Amour de Jésus.

Bibliography: m. even, Mgr. Gaston de Ségur (Paris 1937). m. de hÉdouville, Mgr. de Ségur (Paris 1957). j. rivet, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 14.2:1781–83. For a list of his works and their various eds. see the catalog of the Bibliothèque National 169:963–995.

[j. daoust]