TOURNÉLY, ÉLÉONOR FRANÇOIS DE

Founder of the Society of the sacred heart of jesus; b. Laval, Brittany, Jan. 21, 1767; d. Hagenbrunn, near Vienna, July 9, 1797. After priestly studies at Saint-Sulpice Seminary, Paris, where his piety, zeal, and attractive personality were remarked, the young aristocrat heeded the advice of Jacques Émery, head of the seminary, and fled the French Revolution in 1791 to Luxembourg and Belgium. Dedicating his life to labor for the restoration of the jesuits, suppressed by Clement XIV in 1773, he established a religious institute with this as its main purpose (May 8, 1794), and acted as its superior until his death. Together with his followers he eluded the armies of the French Revolution by moving to Cologne, Augsburg, and Vienna (August 1796), where he died of smallpox. Death overtook him before he could organize a religious congregation of women devoted to the education of girls and modeled on the Jesuits; but Father varin passed on his ideas to (St.) Madeleine Sophie barat, who then founded the Society of the sacred heart. This institute honors Tournély as the forerunner and ultimate inspiration of its foundress, and transferred his remains to its chapel in Vienna (Sept. 23, 1868).

Bibliography: f. speil, P. Léonor Franz von Tournély und die Gesellschaft des heiligen Herzens Jesu (Breslau 1874). a. guidÉe, Vie du R. P. Joseph Varin (2d ed. Paris 1860). l. koch, Jesuiten-Lexikon: Die Gesellschaft Jesu einst und jetzt (Paderborn 1934); photoduplicated with rev. and suppl., 2 v. (Louvain-Heverlee 1962) 1763–64.

[j. f. broderick]